Dear Editor,

When educators do their duty — to teach students what science has learned about the Earth’s changing natural systems — they cannot avoid creating anxiety. If humanity is to make an informed and democratic response to our changing environment, we must understand that environment. However, attentive students cannot take the dispassionate stance often expected when studying science: environmental science’s conclusions are an existential warning to society, which students can see isn’t being heeded. The result is a mental health crisis that includes eco-anxiety, and even collapse anxiety, affecting most young people.

A young person who learns about environmental science is like a person who suddenly learns they have high risk for a grave disease. In both situations fear is a rational, natural reaction to a real threat.

This is emphatically not to say that humanity is doomed. Students' anxiety is rooted in awareness that something important is at stake, and if we were doomed, then nothing would be at stake — everything would be lost. Students become anxious because everything is at stake, and too little is being done. Emotional overwhelm, disengagement or denial often result.

All of this emotion must be handled with care and sensitivity and helped to mature into action. Students require institutions that recognise their predicament, and provide support and practices that help transform their emotional responses from denial or despair into energetic action to protect our future. Indeed, awareness of the stakes, and accompanying emotion, is required to motivate decisive action. Strong bonds can be built around concern. It can help us reconnect with the natural world that is at stake.

We therefore call for everybody who must learn about climate change to be provided resources and spaces that help handle troubling, and well-founded concerns about our future and turn these into action.

Sincerely,