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HOW YOUNG PEOPLE FEEL ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND THEIR FUTURE

Science Nov 5, 2021 8:00 AM EST

A majority of young people in the United States are optimistic that it’s still
possible to prevent the worst long-term effects of climate change, according to
a new poll among 13- to 29-year-olds from the PBS NewsHour and Generation Lab,
even as many of them point to the multiple ways they believe climate change will
affect their personal lives in the future.

In the days since this poll was conducted, world leaders have gathered to attend
this year’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, to make decisions that
will help determine our collective future on this planet. Scientists can predict
just how much warming is expected to increase over time, and know what will help
keep the most dramatic global warming at bay, and yet uncertainty reigns: Will
countries make ambitious-enough pledges to reach net-zero carbon emissions
quickly enough? Will they match their words with actions, as youth activists
protesting in Glasgow are demanding?

READ MORE: How global climate negotiations work, and what to expect from the
COP26 summit in Glasgow

That feeling that we just don’t know yet whether the global community will
succeed may be reflected in this poll, which found that around a quarter of
people are unsure as to whether there’s enough time to turn things around.

Samantha Burns, a 26-year-old from Kentucky, expressed optimism that its worst
effects could be tempered through collective action, but acknowledged that the
people who are trying to do something about it “are still outweighed by people
who just don’t care and ain’t doing nothing.”

Burns, who said she didn’t believe climate change would personally impact her
own future, alluded to a sense of inevitability.

“The way I see it is, if climate change is going to continue to harm us, it
probably ain’t going to get no better,” Burns said. “So I mean, there’s no use
in not pursuing what you want to do.”


BREAKING DOWN THE NUMBERS

Graphic by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour

Fifty-eight percent of respondents said it is possible to prevent the worst
long-term effects of climate change, 16 percent said they thought it is not
possible and 26 percent said they were unsure.

That relatively high degree of uncertainty — one in four respondents — stood out
to Matin Mirramezani, who oversees polling as the chief operating officer of the
Generation Lab. He noted that the “unsure” option is often included in survey
research, but that it’s rare to see it exceed more than 10 percent or so of
respondents to any given question.

That uncertainty may speak to their candidness about how much they understand
climate change, but also the open questions facing the scientific community,
Mirramezani said. That includes whether nations will make the right choices.

Experts agree that coordinated international action to curb greenhouse
emissions, particularly on the part of wealthier countries most responsible for
generating them in the first place, is key to reining in climate change. But
that doesn’t necessarily negate the importance and impact of individual action.

Sarah Ray, a professor of environmental studies at Humboldt State University,
argues that there needs to be a middle ground that emphasizes why one person’s
choices are significant, but also “doesn’t let corporations off the hook.”

“The climate movement has to come up with some good, understandable, believable,
viable argument as to why you do matter and also that corporations need to
change — [because] they are the most responsible,” Ray said.


HOW GENDER AND RACE INTERSECT IN CLIMATE AWARENESS

Graphic by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour

Men were more likely than women to express the belief that climate change would
not affect them personally (20 percent versus 9 percent). Susan Clayton, a
professor of psychology at the College of Wooster, pointed to a “consistent
gender gap” across the poll that suggested women were generally more likely than
men to say that climate change would affect various facets of their future.

“It’s consistent with the research that’s been out there,” Mirramezani added.

All three experts noted that women in general tend to be more actively concerned
about the impacts of climate change, and they also are more likely to be
disproportionately impacted by those consequences compared to men.

Men were more likely than women to express the belief that climate change would
not affect them personally.

Seventeen percent of white people reported believing that climate change
wouldn’t influence their futures, as well as 10 percent of Black people and 4
percent of Asian people. Ray noted the broader reality of the ways that
privilege — whether in the form of race, gender, income, education, or any other
factor — can insulate individuals from feeling the true threat of climate
change, which humans tend to perceive as amorphous in the first place.

“Climate change is connected to other forms of oppression and abuse and
inequality in the world, and people who are experiencing those things are going
to be much more attuned to the sources of their suffering,” Ray said. “All kinds
of data shows that nonwhite people care more about climate change.”


INDIVIDUAL ACTION VS. INTERNATIONAL COORDINATION

Compared to the optimism that the planet can avoid the worst outcome, there was
more variation among respondents when it comes to how the reality of climate
change will impact everyday facets of their personal lives in the future.

Graphic by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour

 * A majority of people said that the reality of climate change will influence
   where they decide to live, how they use transportation or how much they
   travel and what they buy as consumers.
 * 15 percent said they did not think climate change will influence their future
   at all.
 * Around a third of Gen Z and millennial respondents across all three age
   categories said climate change will influence whether they become a parent
   and raise children.
 * In several categories, men were 8 to 12 percentage points less likely than
   women to report thinking that climate change would play a role in their
   decision-making.

As an academic who works closely with environmentally minded university
students, and who keeps an eye on research that looks at the younger
generations’ views, Ray said she assumed more respondents would’ve reported a
belief that climate change would impact the personal choice categories laid out
in the poll.

Past research, she added, suggests that younger people tend to report higher
levels of concern over climate change compared to their older counterparts. But
she felt that didn’t necessarily “match the numbers of whether they think it
will affect [the] aspects of their lives” reflected in the poll.

“That sort of puzzles me,” Ray said.

Americans are generally less likely to express concern about climate change
compared to people in other countries, according to Pew Research Center
(although U.S. millennials and Gen Zers report a greater interest in supporting
climate activists and taking action themselves compared to other generations).
That finding is in line with research suggesting that people in historically
colonized countries and marginalized communities within wealthier ones are both
more likely to endure the consequences of climate change and believe its threats
to be significant.

Respondents to this poll were more likely to say that climate change would
impact where they choose to live compared to other facets of their lives. In
Ray’s view, that disparity “reveals a layer of privilege” because “deciding
where you live involves a certain level of mobility and choice over the matter,”
which many in America have, depending on their wealth and resources.

READ MORE: Extreme weather doesn’t usually motivate Americans to move. Here’s
why

When it comes to categories like food, buying habits or the choice to rear kids,
Ray said that the comparatively lower figures could reflect a broader
unwillingness among some younger people “to imagine any kind of deprivation,
sacrifice, self-denial” associated with everyday choices like changing one’s
diet or transit choices.

“To me, the data reveals people are not connecting the dots” between their
day-to-day lives and climate change, Ray said.

Clayton also highlighted the fact that a minority of people said climate change
would impact what they choose to eat.

That’s despite a relatively long-standing push among environmentalists to
encourage people to note the impact that dietary choices have on the
environment. Food production is a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions,
as well as biodiversity loss, deforestation and other negative impacts on the
global ecosystem, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Veronique Daniel, a 20-year-old from New York, said that she takes steps in her
personal life — like turning off lights when she’s not using them, recycling and
buying local — to reduce her own environmental impact. But she also pointed to
people in power and corporations as players that have the influence to make a
meaningful difference.

“I think what we need are drastic changes, and those are not happening,” Daniel
said. “A lot of big corporations are committing to reducing their carbon
footprint. And that’s a step — you can make the commitment, but are you actually
doing it? Some of them are, some of them are not.”

Sathvik Bodepudi, an 18-year-old from South Carolina, said that his family has
invested in an electric car and that they’re serious about recycling and
composting in the spirit of reducing their own carbon footprint. He said he
believes it’s possible to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate
change, but that doing so will boil down to whether people do their part to
“actively try to make a difference.”

“Is it selfish for me to want to be a parent and to have this great experience
if, when I die, I’m leaving my child in this apocalyptic world?”

“When I say it’s possible, I mean it all really depends on our cooperation,”
Bodepudi said. “I know there’s a lot of people trying to work toward that and
making it happen, but it’s not really going to go into full swing if there’s
still people out there who don’t care about it. It just slows down all of our
progress.”

About a third of people said that climate change would influence their eventual
choice to become a parent. Sofia Grillo, a 22-year-old from Florida, said that
she’s recently been questioning “the morality of parenthood,” even though she
does personally want to have kids herself. She worries that the impacts of
climate change will continue over time to the point that her children — and
their children — will live in a world in which those consequences are
irreversible.

“Is it selfish for me to want to be a parent and to have this great experience
if, when I die, I’m leaving my child in this apocalyptic world?” Grillo said.

Grillo added that she’d want to start a family within the next five to 10 years,
so she has time to consider her options. She said that if things appear to be
getting better, “or if we’re all coming together as a society to try and make it
get better,” that would push her in the direction of parenthood. But if things
are worse, she may say, “Forget it, let’s get a dog or something.”

The PBS NewsHour/Generation Lab survey was conducted Oct. 15-19, 2021 with 805
U.S. respondents between ages 13 and 29 for a margin of error of 3.8 percentage
points.

Left: Protestors display posters as they take part in the Global Climate Strike
of the movement Fridays for Future at the Kramgasse street in Bern, Switzerland,
October 22, 2021. Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters


RELATED

 * What young Americans think about vaccines and mandates
   
   By Laura Santhanam

 * Activists protest pace of climate action at COP26
   
   By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

 * Extreme weather doesn’t usually motivate Americans to move. Here’s why
   
   By Isabella Isaacs-Thomas


GO DEEPER

 * climate change
 * cop26
 * environmental awareness
 * generational divide
 * tipping point
 * young people

By —

Bella Isaacs-Thomas Bella Isaacs-Thomas

Bella Isaacs-Thomas is a digital reporter on the PBS NewsHour's science desk.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@bella_is_

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