![Protesters crowd a street carrying signs that read, "Global warming real. In other news, water is wet," and "Stop denying the [blue painted pic of the Earth] is dying."](https://static.producer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/29145152/158171_web1_2019-10-18T222818Z_1221762151_RC14C26A65A0_RTRMADP_3_CLIMATE-CHANGE-THUNBERG-1200.jpg)
For years, climate change has dominated the worldview of many young people, instilling a sense of urgency, fear and moral responsibility.
In schools and media, young people have been taught that the planet is on the brink of collapse and that their generation will bear the brunt of the consequences. They have grown up surrounded by climate anxiety.
However, after decades of apocalyptic messaging, something is shifting.
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What was once explosive passion is giving way to fatigue, confusion and competing priorities.
Climate change still matters, but panic is giving way to weariness, and urgency alone is no longer enough to sustain engagement.
If concern is to translate into lasting action, the relationship youth have with this issue must be recalibrated — from despair to informed, empowered participation.
Why has climate change resonated so deeply with this generation?
First, it’s about time. Young people know they’ll live long enough to face the full consequences.
It’s also moral. Many have been led to believe — having heard only one side of the story — that previous generations, through consumerism, complacency and environmental neglect, are to blame. That generational divide isn’t just political. It’s personal.
Yet even with this strong emotional connection, the focus is beginning to shift.
Surveys now show that while climate change remains a concern, it increasingly shares space with other anxieties — housing, economic insecurity, mental health, artificial intelligence and war.
Once front and centre, environmental fear is settling into the background, dulled by uncertainty over whether individual efforts make a meaningful difference.
That uncertainty is only deepened by the contradictions young people see around them.
In school, they’re taught to recycle and reduce emissions, but they also see the wealthy flying private jets and governments approving new oil and gas projects — even as Canada pledges to cut emissions.
The science is broadly consistent, but the messaging isn’t — from catastrophe to denial, from guilt to techno-optimism.
The result is cognitive dissonance — when what they’re taught to believe clashes with what they see happening in the real world.
Caught between anxiety and ambiguity, many turn to activism, and public protests remain highly visible.
Others, however, retreat into digital spaces, focus on personal wellness or shift their attention to more immediate, local concerns.
This disengagement isn’t apathy. It’s exhaustion. And unless something changes, the risk is a generation emotionally burned out before it ever gets the chance to lead.
Young people aren’t wrong to care, but they need more than emotional appeals or empty slogans. They need truth and consistency. They need tools — practical ones that help them understand how systems work, how change happens and where their energy can have real impact.
They need to be trusted with the complexity, not shielded from it or fed only worst-case scenarios.
What would empowerment look like in practice? It starts with honesty — about trade-offs, timelines and limits. It means teaching systems thinking — how environmental, political and economic forces interact. It also requires policy literacy so that they can engage with how real decisions are made.
It also means shifting from symbolic gestures to strategic ones and offering pathways that connect personal passion with institutional influence.
Instead of telling youth to “save the planet,” we should show them how energy grids operate, how regulations evolve, how real solutions grow from ideas to large-scale impact, and how meaningful change actually happens.
The climate is changing, but so is the conversation.
If we want today’s youth to become tomorrow’s leaders on this issue, we must stop scaring them into paralysis and start equipping them for meaningful action, not through alarmism, but through science, honesty and empowerment.
Perry Kinkaide founded the Alberta Council of Technologies Society in 2005 and previously held leadership roles at KPMG Consulting and the Alberta government. This op ed first appeared on the TroyMedia website.
