For the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry, from Hiroshi­ma through the Cold War, peo­ple around the world lived in vis­cer­al fear of nuclear anni­hi­la­tion. At any moment, the ​“fin­ger on the but­ton” could launch the end of civilization.

'I used to feel sad on warm winter days as early as middle school because I knew the world was warming,' says Peter Thacher, a divestment activist at the University of Pennsylvania.

In Nuclear Fear: A His­to­ry of Images, Spencer Weart, a sci­en­tif­ic his­to­ri­an, chron­i­cles the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll this anx­i­ety took on indi­vid­u­als, espe­cial­ly the young. ​“Well after the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis,” he writes, a poll ​“found 40 per­cent of ado­les­cents admit­ting a ​‘great deal of anx­i­ety’ about war.” He cites anoth­er sur­vey from 1965 ask­ing school­child­ren to pre­dict the state of the world 10 years ahead. Though the ques­tions made no men­tion of nuclear bombs, ​“over two-thirds of the chil­dren mention[ed] war, often in somber terms of helplessness.”

Today’s youth live with a dif­fer­ent kind of dread. For the post-Cold War gen­er­a­tion, the pri­ma­ry glob­al threat comes not from action, but inac­tion. Last year, the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence warned that with­in a few decades, cli­mate change will have ​“mas­sive­ly dis­rup­tive con­se­quences to soci­eties and ecosys­tems,” includ­ing wide­spread famines, lethal heat waves, more fre­quent and destruc­tive nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and social unrest. Despite the litany of warn­ings like these, gov­ern­ments have utter­ly failed to take mean­ing­ful action.

At this point, cli­mate change can be lim­it­ed or accel­er­at­ed, and humans can adapt to some degree, but sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to the plan­e­tary ecosys­tem can no longer be averted.

Accord­ing to Wash­ing­ton, D.C.- based foren­sic psy­chi­a­trist Lise Van Sus­teren, the expec­ta­tion of cli­mate-change dis­as­ters is caus­ing ​“pre-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der.” In an inter­view with Esquire in July, she explains that the symp­toms look much like those of post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der: ​“the anger, the pan­ic, the obses­sive, intru­sive thoughts.”

Signs of pre-trau­mat­ic stress are increas­ing­ly evi­dent among those who stare at the prob­lem of cli­mate change head-on: cli­mate sci­en­tists, cli­mate jour­nal­ists and cli­mate activists. The Esquire piece pro­filed a num­ber of cli­mate sci­en­tists and activists who expe­ri­enced pro­found psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma in the course of their work.

Paul Ehrlich is an ecol­o­gist at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and the coau­thor of a recent paper argu­ing that a sixth mass extinc­tion is already under­way. He has put civilization’s chances of sav­ing itself at about 10 per­cent — but he’s begin­ning to think that’s too opti­mistic. When asked by In These Times how he deals with the prospect of soci­etal col­lapse, Ehrlich chuck­les: ​“I drink a lot.”

Katie Her­zog, an envi­ron­men­tal jour­nal­ist for Grist, says it’s ​“some­thing eas­i­er to ignore if you don’t work in the busi­ness” — her friends are prob­a­bly tired of hear­ing that ​“the plan­et is going to shit.” She’s ​“wor­ried about the world that chil­dren will inher­it,” and thinks it’s ​“irre­spon­si­ble to have kids. I take solace that I’m not bring­ing life into the world that’s going to suffer.”

Slate​’s cli­mate reporter Eric Holthaus, a mete­o­rol­o­gist by train­ing, made waves when he pub­licly declared that he cried read­ing an Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change report. ​“I go back and forth day-to-day between despair and opti­mism.” After much inter­nal debate, he, unlike Her­zog, did decide to have a child. ​“Before we had our baby it felt much eas­i­er to just give up,” he says. Now, ​“I feel an added pres­sure to keep trying.”

Those who pay close atten­tion to cli­mate change are deeply con­cerned for the next gen­er­a­tion. And a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the next gen­er­a­tion, it seems, is con­cerned for itself.

The young and the stressed

A 2007 poll of more than a thou­sand mid­dle school­ers found that almost 60 per­cent feared cli­mate change more than ter­ror­ism, car crash­es or can­cer. Rough­ly the same per­cent­age thought more need­ed to be done to com­bat the threat, and more than 40 per­cent report­ed that con­cern about cli­mate change occa­sion­al­ly occu­pies their minds.

“Unlike adults who can put their heads in the sand … kids are very aware of what’s going on,” said Chris Saade, a North Car­oli­na-based psy­chother­a­pist, in a 2014 inter­view with The Globe and Mail. ​“Chil­dren often ask me ques­tions that we, as adults, try to evade: ​‘What is going to hap­pen to the human race?’ ”

Most of the mid­dle school­ers from 2007 are now in their ear­ly 20s. For a gen­er­a­tion that was born after the Cold War and came of age in the Anthro­pocene, to what extent does cli­mate fear per­sist into young adulthood?

In a June 2015 Pew poll, 51 per­cent of Amer­i­cans aged 18 to 29 rat­ed cli­mate change a ​“very seri­ous” prob­lem, com­pared to 47 per­cent of those 30 to 49, 44 per­cent of those 50 to 64, and 41 per­cent of those 65 and over. Fifty-one per­cent may seem a slim major­i­ty, but in light of what we know about human psy­chol­o­gy, it’s actu­al­ly quite strik­ing. A 2009 report on cli­mate-change psy­chol­o­gy by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion explains that peo­ple tend to under­es­ti­mate the dan­ger of events per­ceived as hav­ing a ​“small prob­a­bil­i­ty.” Cli­mate risks, which are believed by many to be uncer­tain, far off in the future, or occur­ring in remote parts of the plan­et, should fol­low this logic.

Yet a major­i­ty of mil­len­ni­als rate the threat as very seri­ous. While polls shed some light on young people’s con­cern lev­els, no large qual­i­ta­tive sur­veys exist to illu­mi­nate the depth of their wor­ries or how the emo­tion­al impact of cli­mate change influ­ences their life choices.

In response to her own anx­i­eties sur­round­ing cli­mate change, poet and Brown Uni­ver­si­ty Eng­lish lec­tur­er Kate Schapi­ra, 36, set up a booth in 2014—mod­eled after Lucy’s 5‑cent psy­chi­atric ser­vice in the Peanuts com­ic strip — offer­ing ​“cli­mate anx­i­ety coun­sel­ing.” She record­ed the result­ing con­ver­sa­tions with strangers, acquain­tances and loved ones on her blog. One anony­mous inter­vie­wee describes get­ting ​“hives sopho­more year of col­lege think­ing about cli­mate change.” Anoth­er vis­i­tor to Schapi­ra’s booth says, ​“My entire life, cli­mate change has been in my aware­ness … and I think it should wor­ry everyone.”

“It seems to me that cli­mate change, eco­log­i­cal degra­da­tion and the oth­er anx­i­eties my stu­dents share with me actu­al­ly have the same root: a kind of hier­ar­chy that favors and rewards exploita­tion and fear-based grab­bi­ness,” says Schapi­ra. ​“Great insta­bil­i­ty caus­es great emo­tion­al distress.”

To find out more about how young peo­ple are cop­ing, In These Times spoke with 17 cur­rent and recent­ly grad­u­at­ed stu­dents from 10 col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. Most came from mul­ti-col­lege list­servs of stu­dent divest­ment activists. Some had pur­sued the sub­ject aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, and a few had no sig­nif­i­cant back­ground on the issue.

Rachel Fifi, 22, is a Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent from New Orleans whose fam­i­ly was impact­ed by Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na when she was a child. Today she’s an activist with Colum­bia Divest for Cli­mate Jus­tice. ​“I watched this video about deter­min­ing one’s own gen­der, and in it a woman said vio­lence in her child­hood was ​‘a pain so dis­tant it was inti­mate,’ ” she says. ​“The strange com­bi­na­tion of survivor’s guilt, anger, and loss I feel when I think about Kat­ri­na and cli­mate change feels like exact­ly that. Pain, but so old, tak­en for grant­ed, dis­placed and tired that it resem­bles inti­ma­cy and under­stand­ing rather than suffering.”

“I used to feel sad on warm win­ter days as ear­ly as mid­dle school because I knew the world was warm­ing,” says Peter Thacher, a divest­ment activist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania.

“While [cli­mate change] doesn’t affect me on a day-to-day basis, it is prob­a­bly my great­est exis­ten­tial con­cern,” says Eric Collins, a 23-year-old Ohio res­i­dent. When asked if the world was get­ting bet­ter or worse, Collins respond­ed, ​“Prob­a­bly worse.” Ling­wei Cheng, 22, a mas­ters stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, says, ​“It will decrease my stan­dard of liv­ing because even­tu­al­ly we will need to give up con­sum­ing ener­gy with abandon.”

Pre­ston Keme­ny, 22, a recent Prince­ton grad­u­ate with a degree in geo­sciences, feels ​“extreme­ly” anx­ious. What con­cerns him most is the destruc­tion of the planet’s bios­phere. ​“If only humans were at risk, that would be a dif­fer­ent ques­tion,” he says. ​“Then this whole deba­cle would sim­ply be a tragedy and a lost oppor­tu­ni­ty for our cool speci­esthat has some spe­cial tricks.”

But some inter­vie­wees found rea­son for opti­mism. ​“All of the demo­c­ra­t­ic mass resis­tance pop­ping off around the world gives me hope,” says Peter Soeller of Brook­lyn, New York. ​“There’s a sil­ver lin­ing to all of this and it’s an excuse for us to build the type of world we’d like to live in.”

Schapi­ra thinks that the best way to address cli­mate dis­tress is with ​“gen­uine­ly pur­pose­ful action” — prac­ti­cal ways of engag­ing with cli­mate change in one’s own life.

Char Miller, a pro­fes­sor of envi­ron­men­tal analy­sis at Pomona Col­lege who talks dai­ly with ​“stu­dents and alum­ni who are wrestling with the exis­ten­tial cri­sis of cli­mate change,” says that, as a cop­ing mech­a­nism, ​“more and more stu­dents focus on things they can put their hands on, decid­ing to become archi­tects and urban plan­ners or learn­ing how to farm.”

Col­lege cam­pus­es have also become the main bat­tle­ground of the fos­sil fuel divest­ment move­ment, and more than 50,000 stu­dents showed up at the Sep­tem­ber 2014 People’s Cli­mate March. Ear­li­er that year, on March 2, stu­dents helped cre­ate the largest sin­gle-day civ­il dis­obe­di­ence action at the White House in decades, as part of the anti-tar sands protest XL Dis­sent. More than a thou­sand peo­ple marched through the streets of Wash­ing­ton, D.C., that day, and 398 — almost all stu­dents (full dis­clo­sure: includ­ing one of the authors) — were arrested.

‘I will not do nothing’

The bur­den placed on the shoul­ders of today’s youth remains enor­mous. They must learn to live in the midst of an exis­ten­tial threat with­out prece­dent. Though sur­vival depends on col­lec­tive action, each will forge his or her own under­stand­ing of a world in flux.

Philoso­pher Dale Jamieson, a pro­fes­sor at NYU and author of Rea­son in a Dark Time: Why the Strug­gle Against Cli­mate Change Failed — And What it Means for Our Future, thinks this will be painful, but man­age­able. ​“Human ani­mals are extreme­ly adap­tive. Peo­ple have man­aged to have mean­ing­ful lives and lives that are valu­able to them in unspeak­able conditions.”

Jamieson allows that a mean­ing­ful life can still hold tragedy, and believes many will be dev­as­tat­ed ​“not just by the mon­e­tary or phys­i­cal effects of cli­mate change,” but by ​“being in a world that’s increas­ing­ly a human world … the species equiv­a­lent of liv­ing in your own head.”

In some ways, our soci­ety — or at least the politi­cians and busi­ness elites who fail to appre­ci­ate the apoc­a­lyp­tic impli­ca­tions of cli­mate change — appears to be already trapped in its own head. The lack of sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal action on cli­mate change was a con­cern for most of the young peo­ple inter­viewed for this piece. This is in line with polling data sug­gest­ing that young vot­ers want sub­stan­tive polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic action to com­bat cli­mate change. In a 2014 Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin poll, 68 per­cent of vot­ers younger than 35 said they were more like­ly to vote for can­di­dates who sup­port reduc­ing car­bon emis­sions, com­pared to 50 per­cent of vot­ers 65 and old­er. Younger vot­ers were also much more like­ly than oth­er age groups to sup­port curb­ing fos­sil fuel use and expand­ing finan­cial incen­tives for renewables.

Mike­lis Beitiks, 32, is run­ning in Cal­i­for­nia for U.S. Sen­ate in 2016 with a sim­ple slo­gan: ​“I will not do noth­ing.” On his web­site, he writes: ​“I run for Sen­ate on a nar­row plat­form. It’s more of a sin­gle board, real­ly. If elect­ed, I promise to mono­ma­ni­a­cal­ly cre­ate and sup­port leg­is­la­tion that com­bats cli­mate change.”

The site is full of dark­ly humor­ous rhetoric: a shirt­less and sweaty Beitiks with the cap­tion ​“We’re lit­er­al­ly going to die,” sim­ple philo­soph­i­cal state­ments like ​“I do not like unnec­es­sar­i­ly dead things,” an ​“upcom­ing events” page that includes ​“spin the cylin­der of a revolver, cry,” and action plans like, ​“Every­one has to breathe more shal­low­ly” and ​“Cut­ting down trees will now be called ​‘arbor­tion.’ ”

“I’m not the only per­son who’s sat there and thought, ​‘Whoa, this is very ter­ri­fy­ing,’ ” he tells In These Times. ​“It’s a very heavy bur­den to car­ry … There’s a lot of peo­ple who feel like us. Any­body read­ing this arti­cle and feel­ing like this, they should know they’re not alone … every­one would rather be doing some­thing than nothing.”

He has also cor­re­spond­ed with indi­vid­u­als he calls ​“near-term extinc­tion peo­ple,” who give humans only a few decades, though he does not share their apoc­a­lyp­tic vision. ​“I have two young kids,” he says. ​“I can’t afford to not have hope.”

As he brings his cam­paign to news out­lets like MSNBC, sci­en­tists con­tin­ue to research mass extinc­tions, jour­nal­ists con­tin­ue to doc­u­ment human and non­hu­man suf­fer­ing, and stu­dents con­tin­ue to stage sit-ins and peti­tion dri­ves. Cli­mate change leads some to a dark men­tal place, but for many there is mean­ing in resistance.

“Activism, for me, is essen­tial,” says Colum­bia junior Elana Sulak­shana, 22, who works with Colum­bia Divest. ​“It inspires and empow­ers me, and con­sis­tent­ly moti­vates me to keep fighting.”

As Pope Fran­cis writes in his recent cli­mate-focused encycli­cal, ​“Let us sing as we go. May our strug­gles and our con­cern for this plan­et nev­er take away the joy of our hope.”

Or as Beitiks puts it: ​“If you look death in the eyes and you don’t laugh, you’re kind of miss­ing the point of life. If you do noth­ing, you’re also miss­ing the point of life.”