In this article, Clare Rowe contextualises and disseminates the findings of the IPA’s research into Climate anxiety in children.
Australian children are being introduced to climate change earlier than ever. But instead of feeling informed, many are walking away frightened, guilty, and overwhelmed. It’s emotional manipulation dressed as science.
This week, more than 150 mental health professionals, educators and climate activists signed an open letter titled “Climate Science, Not Climate Silence”, accusing critics like myself of spreading misinformation and underestimating the emotional resilience of children.
The letter, spearheaded by Doctors for the Environment and youth-led climate groups, claims that climate education isn’t the cause of growing anxiety in children, it’s the solution to it.
But the argument crumbles when held up against what we know about child development – and even more tellingly, when you listen closely to what the letter’s own supporters are saying.
In a radio interview on ABC Newcastle, Dr Clare Smith, a general practitioner and one of the letter’s signatories, tried to discredit my recent research with the Institute of Public Affairs, which documents the rise of climate anxiety in young children caused by developmentally inappropriate education. Ironically, it was Dr Smith herself who offered the clearest support for my case.
Speaking about how young children make sense of the world, she said, “Five-year-olds can do this thing called magical thinking … they may, for example, have the view that if they make their bed really nicely and keep their room tidy, grandma won’t die — and then she dies, and they go on with the lasting belief that they somehow caused their grandmother’s death.”
This is precisely the cognitive trap my report warns against. When we present them with emotionally charged global crises – like bushfires, sea level rise or mass extinction – and then suggest they “do their bit” by turning off lights or eating less meat, what are we asking them to internalise? I’ll tell you what I see in clinic: children who believe the fate of the planet rests on whether they brought a keep cup to school. Children who think they’re “bad” if their parents drive to work. Children who say they don’t want to have families because “the world will be gone by then.”
This isn’t science education – it’s guilt messaging. And it’s producing not empowered environmentalists, but anxious, hopeless children paralysed by learned helplessness.
The open letter states that “psychologically safe” climate education can build resilience – and I agree, in theory. But nowhere does it define what “psychologically safe” means in a developmental context. Because if it did, it would have to grapple with uncomfortable truths: that young children are not mini-adults, and real safety means shielding them from premature exposure to overwhelming concepts.
Rather than accuse those of us raising concerns of “misinformation,” I urge the signatories of the open letter to engage with the evidence. Listen to clinicians on the front lines. And most importantly, listen to your own words.
Dr Smith was right: magical thinking is real. But so too are the long-term effects of fear, guilt and helplessness. We don’t build strong children by scaring them into premature activism. We build them by letting them be children first.
