Young People Share Their Feelings About Climate Change Lessons

Many young people feel fear, grief, anxiety and hopelessness about climate change, according to Phys.org. Researchers say that climate change education is not keeping pace with these growing feelings of ecological grief (sadness about damage to nature).

A study shares the views of 39 young people, aged 16 to 34, about how they learn about climate change. In 2025, the researchers held seven online discussion groups inspired by a climate café model, which is a casual meeting where people talk about a topic. Each group had up to nine young people from different places in Ontario, a province in Canada.

Participants were found through the University of Guelph's research web page, social media channels and community networks. Thirty-four of the 39 participants identified as racialized, which means they belong to a group that is treated differently because of their race. Three participants identified as both racialized and Indigenous from another country, and five participants identified as white.

Many participants said that climate change was taught in school as a one-off unit or topic, rather than as a subject that ran through their learning. Many also described lessons that focused on individual habits, such as recycling. Several reported that classroom climate lessons were reduced to carbon footprints, a way of measuring the greenhouse gases caused by a person's actions. The article notes that carbon footprint approaches were popularized by British Petroleum.

Some participants said they coped with the climate crisis by avoiding the topic. Others described feeling helpless, guilty, exhausted and overwhelmed. Some also felt morally accountable for climate disasters, even though they had not caused them.

The article states that recent wildfires in Canada brought disproportionate emotional distress to First Nations, Métis and Inuit people. These are Indigenous peoples of Canada.

Participants said they wanted climate conversations to happen outside the classroom, in their own communities. The article argues that climate education must move away from individual blame and include emotions.