By Caleigh Wells for KCRW.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration

Students in Brittany Jefferson's class can rattle off facts and opinions about deforestation, corporate greed, rising tides, warming temperatures, and the unequal plight of poorer countries as soon as the topic of climate change is introduced.

And most of them are just 10 years old.

"Because of global warming, and the amount of gas that we use, and the animals that we kill, and all the trash that we're putting in the ocean, we're just taking everything," says a fifth-grader named Jack at Citizens of the World Silver Lake charter school.

That doesn't mean these students are sanguine about ecological collapse.

"It makes me feel overwhelmed," says Hayoon, one of Jack's classmates. "If I was in the next generation, I would just cry and eat ice cream all day."

With greater knowledge comes greater anxiety. And while it's important to LA Unified School District administrators to educate kids about the warming world - this year the LAUSD board passed a resolution committing to incorporating climate literacy into existing curriculum - that leaves teachers grappling with how to inform children without traumatizing them.

"They don't have faith in the people powerful enough to make systemic changes," says fifth-grade teacher Jefferson. "And so they're just like, 'Yeah, the world is burning. And so we're gonna burn eventually.' And so that's something that I am working to combat."

Generational trauma

Kids like Jack and Hayoon are part of a cohort "that is experiencing much higher levels of anxiety than earlier generations," says David Bond, a licensed clinical social worker and trauma specialist. It was different for their parents, Bond says, who might think, "'Well, somebody else is going to figure that out.'"

"For young people," he continues, "they are the ones who have to figure this out. And also there's a sense [that] older generations aren't doing enough to mitigate the harm that we have done to the environment. So there's a sense of anger and frustration at older generations as well."

Citizens of the World Silver Lake fifth-grader Sawyer is ready to prove the point.

"I feel like we take it a bit more seriously than some adults because we actually care about having this earth, not having it turned into just like a wasteland," he says.

But that doesn't make Sawyer hopeful. "Eventually, this is just going to end up in a way that kills us all."

Lucy Garcia with Climate Reality Project, which helped spearhead LAUSD's climate literacy effort, knows this is a problem. She believes one way to combat anxiety is talking about it in the classroom. When it's ignored, she says, "That's where the trauma is worsened. So the most important thing is to be able to have them see that we are working on it, that we need their help ... [rather] than to ignore it. Because they see it anyway - this is the age of the internet."

Bond agrees that climate anxiety and the internet can create a problem for kids, because social media can become a place for teenagers to air their stress and anxiety publicly, which encourages doomscrolling.

Teacher Blossom Shores at Van Nuys Middle School says her best antidote to climate anxiety is teaching kids about solutions that are working.

"They're more perceptive than we realize," she says. "Yes, we want them to understand the gravity of it, but we don't want them to have dystopian reality fears. ... It's so important for them to feel empowered."

When Shores recently gave a climate talk to a class of Van Nuys Middle School sixth-graders, it started with some bleak statistics. But when she got to the back half of the presentation and started talking about the exponential growth of wind and solar energy, some students were more than ready to jump on the optimism bandwagon.

"Now there's a chance that global warming doesn't get worse," says one student named Luciana.

Her classmate Tyler was glad to see some of the good news, but says it still doesn't outweigh the bad news.

"It hasn't done so just yet, but I hope it will in the future."

Caleigh Wells wrote this article for KCRW.


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In rural Alabama, where hurricanes and tornadoes are a constant threat, communities often struggle with damage and limited resources for extended periods.

The nonprofit Hometown Organizing Project is stepping in to help. Through their Climate Protection Canvass initiative, they are forming teams to support communities during severe storms.

Messiah William-Cole, mayor of Camp Hill, said rural communities rely on outside funding for storm recovery help. The support is crucial in his own community, which is still recovering from unprecedented flooding and damage caused by a hailstorm six months ago.

"All homes in our municipality's jurisdiction took damage, roofs were damaged," William-Cole recounted. "When we did a damage assessment 76 % of our towns cars were damaged. "

The Climate Protection Canvass will help communities in Colbert, Coosa, Dallas, Tallapoosa, and Walker counties. Organizers said it is a long-term, four-phase project, which will take place over two to three years. It includes story sharing, a community road tour, political education training, and the development of community protection teams.

Environmental Protection Agency data project Alabama will see warmer weather and more severe flooding and drought.

Michaela Lovegood, executive director of the Political Healers Project, will work with the Hometown Organizing Project on the canvass. She said weather pattern changes are a global problem, and stressed the need for long-term commitment to mobilize communities to take the lead in climate protection.

"The importance that we are putting here is that we are trying to create climate protection where local communities have the training development and the support in order to be able to create the kind of response, recovery work and plan they need," Lovegood outlined.

NOAA has recorded 15 weather-related disasters in 2023, each causing at least $1 billion in damage.


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Researchers at the University of Maine are working to develop a more resilient electric power grid to withstand the growing number of climate change-related weather events.

The goal is to help communities disproportionately impacted by such events build locally controlled microgrids fueled by renewable energy.

Sharon Klein, associate professor of economics at the University of Maine, said rural and remote communities identified as socially vulnerable often face the greatest effects when power lines go down.

"A lot of our northern communities are on that list," Klein pointed out. "Also a lot of the coastal communities who are going to be susceptible to a lot of the sea-level rise and flooding."

Klein noted researchers will also work with communities in Alaska, South Dakota and Puerto Rico to study how local microgrids could better ensure the lights stay on when extreme weather strikes.

Researchers said the key to developing microgrids is to first build strong relationships with communities to ensure their individual needs are met. Klein explained she is working with all of Maine's tribal communities, who have shared the effects they have already faced from climate change, as well as their vision for a more sustainable power grid.

"It's important to me personally that the communities that have not been part of the conversation as much, that they're accessing directly those benefits to transitioning to renewable energy and away from fossil fuels," Klein emphasized.

Klein added researchers and community members express a sense of urgency in ensuring America's aging power grids can withstand climate change. The bulk of America's transmission lines and transformers are at least a quarter-century old and were not designed to withstand the types of extreme weather conditions the U.S. is experiencing today.


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A 2021 survey published in The Lancet showed almost half of U.S. youth ages 16 to 25 feel "heightened worry" about climate change.

Sponsors of Nebraska's upcoming Youth Climate Summit, "Seeking Solutions to the Climate Crisis" aim to foster hopefulness in the youth who attend.

Ken Winston, executive director of Nebraska Interfaith Power and Light, is also a community organizer for the Nebraska chapter of the Sierra Club. He said speakers will cover a variety of ways to deal with the effects of climate change.

"The state climatologist will talk about climate change in Nebraska," Winston outlined. "We have a panel of people who are going to talk about things like renewable energy and regenerative agriculture, hydroponic growing and sustainable business."

Winston noted afternoon plans include an interactive "scenario gaming exercise," based on requests from last year's attendees for more "interactive" events. The summit is geared toward 15- to 25-year-olds and will be held Sept. 22 on the East Campus of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. There is no fee to attend, but preregistration is requested by next Monday.

Winston emphasized they are lucky to have twenty-four-year-old Filipino environmentalist Louise Mabulo as keynote speaker. Mabulo, who's also an award-winning chef, was designated a United Nations Young Champion of the Earth and a National Geographic Young Explorer because of the impact of The Cacao Project she founded in the Philippines.

"She started organizing local farmers and helping them develop a cacao crop, and then she also has a business that markets the chocolate," Winston explained. "So, she's an organizer and a chef and an entrepreneur."

One of the panels will feature young Nebraskans sharing steps they have taken to spur action on climate change.

"They'll talk about their own experiences," Winston added. "Testifying before the Legislature, creating rallies to draw attention to climate change, going to the U.S. Capitol and talking to members of Congress."

Winston stressed young people have been involved throughout the planning process and the fifth Youth Climate Summit has generated the most interest so far.