We're robbing kids of their future--but also their present

Climate anxiety meets the commitment to the status quo

There’s no question that the rate of climate anxiety is growing—how could it not be, on a world where fires and floods are increasingly commonplace? And once your house has flooded—well, the next rainstorm, or even the next forecast, is going to bring back too many memories.

But I’ve found that a fair number of people, especially younger ones, are feeling really desperate anxiety even before they’ve had a traumatic experience, to the point where, for instance, they don’t want to have children of their own. My guess is that this has as much to do with the sense that they’ve been abandoned by the leading institutions—political and economic—of our societies, who can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the scale of this emergency or break old practices.

I’ve been thinking all week at my anger at America’s big banks, the companies that represent the capital in capitalism—as I explained last week, they’ve now backed away even from their very scant climate commitments, fearful it might cost them a bit at the margins. And this week the Biden administration let it be known it was going to relax the timetable for getting rid of internal combustion engines, because of combined pressure from the auto companies and the auto workers union.

I have no more sympathy for the car companies than the banks—they’ve opposed every regulation anyone has ever proposed, at least as far back as seatbelts. And I have lots of sympathy for the UAW—they deserved and needed a new contract, which is why many of us tried to play at least a tiny part in helping their successful fall strike. They fret that moving too fast could cost jobs, which is a real worry. But moving too slow has a huge cost too, on a planet that has just come through its hottest year in the last 125,000: passenger vehicles contribute almost a third of America’s carbon emissions. In a world that understood the climate crisis as an emergency, UAW president Shawn Fain, and the car company CEOs, and the Biden administration would be out on the stump together, doing everything they could to get people to buy EVs.

No need to single out the UAW, especially since they’re doing their best to undercut the Trump campaign (he’d love to make electric cars, which he insists grind to a halt after 15 minutes of driving, a centerpiece of his campaign). After all, we could say the same thing about all those universities that have fought fossil fuel divestment because it’s easier just to keep investing as you have in the past, or those insurance companies that continue to underwrite new pipelines even as their data show the inexorable rise in climate damage, or those longtime residents of cities and suburbs who oppose denser housing in their communities even though it’s clearly a key part of both cutting emissions and letting the next generation have an affordable place to live. If you’re a young person you could look at them all and think: they don’t want even relatively small changes, and in the process they’re guaranteeing that absolutely everything will change for us.

I think older people underestimate how often their resistance to change is read as disregard for the future. I remember debating a windpower opponent at Dartmouth years ago; when he was done making his case that no one should have to look at these ‘monstrosities’, the first question from a student was: “Could you please explain how you managed to get your head so far up your butt?” There are occasions when I despair that the motto of my beloved Vermont, oldest state in the union, should be “change anything you want once I’m dead.”

A global study in the Lancet a couple of years ago attempted to quantify this sense of what the authors called “betrayal.” The researchers found deep-seated climate anxiety around the planet. Read the findings just to let them sink in:

A large proportion of children and young people around the world report emotional distress and a wide range of painful, complex emotions (sad, afraid, angry, powerless, helpless, guilty, ashamed, despair, hurt, grief, and depressed). Similarly, large numbers report experiencing some functional impact and have pessimistic beliefs about the future (people have failed to care for the planet; the future is frightening; humanity is doomed; they won’t have access to the same opportunities their parents had; things they value will be destroyed; security is threatened; and they are hesitant to have children). These results reinforce findings of earlier empirical research and expand on previous findings by showing the extensive, global nature of this distress, as well as its impact on functioning. Climate distress is clearly evident both in countries that are already experiencing extensive physical impacts of climate change, such as the Philippines, a nation that is highly vulnerable to coastal flooding and typhoons. It is also evident in countries where the direct impacts are still less severe, such as the UK, where populations are relatively protected from extreme weather events.

And they also found that that feeling of abandonment was a huge part of the problem:

Distress appears to be greater when young people believe that government response is inadequate, which leads us to argue that the failure of governments to adequately reduce, prevent, or mitigate climate change is contributing to psychological distress, moral injury, and injustice.

Such high levels of distress, functional impact, and feelings of betrayal will negatively affect the mental health of children and young people. Climate anxiety might not constitute a mental illness, but the realities of climate change alongside governmental failures to act are chronic, long-term, and potentially inescapable stressors. These factors are likely to increase the risk of developing mental health problems, particularly in more vulnerable individuals such as children and young people, who often face multiple life stressors without having the power to reduce, prevent, or avoid such stressors

Humans are remarkable creatures. Though we can, uniquely, worry about the future, we can also, uniquely, feel the kind of solidarity and support that lets us carry on even amidst great travail. But isolation, lack of connection—they crack us.

Our institutions—from the White House to the university president, from the bank CEO to the labor leader, from the newspaper editor to the religious leader—need to be willing to show some ability to change in the face of an emergency. We’re not even talking huge sacrifice—the difference between making EVs and making old-school SUVs, or investing in a fossil-free index fund, or ending loans to oil companies, is not existential to any of the parties involved. They are small hits indeed compared with the hits that are headed our way if the planet keeps heating. And the willingness to change would not only help us weather this crisis physically—it would also help us weather it emotionally.

We only get one life. The thought that young people are having to live theirs under this shadow—damaged by the climate crisis even before its fully hit them—should give all of us real pause. There’s a generational theft underway: of water and ice and coral, but also of security and ease.

In other energy and climate news:

+Following up on last week’s post about Line 5 and the Bad River Band, Inside Climate News has an in-depth report on the pipeline company’s attempt to do an end-run around the treaties giving indigenous nations the power to control their land. As Phil McKenna reports:

Riyaz Kanji, an attorney representing the tribe, said prior treaties including an 1854 treaty between the U.S. government and the Chippewa Indians overrule the 1977 pipeline treaty. 

“It’s well established law that tribal treaty rights can’t be abrogated,” Kanji said.

The 1977 U.S.-Canada pipeline treaty also includes a provision known as “article 4,” that allows government agencies to regulate pipelines for purposes including, but not limited to, environmental protection.

“Article 4, we believe, gives the tribe the authority to regulate the pipeline, both to protect its reservation against trespassers and to protect the environment,” Kanji said. “And that’s exactly what the tribe is doing in saying to Enbridge: ‘You need to get your pipeline off the reservation.’”

+As the fight over Biden’s LNG permitting pause continues, new estimates continue to emerge showing that Asian demand for the gas has been overstated. As researchers at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis report:

First, Shell reduced its global LNG demand expectations for 2040 by up to 11% compared to previous forecasts. More significantly, the company has officially predicted that demand will peak sometime in the 2040s.

Shell owns the largest LNG portfolio in the world and is one of the largest equity investors in export projects, with assets and contracts that extend beyond 2050. However, its latest outlook proves that the long-term investment case for LNG is fading. Instead, Shell is pinning its hopes on rapid demand growth in emerging markets and China’s industrial sector that may never materialize.

Meanwhile new data shows the U.S. is awash in natural gas (which certainly explains the industry’s desperation to build more export facilities)

+Important new study from the Rocky Mountain Institute explains why land-use reforms—in essence, allowing denser housing development—is a key climate step in the U.S.:

RMI analysis shows enacting state-level land use reform to encourage compact development can reduce annual US pollution by 70 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2033. This projection, based on 2023 data, underscores the potential for significant impact within a decade. It would deliver more climate impact than half the country adopting California’s ambitious commitment to 100% zero-emission passenger vehicle sales by 2035. Here’s another way of looking at this: addressing America’s chronic housing shortage intelligently — by building more housing where people most need it — can deliver similar climate impact as the country’s most aspirational transportation decarbonization policy. How’s that for a two-for-one deal?

About one-half of the pollution reduction associated with increasing conveniently-located housing would come from reduced travel: cars burning less gas and consuming less electricity. One-third would come from reduced vehicle manufacturing and upstream oil production. The remainder would come from preservation of natural carbon sinks that would otherwise be lost to sprawl and more efficient, less material-intensive buildings.

+David Helvarg reports that more sea otters equals more kelp forests equals more fish, in the same way that more beavers equals more wetlands equals more wildlife. Also, extremely good-looking

+The Guardian has a good review of what I think will turn out to be an important book, Brett Christophers’ The Price is Wrong, which argues that renewable energy is so cheap that there’s not enough money to be made to really get businesses building it out. He thinks it will take explicit government policy, not capitalist incentives, to make it happen. As Randeep Ramesh explains,

While it is true that low-cost and abundant solar and wind energy is increasingly within our grasp, the mistake is to presume that simply because renewable power has become relatively cheap, it will get built. Capitalists invest because profits are high and stable, not when prices are low and uncertain. In a world awash with the proceeds from fossil fuel extraction, Christophers thinks renewables and their volatile, wafer-thin margins don’t stand much of a chance.

+The ever-thoughtful Danny Kennedy has an interesting essay explaining why journalists are underplaying or ignoring the scale of China’s clean energy transition:

China ended up adding 217GW of solar power last year, according to Bloomberg. This is more than the U.S. has ever done in its history! China also added 76GW of wind. This was over half the world’s new renewables. In the coming years, current revised expectations of the International Energy Agency (IEA) have China adding as much clean energy to the system as the rest of the world…combined!

Due to learning curves and economies of scale, this helps lower the cost of electricity from low carbon sources. Some will argue whether that’s good but will have a hard time showing that it is not the greatest response to climate pollution we’ve created yet. Put simply, China is creating a lot of the good news that the world can claim on this existential issue. 

This is not to diminish the hard work of activists to make Biden realize LNG markets are saturated in a low carbon world, nor the efforts to bring clean energy access to the grassroots of India or Tanzania. But by the numbers, on a problem we’ve been confronting in earnest since the turn of the century, China’s contribution is outsized on all counts. The country has made wind, solar, EVs and batteries – the tools of the energy transition – available and affordable.

+The Climate Herald, a new tool for tracking local climate action, has launched. And while you’re on line, check out a new tool for kids called Rangers Wanted, where “Theodore Roosevelt takes kids on an exciting adventure through the natural world via their everyday surroundings.” One trusts that it will involve shooting somewhat fewer exotic animals than was TR’s wont.

+Thank heaven that snowmaking—which is expanding in our ever-warmer winters—is also getting far more efficient.

“An old-school hog might use 800 cubic feet per minute [of compressed air]. This one here uses about 70,” Matt Folts at Vermont’s Bromley Mountain says, pointing toward a tower gun from the early 2000s that stands about 15 feet tall and, unlike the ground guns on Blue Ribbon, can’t be easily moved. Up the hill sits a newer model that can get by on closer to 40 cubic feet per minute, or CFM, and a bit farther down the slope is the resort’s latest tool, which under ideal conditions can use as little as 10. That’s a roughly hundred-fold increase in efficiency.

The state-backed Efficiency Vermont program urges resorts to swap in as many of the more efficient devices as possible. “That work got a real big boost in 2014, when we did the ‘Great Snow Gun Roundup,’” explains Chuck Clerici, a senior account manager at the organization. Before then, it had been doing a handful of sporadic replacements. The roundup retired some 10,000 inefficient models statewide, and, overall, Clerici says snowmaking operations are now using about 80 percent less air than they used to.

+A proposed California law would replace the words “natural gas” with “methane” in state statutes. A small thing, but a smart and honest one!