Facing fear: Gen Z's anxiety with the climate crisis

Generation Z (Gen Z) has been feeling the heat of the climate crisis, with frequent extreme temperature shifts and rising oceans across the globe. The generation that largely makes up LMU’s undergraduate population has felt a heightened sense of anxiety surrounding climate change and the environment. In response to this, many are turning to collective action, coming together to achieve a common goal, which has been seen from many students across the country.

Much of Gen Z feels this anxiety due to the rising environmental disasters in the world, but natural disasters are not the full story. Professors at LMU say the stress may also be from the current political climate seen in the U.S. — specifically in the face of climate change.

“In the United States, it’s just a mess … everything’s been repealed and we’re going backwards. And how can you not feel stressed about that? Because who’s gonna step up and when is this gonna change?” said Nicole Bouvier-Brown, Ph.D., co-executive director of Coastal Research Institute and chair and professor of environmental science.

Under current President Donald Trump’s administration, there have been many attempts at rolling back the current climate change initiatives. The administration repealed a key Environmental Protection Agency finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment. This finding ended Congress’ ability to control the pollution in the United States, which is contributing largely to the climate crisis.

Bouvier-Brown explained that many citizens feel these steps taken are contributing to a regression in the U.S., causing the stress that we are seeing in young adults. She noted how climate change in our country can often feel like a “weight that we are unable to lift off ourselves,” which is discouraging to many people.

“You feel the weight of it all the time, and so you kind of start to ignore it. You just kind of feel like, ‘Oh, that must be the new normal, right?’” said Bouvier-Brown.

She added that as an instructor, it’s hard to give a solid answer on how to solve the climate change issues that are faced every day. Because of the little funding and initiatives in place for research, it is hard to feel like a solid difference can be made. Additionally, in a generation where technology and social media is nonstop, the anxiety that Gen Z feels may come from unlimited access to information. Research shows that the amount of information that Gen Z consumes relates to how high their anxiety is surrounding the environment.

“​​When you put the newspaper down, it doesn’t follow you [and] it doesn’t ding you. [Gen Z is] spending six to seven hours a day on [their] phone and that’s immediate … you’re constantly bombarded,” said Eric Strauss, Ph.D., professor of biology and executive director of the Center for Urban Resilience. “There’s really no break, and especially the way things like social media are structured to get your attention — it’s usually around something that’s structured as a crisis.”

Gen Z has lived in a world of irreversible damage, causing them to feel pressure to solve the problems surrounding the climate crisis — and that pressure also causes anxiety.

“For us, it’s been in our lifetime where the most degradation has happened, and it’s kind of scary knowing that it’s not getting better right now,” said Gabriella Yturri, ASLMU vice president of sustainability and environmental studies major. “And I think it’s us that’s going to be the ones that are forced to deal with it.”

So is this anxiety leading to collective action from Gen Z? While research doesn’t show a definitive answer, Yale School of Public Health thinks it can help those suffering from stress due to climate change cope. When Gen Z engages in collective activities relating to education or action surrounding climate change, it evokes a sense of optimism which makes the stress more manageable.

ASLMU and Green LMU took collective action steps by celebrating Earth Month to educate students about the importance of Earth Day and creating change towards the climate crisis. On April 22, the two organizations hosted an event in collaboration called Earth Day Fest, where students could engage with organizations on campus and participate in events focused on education surrounding the climate crisis.

“[It was] a way to get everybody not only attentive to the fact that it was Earth Day … but also [to] learn how to sort your waste correctly. Let’s also learn how to plant native plants in your community, let’s learn how to engage in the environment in a more sustainable way, rather than just celebrating the fact that we’re here. Because both are great, but one is going to make change and the other isn’t,” said Yturri.

Despite these activities, sustainability goes beyond April. Although LMU has many accolades which point to being a sustainable campus — no. 4 in The Princeton Review’s top 50 green universities, gold rated in the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education — Bouvier-Brown believes more can be done to make LMU a truly environmentally-friendly campus. She wishes that there were more opportunities for students to be able to see how they could get involved, which would lead to more students having conversations, engaging with the climate crisis in a direct way and ensuring that campus can be a place trying to help fight the climate crisis.

“My dream would [be] if there was a space where we could — and it doesn’t have to be a physical space … a way to coalesce everything that’s happening on the campus, the beach cleanups or the garden, not just big events, but the things that are happening all day, all the time,” said Bouvier-Brown. “And that would be, I think, a huge step, because then we’d have these conversations, and then people would go, ‘Yeah, it is weird that we did this, and it is weird that we do that, or why are we spending money on that thing?’”