Worried About the World: How Young People Experience Climate Anxiety and Radical Hope for the Future

The experience of distressing emotions associated with climate change and its anticipated effects have become widespread and well-documented over recent decades, with young people reporting a disproportionately high rate of these feelings compared with other age groups. However, significant gaps remain in qualitative assessments of these feelings, as well as in understanding how young people try to manage them. This study sought to address these gaps by conducting a large online survey (N = 877) of Australian youth aged 16–25 years, in which they were offered the opportunity to respond to open-ended questions about their feelings about climate change, their hope for the future, and how they manage distressing climate emotions. The results indicated that despite feelings of sadness, anger, fear, and hopelessness—indicative of moral injury—these young people also reported radical hope (i.e., not simply optimism but rather an active, intentional commitment to behaving ethically and collectively despite uncertain future outcomes) for the future resulting from engagement in climate change activism, collective behaviors, and shared responsibility. We recommend a multipronged approach to supporting these youth that involves both individual psychological care affordances along with systemic change to address the urgent action required to mitigate and adapt to advancing climate change.