Seventeen-year-old Zoha Faisal has been concerned about climate change for as long as she can remember. Her family immigrated to British Columbia from Pakistan, where her grandfather is the chief of a small village. “We have suffered many floods that wiped out entire years’ worth of crops and the town is also quite contaminated. Just seeing the stress that that has put my family under, I think that was the main cause of my sense of urgency.”
It is now well known that teenagers and young adults around the world are suffering distress as a result of climate change. In the widely reported The lancet In a survey of 10,000 young people in 10 countries in 2021, more than 45 percent of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning. And more recently, in February of this year, a US study of 39,000 high school students found that those who experienced the greatest number of days under a federal disaster declaration were 20 percent more likely to report mental distress, even five years after.
Climate action is constantly and reflexively prescribed as an antidote to what is strictly known as climate anxiety. We talk about “turning anxiety into action,” as if we and our children’s sleepless nights, our pounding hearts, and our twisted guts were a raw form of energy that could be harnessed to gently power an electric monster of moral fortitude and save ourselves. all.
It is true that activism can be a valid, even vital, coping strategy. But what the young people I hear also say is that when they rush to act out of their own desperation and climate movements are not structured for healing, they experience burnout and dejection from the very activism they turned to for help managing their distress. .
This is a personal concern for me. I have a nearly teenage son whose climate awareness is growing, but I’m honestly not sure where to draw the line between empowering him with the invitation to act on his beliefs and burdening him with what feels more like an obligation.
At the University of Toronto, Maria Vamvalis recently published a qualitative study on youth engagement in climate justice work.
“I don’t think I was fully prepared for the deep desperation that many of them feel and the amount of energy it takes to feel prosperous,” she told me. “They are scared, angry, frustrated, depressed, sad, but they also feel empowered when they are part of a movement. So, there is a whole complex range of emotions.”
For the young people in their study, “being part of collective movements was essential for their well-being.” In fact, Vamvalis said, “being part of the youth climate movement was the only thing that helped them feel like there was any possibility in their lives.”
That’s a lot of pressure. At just 12 or 13 years old, Faisal began organizing his classmates in Vancouver to join the global climate strike in the fall of 2019.
Climate #activism can be a valid, even vital #coping strategy. But young people also say that when they rush to action and discover that not all climate movements are structured for healing, they experience exhaustion and despondency. #youth
“It felt really good to be a part of something. Part of the hopelessness about climate change is thinking that nothing can be done about it. “It was very healing for me.” But it could also be exhausting. “It’s something most young activists go through,” he says. “You throw yourself into the cause without any kind of sustainability and you end up burning out and collapsing. “I saw that happen to so many people around me.”
“I’ve seen 14-year-olds go days without sleep because they’re not just thinking about climate change but also working on campaigns,” agrees Abhay Singh Sachal, 22. He started as a climate advocate at the age of 14. Join an expedition to the Arctic. He now focuses on the intersection of climate and mental health. “Exhaustion is very characteristic of the youth climate space.”
Progress can be slow and frustrating. The community is small, especially in Canada, and can sometimes seem competitive, even though people are working toward a common goal. And, of course, what is at stake is, as Sachal says, “life or death.”
What may not be immediately evident to those who are young and new to a movement is that for generations, people working to build a better world have struggled with these feelings, and there are lessons to be drawn from their experience.
At 23 years old, Zain Haq already feels like a veteran of the movement. His direct action work with Save Old Growth in British Columbia landed him in jail and an immigration detention center. Lately he has been turning to Gandhi’s writings. “What I really find inspiring about someone like Gandhi is that he seems to have lived life with a deep sense of humor. In the photos you always see him laughing and playing with the children.” By learning about nonviolence as a spiritual path, Haq has been able to distance himself somewhat from the results of his activism and cultivate patience.
“When people are young, I think there is a high probability of thinking that we are invincible and that we have to do things right now. But most of the time we have to be willing to live our entire lives dedicated to something.” He is interested in being part of a climate movement that values “sociality,” meaning people caring for each other, sharing meals, and celebrating together.
Faisal came to a similar conclusion. After the pandemic, he reached a turning point when it came to balancing climate action and mental health. The old tactics seemed outdated and “stagnant,” he said, and produced diminishing returns. He proposed that instead of another strike or march, his group, Sustainabiliteens, organize a “climate block party.”
“We wanted it to be a celebration of community, people coming together and celebrating victories, free food, artists, music, things that brought people together. I think that’s what the climate movement has been missing for so long. At the end of the day, it is a popular movement.”
She received a rejection. “On one specific call I was on, these older white male organizers told me it wasn’t a good idea.” But she and her friends persisted and the event was a great success.
“This crisis is caused by systems of oppression and cannot be dismantled using this routine mentality, like work, work, work,” says Faisal. “You have to center love, hope and joy if you want to build a movement that has those ideas at its center.”