Eco-anxiety is overwhelming children, writes Jason Plautz in Washington Post Magazine. Marching in Denver against climate change, high school sophomore Sophie Kaplan holds a poser asking: “Why Should I Study For a Future I Won’t Have?” The world is “on the brink,” she believes. “I don’t understand why I should be in school if the world is burning. What’s the point of working on my education if we don’t deal with this first?”

Older adults tell Plautz they’re reminded of Cold War fears about Nuclear war.

. . . the 1983 TV movie “The Day After,” which dramatized the fallout from a nuclear attack on the Midwest, emerged as an apocalyptic touchstone; surveys after the film aired found viewers were more depressed about their chances of survival and were less optimistic about their ability to influence nuclear weapons policy.

“These scenarios of apocalypse, of really cataclysmic climate change that people are scaring children around, are in the realm of an extreme, unpredictable event,” says Michael Shellenberger, founder of the nonprofit Environmental Progress, which promotes nuclear energy. He has a book coming out in June, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

Brooding on inevitable doom isn’t good for young people, psychologists told The Telegraph.

. . .  a rising number of kids and young adults are being treated with psychiatric drugs in order to reduce the emotional stress and exhaustion caused by “eco-anxiety,” or, a fervent fear that humans will go extinct as a result of their own pollution and damage to the environment.

The standard advice is for young people to take action rather than succumb to “climate despair” also known as “eco-nihilism” and “human futilitarianism.” I’d suggest studying science and energy, nuclear or environmental engineering.