Psychologists have given it a name: climate anxiety. Not merely worry or guilt, but a persistent dread tied to the knowledge that the planet’s systems are tipping. Unlike other anxieties, this one is rational — the science is grim. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses phrases like “unprecedented” and “irreversible” with clinical detachment. But for a teenager in London, Lagos, or Los Angeles, those words aren’t abstractions. They haunt future plans: Should I have children? Will my city be liveable? What’s the point of saving for retirement?

This psychological burden is profound. It’s not just fear of disaster, but grief for a future that feels foreclosed. Some report nightmares about flooding, others speak of a low-grade hopelessness that colours every ambition. Climate change becomes not just an environmental issue, but an existential shadow — eroding the very idea of a stable adulthood.

In response, young people are devising their own coping strategies. For some, it’s action — joining climate protests, changing diets, avoiding air travel. These efforts aren’t just ethical stances; they’re therapeutic gestures. To act is to reclaim agency. Others turn to digital spaces, building communities that mourn together, organise together, meme together. But not all coping is healthy. There’s a growing undercurrent of nihilism — a dark humour that masks despair, or a refusal to plan for a future one believes won’t arrive.

The cultural implications are striking. Films, music, even fashion reflect a kind of eco-noir: post-apocalyptic imagery, dystopian soundscapes, biodegradable everything. There’s also a spiritual aspect — a return to animism, to rituals that honour the non-human world, as if trying to reweave a broken relationship with nature.

And yet, amid the anxiety, something like resilience is forming. Not in the stoic sense of toughing it out, but in the quieter, more radical sense of adapting emotionally to uncertainty. Hope, for this generation, isn’t naive optimism. It’s a choice to care even when the outcome is unclear. To plant trees, literally or metaphorically, under whose shade they may never sit.

In the end, climate anxiety may be less a pathology than a rational response to a world on fire. But it also holds a mirror: it shows us what we value, what we fear losing, and what we might still save — not just ecologically, but psychologically. In facing the storm, Gen Z isn’t just reacting. They’re redefining what it means to be alive in a time of collapse.