COP26 had just ended in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. Thomas (he does not wish to give his name), 16, a final year student in a high school in Seine-Saint-Denis, returns home. He has in mind all the homework and control forecasts. The week promises to be busy. But the temptation is too strong to see the result of these two weeks of marathon negotiations to fight against global warming. “When I read the Glasgow Climate Pact, I understand that it will not be enough, and I am in despair. I feel again falling into the abyss of eco-anxiety ”, confides the young man.
It’s been almost two years since this good student self-diagnosed “eco-anxiety”, a word invented to designate a new reality: the fear felt in the face of the anticipated effects of climate change. This anguish he felt for the first time at the age of 14. In 2018 and 2019, the environmental crisis burst into his world: climate marches, school strikes and civil disobedience actions punctuate a year of climate disasters. Thomas gets information on social networks, Instagram in particular, and on the forums of the instant messaging service Discord devoted to the subject.
Very quickly, however, this was no longer enough for him: at 15, he read the “summaries for decision-makers” of the latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and devoured the articles of BonPote, a information site created in 2018 by Thomas Wagner, former financial advisor turned science popularizer. “It was then that I felt a stronger form of worry linked to the scale of the problem and the countless difficulties in preventing this warming”, the high school student takes place on the phone, between two hours of class.
How many are they, like Thomas, to be crossed by this anxiety felt in the face of present and future threats? Everything suggests that they are more and more numerous, even if the expression and manifestations of this feeling are very variable. In September 2021, a large study published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health revealed that 45% of young people surveyed were affected by eco-anxiety in their daily life. The study, which was conducted by researchers from American, British and Finnish universities in 2021, among 10,000 young people aged 16 to 25 in ten countries (Australia, Brazil, United States, Finland, France, India , Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal and United Kingdom), reveals a grim reality: 75% of young people questioned judge the future ” frightening “, 56% believe that “Humanity is doomed”, and 55% that they will have fewer opportunities than their parents.
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