Deconstructing ‘Climate Anxiety’

On April 8, 2025, the Trump Administration announced the end to $4 million in funding for research programs at Princeton University exploring risks associated with climate change. At the time, it was the latest instance in an ongoing wave of federal cuts to environmental initiatives. But this case sparked interest for another reason: According to the press release, at least one of the programs was eliminated because it was allegedly “contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.” 

Environmental experts were quick to denounce the idea that the solution to anxiety about climate change would come from avoiding research on the topic. But it's not the first time the phrase “climate anxiety” has been summoned for political gain, on either side of the aisle. The truth is the term gets used to describe all variations of distress over the state of the Earth. Parsing out the possible interpretations is an important exercise for educators, practitioners, and students themselves. 

A 2024 study of “climate emotions” in 16- to 25-year-olds found that up to 85 percent are “worried” about climate change and its potential impact; and for around 38 percent, these worries negatively affect daily life. Concern over climate change has become so widespread among young people that it's affecting how they vote, whom they choose to work for, what products they buy, even their decision to have children. But are young people’s responses to climate change a clinical issue to be treated? Or do they fall in line with those to most social problems, just with a catchier, more damning name?

The framing of “climate anxiety” presents something disordered in need of a cure, but from a clinical perspective, there is a distinction between an anxiety disorder and experiencing some sense of anxiety. After all, the vast majority of young people may feel worried about climate change; the majority don’t have an anxiety disorder.

“Anxiety or worry on its own isn’t necessarily a problem or something to be treated,” said Kaitlin Gallo, a Boston-based psychologist whose practice focuses on young adults and college students. She said she’s encountered a spectrum of concerns when it comes to climate change. Even among her patients who tend to have clinical-grade issues, their climate concerns do not necessarily map onto an anxiety disorder. “Oftentimes, the worry is occurring outside of the context of an anxiety disorder, and it’s just what I might call sort of a normal or understandable worry given the state of the world,” she said. 

It’s when the worry becomes “hard to control or to move on from” that it could begin to signal a deeper anxiety disorder demanding a more clinical response, Gallo said. Even then, the end goal may not be to try to get rid of the concerns.

“I think sometimes when worries are realistic, then there’s just a different way to deal with them,” she said. “Sometimes it might not be reasonable or helpful to change the thought, but rather to think about how you want to live your life in the face of that concern.”

People who experience an anxiety disorder are certainly susceptible to dark fears about a fiery end. For others, particularly young people who have more time on the earth, climate distress, even fear, may be an unavoidable part of living. 

Olivia Ferraro, a 25-year-old living in New York, said dismissals of climate change are what really makes her crazy.  

“To watch business as usual go on around you with very little recognition of how distressing the state of the planet is can be really confusing. Because you’re like, ‘Am I insane?’” she said. “This feels like a problem that we should be moving to solve with World War II urgency. Everything needs to be mobilized to prevent catastrophe.”

When she first started experiencing more acute distress about the state of the climate and its future, Ferraro was surprised at the lack of sympathy she met from family and friends, especially those she expected to understand. If anyone had asked them, she knew they would say they cared about the environment.

Realizing her regular network might not be able to give her support she needed, she started exploring other options. She was especially interested in talking to people her age, given climate change, she said, “is a threat felt uniquely the younger that you are.”

“I wanted to be with people who could share that experience of, ‘I’m freaked out because I don't know if I'm going to have a child anymore,’ or ‘I will be my parents’ age when a lot of these predicted catastrophic shocks happen. How can I think about my life when I'm 50 where I can't get water from the tap?’” Ferraro said.

The support group she ended up finding was one she had to help create. Eager for an in-person space in New York, she started hosting “climate cafes,” or listening circles that bring together people with environmental concerns to share how they’re feeling. 

A grassroots initiative, climate cafes have popped up with chapters nation-wide. Ferraro said they can offer relief from advocacy-related burnout or help someone who doesn’t even identify as an “environmentalist” learn about new ways to contribute to the cause. On the website for Climate Cafe NYC, the branch refers to itself as “the social home of NYC climate action.”

“A lot of it is holding hands with people as they kind of walk into that unknown, knowing that you’re doing it together and that there are other people who are experiencing this,” Ferraro said. 

Part of the purpose is helping each other avoid hopelessness. “We can be sad, but to be despaired is a totally other feeling. That’s when you’ve given up,” Ferraro said. “We want to help people avoid despair and avoid nihilism and really, even though it’s very hard work, stay openhearted and willing to connect with people and understand how we can work together.” 

The need for these kinds of outlets is evident in the many students who are bringing their climate-related concerns to school with them. Professor Sarah Jaquette Ray said the emergence of this distress in her classes pushed her down a path towards a new expertise: emotions and the environment. Now she’s chair of the environmental studies department at Cal Poly Humboldt.

As recently as a decade ago, Ray said environmentalists were trying to ramp up concerns about climate change, with what she calls the “scare-to-care” approach. Opening young people’s eyes to the devastation that could come, the thinking went, would inspire them to act, before it was too late.

The strategy may have worked, but too well. Ray said she saw students becoming more enthusiastic about climate-related issues, but they also seemed more despairing. “I was noticing my students were not coping very well with the material,” she said. “I didn’t think my teaching was changing, but something was changing about the students.”

Up to that point, Ray had felt like her students were taking the issues in stride, embracing problem solving. With time, she said, “It felt more like an existential crisis for them.” She decided part of the problem was that students were learning a lot about what was going wrong and a lot less about how to manage their own response to the problems. “They weren’t learning all that stuff alongside coping skills or emotional intelligence or any kind of cultural frame as to why these things might be getting worse,” she said.

She set out to fill the gap. Research into the spiritual and therapeutic tools activists have used in other social movements became the basis of an understanding about how to deal with climate concerns. This mental health-forward approach to environmental issues also appears in her book “A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet.”

Still, Ray continues to wait for the day when higher education institutions have integrated trauma-informed instruction and emotional intelligence into environmental education. That component “is just beginning to percolate on the edges of the tipping point,” she said. 

William Throop, professor emeritus and former provost at Green Mountain College, is also interested in activating a more personal dimension of environmental studies. For the philosopher-by-training, with a background teaching environmental ethics, it’s important to not only present possible climate change solutions to students but equip them with the life skills to enact them. This is an approach he views as part of “character education,” which he said prioritizes “the student as a person, not just as a collector of information.”

By learning what he calls “skillful habits,” Throop said, students stand to become “better critical thinkers, better ethical thinkers and actors.” In his book, “Flourishing in the Age of Climate Change,” he discusses a set of “hope skills” particularly helpful for confronting climate issues.

“Hope communication,” for example, is a skill Throop suggests could be particularly pertinent for tackling climate change. “How do you describe in a clear way the facts of a situation which are problematic and yet don't turn people off?” he said. “How do you motivate people who address those facts in the way you communicate about them?”

Teaching hope, Throop said, might sound “like something a psychologist ought to do.” He thinks otherwise. “It's something that should be embedded in curricula addressing these issues.”

As some faculty become more in tune with how students react to learning about climate change, students continue to turn towards each other to process the emotions they are experiencing. 

Eva Salmon, a rising junior at Barnard College, said she doesn’t usually struggle with anxiety in other facets of life; yet concerns about the climate are a constantly “simmering undertone” in the back of her mind. “In general, seeing everything happening in the world, it feels like my heart is constantly breaking, and I'm constantly experiencing a sense of betrayal.”

“Anytime it's relevant, I can feel the grief. I can feel the anxiety. It really is there,” she said.

Compounding these emotions for students is the sense that their institutions are leaving them to lead the way alone. That’s the consensus among many members of Sunrise Columbia, the Columbia University branch of the Sunrise Movement, a national youth climate activism effort. 

Because it’s independent from the university, Sunrise Columbia can hold the administration’s feet to the fire in ways a club receiving school funding can’t. The student-run group conducts its own investigations into the university’s use of funds from fossil fuel companies to fund climate research. 

“Complicit Columbia” is the 53-page report the students published on their findings that the university accepted at least $43.7 million from fossil fuel companies between 2005 to 2024. More than a third of the funds benefitted the university’s research hub, the Center on Global Energy Policy.

Salmon, one of the student authors of the paper, said she takes issue with the fact that students, rather than university personnel, were the ones to take on this initiative. “The university needs to be more attuned and aware and doing its own research into these things. But for now, this is what we have,” she said.

The group of friends Salmon collaborates with has been key to keeping her motivated despite her frustrations. In general, she said she believes “a lot of the bad that's happening in the world” is the result of “not prioritizing community” and disconnect among people. It’s a problem she feels grateful not to have. 

“To have found community and the space in the way that I have really has brought me a lot of peace and joy,” she said. The sense of support pushes her activism to the next level. “I think I would've done it regardless, but I don't think I would've felt quite as empowered and impassioned.”

“At the end of the day, even if all this is happening around us, we have each other. And that feels like a very powerful, powerful thing,” she added.

Salmon’s overriding objective is to stay positive, to concentrate on the friends that are supporting her and the work they do together that bring her relief. “I really try and focus on recognizing the beauty in every step I take or recognizing things I like around me and just expressing gratitude for that,” she said. 

Olivia Ferraro, the climate cafe host, has adopted a similar outlook. While “climate anxiety” may be more apparent in her life than it was a few years ago, that discomfort has fed a deeper appreciation for the time she has left and a desire to make the most of it. It’s a guiding force that has changed her approach to relationships and decision-making.

“It’s been really freeing, honestly,” she said. “I like my life a lot more now than I ever did before."