Something dark is happening to our children — and it’s not the climate, it’s fear.
The Left has turned climate change into a doomsday cult, and today’s children are its most devoted converts. A global survey in the Lancet found that 59% of young people are “very” or “extremely” worried about climate change. Nearly half said it affects their daily lives. In the United States, teenagers said climate anxiety shapes their plans for college, travel, and even whether to have families eventually. Pew Research reported that many adults under age 40 cited “the environment” as a reason they may never have children.
These numbers aren’t spontaneous; they’re cultivated by politicians and activists who see manufactured “eco-anxiety” as a gateway to political control. But the truth is, this panic is nothing new. Climate shocks are as old as history.
Around 2200 B.C., the Akkadian Empire collapsed after a brutal megadrought. Rivers dried up, crops failed, cities emptied, and families fled toward rumored oases. Governments rationed, and civilization teetered on the edge of collapse.
This all happened long before smokestacks or SUVs. Yet today, that ancient dread is being recycled, politicized, and deliberately packaged for children. Activist groups, such as the Potential Energy Coalition, even distribute messaging guides on how to turn climate catastrophe into viral content. As the New York Post recently warned, a movement that once preached “teach the science” now coaches children for perpetual protest.
I’m a Florida father of (soon) four, and I refuse to raise little apocalypse disciples. When a hurricane looms, we load the truck, charge the iPads, and turn evacuation into an adventure — Buc-ees stops and hotel-room prayers reminding our children that God still commands the sea. They learn prudence, not panic; courage, not carbon guilt. Above all, we teach them hope.
Every new baby is a possible dreamer, inventor, or entrepreneur — the kind of mind that might design better batteries, engineer flood-proof cities, or launch the biotech breakthrough that scrubs carbon dioxide from the sky. If climate change really is a global emergency, we don’t need fewer people. We need more problem-solvers. History’s answers have usually arrived in a bassinet before they showed up in a lab.
But hope also means telling the truth about where progress and prosperity really come from. In Landman, Billy Bob Thornton’s roughneck oilfield character stands under a wind turbine and laughs:
“You wanna guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that thing? … Our whole lives depend on it — tennis rackets, lipstick, cell-phone cases, artificial heart valves, everything.”
He’s right. Even the blades that chase a West Texas breeze were forged, shipped, and maintained with fossil fuels. America’s hydrocarbon infrastructure isn’t a moral stain. It’s why the lights stay on when the clouds roll in.
Under President Donald Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council, the U.S. became the world’s top oil-and-gas producer and cut CO2 emissions faster than several Paris Accords cheerleaders. Cheap natural gas has displaced coal and freed up capital for innovation.
Want a real crisis? Hand over our energy future to China and hope for the best.
History proves that optimism and ingenuity beat panic and paralysis. Thomas Malthus predicted mass starvation in 1798 — until fertilizer and high-yield crops fed billions. Y2K threatened civilization until engineers, or people, fixed the glitch.
So what does a hope-centered response to climate anxiety actually look like? It begins by telling our children the truth: risk is real, but so is human creativity — and they can be part of the solution. Put children in science fairs, not sit-ins. Encourage them to plant a garden, tour a power plant, or meet the linemen who turn the lights back on.
Show them that stewardship means building, repairing, and innovating — not gluing themselves to airport runways.
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Replace TikTok doomscrolling with biographies of Edison, Carver, and Musk. Ground their identity in something bigger than carbon counts — in a calling, to subdue the Earth responsibly.
My wife’s due date is Christmas, a season of expectant joy. While some of our peers are taking “climate vows” to remain childless, we’ll welcome another little Floridian, restock our hurricane kit, and read bedtime stories about astronauts farming lettuce on Mars. The world isn’t ending because of climate change, but the Left’s grip on our children’s imaginations should.
Gates Garcia is the host of We The People, a popular YouTube show and podcast. Follow him on Instagram and X @GatesGarciaFL.