Coping through climate change

Mar 13

Sometimes numbers just knife you in the gut — 78 per cent of young Canadians report that climate change is impacting their mental health.

Small wonder, since half of them (48 per cent) say humanity is doomed. Those are just a couple of findings from new research out of Lakehead University surveying Canadians aged 16 to 25.

If you’re in that age group, or have young people in your life, the results probably echo your own experience. No matter your age, if you’re tuned in, some degree of dread probably is your experience.

Sweltering under the Pacific Northwest heat dome, I certainly felt panic rise in my own mind. It’s not just the impacts themselves but what they portend.

Growing up, my generation’s great fear was the possibility of global thermonuclear war. Young people today are faced with the inevitability of planetary impacts. Our minds have to grapple with that knowledge on top of pandemic disorientation and the other looming unknowns (what jobs will our robot overlords permit us?), all while glued to devices generating algorithmic angst.

Seventy-three per cent of young people told the Lakehead researchers they find the future frightening.

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Peter Allan

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