Californians establish ‘climate cafes’ amid ‘eco-anxiety’ crisis

A trend among Californians has young people attending “climate cafes,” regular meetups where participants share their distress over “climate change.”

Approximately 80% of California’s youth ages 14–24 suffer from “eco-anxiety,” according to a 2022 study by the Blue Shield of California. Global surveys show 60% of children and young people worldwide suffer from the mental health condition, defined by the American Psychological Association as “a chronic fear of environmental doom.” 

The number jumps to 70% among university students, who are taught that humanity is facing certain Armageddon and they are powerless to stop it. This leads to feeling of despair, depression, anxiety, hopelessness and even suicide ideation.

“I was questioning the sheer gravity of it all and how all of it is systemic. None of it has an easy solution,” Maksim Batuyev, a Los Angelino who developed eco-anxiety while studying at Michigan State University, told Cal Matters last week. “That really started to bring me into some dark places.”

Batuyev and his colleagues are among those who have started climate cafes to address their “climate distress”.

But the crisis is not only affecting Californians. This winter the University of Denver (DU) will offer a course titled “Leveraging Eco-Distress to Create a Regenerative Future” which the university claims is designed to help students cope with eco-distress.

Nor is eco-anxiety limited to Americans. Last year the UK’s University of East Anglia began offering a course called “Mindfulness and Active Hope,” which aims to “help students cope with eco-anxiety, cultivate self-care, and understand how to transform their fear and grief on issues like climate change." 

But far from helping young people overcome their anxiety, these courses and similar initiatives aggravate it. Rather than showing, for instance, how climate science is deliberately doctored to create a crisis, university faculty members validate and encourage the fear fanned by faulty studies. Students are then told that the only way to solve their anxiety is to solve “climate change,” which can only be done through activism.

“This course, I believe, is in response to noticing our students’ heightened distress and really supporting them and moving along the spectrum, from, ‘Yes, feel the feels, validate them, build community,’ and then, ‘How are we moving ahead and empowering them and taking action?’” said DU Professor Julia Senecal, who will be heading the eco-anxiety course.

In coordination with academia, mainstream media and globalist politicians are also fostering eco-anxiety among youth. Last month the New York Times reported how Italy’s Environment and Energy Security Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin started crying at a children’s festival over “climate change.”

“I have a responsibility toward all of you,” Fratin told the children as he choked up. “I have a responsibility toward my grandchildren.”

Politicians like Fratin and California Governor Gavin Newsom support teaching children from a young age to fear the weather. In 2021 Newsom allocated $6 million to the San Mateo County Office of Education to add “climate change” and “environmental justice” to the standard curriculum for grades K-12.

This fear of “climate change,” which begins in elementary school, balloons into a mental health crisis by the time students leave college and look to enter the workforce.

The accounting firm KPMG polled 6,000 people in the UK who belong to the Millennial generation or younger and found that nearly half (46%) want their employers to conform to climate dicta, while 20% have refused a job offer outright from employers who are not compliant enough. The number rose with 18-24-year-old respondents, a third of whom have refused such offers.

One in three respondents reported researching a company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance before seeking employment there, and nearly half rated environmental impact and living wage policies as important factors in the recruitment process.

KPMG’s Head of ESG John McCalla-Leacy said younger people “will see the greater impacts if we fail to reach this target” and are therefore demanding ESG compliance.

The survey matches with another from Yale University, which found that 51% of students would take a lower salary to work at an ESG-compliant company, while 26% would not accept a job at a non-“climate friendly’ company no matter how high the salary.

Eco-anxiety also affects other significant life decisions. Four in ten young people are hesitant to have children due to “climate change,” say researchers.