Life Skills for Climate Change
Climate change is one of the existential issues of this generation, and concerns about the future can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety. Pete Read, CEO and Co-founder of Persona Education, introduces six Social-Emotional Skills that help young people deal with the realities they are facing and not give up, and equally importantly help them start to understand issues, plan responses and take action.
24-Jul-24
By Pete Read, CEO & Founder
Managing reactions to Climate Change
World Environment Day – the United Nations day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment – and World Emotional Intelligence Day – created by Six Seconds – fall within a day of one another on 5th and 6th June. This is fortuitous for us because at Persona Education our ideas around Life Skills for Climate Change combine these two themes.
Our objective in this area is to empower schools, colleges, teachers and tutors to think about the crucial importance of climate change for their students’ future lives – and even more importantly their children’s lives further into the future and the 22nd Century – recognise the central role that emotional intelligence and social-emotional skills play in reactions to and responses to the climate change crisis among these young people.
And then begin to help and guide their students with strategies and tools that can help the to manage both their feelings and their actions in response to climate change.
This article outlines ideas from a new section our 2024 white paper, The Guide to Student Personal Development, called Equipping Students With Skills for Climate Change.
An existential issue for this generation
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Climate change is one of the existential issues of this generation, and concerns about the future can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety.
For young people, perception is reality. So social-emotional Life Skills that help them deal with the realities they are facing and not give up, are equally important as those which help them understand issues, plan responses and take action.
Our young people are very worried about climate change. That’s no secret! A major global survey of 10,000 young people age 16-25 in ten countries, by The Lancet 2022, found:
- 59% are extremely or very worried about the climate
The percentage was even higher in developing countries where the consequences are expected to be the worst.
- 45% of young people said feelings about climate change negatively affect daily life
- And 75% think the future is frightening
That’s huge!
It's not quite that bad
But – while it is no doubt one of the biggest issues of this generation – most people think that climate change is even worse than it actually is.
While that may give rise to a useful urgency of action, it can also lead to unnecessary stress and anxiety, a lack of willingness to change because “there’s no point”, and even taking risky extreme action such as protesting physically.
The not-for-profit Gapminder has been conducting misconceptions studies for almost ten years, and their latest quiz focuses on climate change.
Their studies all show that people tend to be pessimistic, and score a lot worse than “monkeys choosing random answers”. They show that humans suffer from systematic misconceptions on important global facts – despite that all these facts are freely available on the Internet, if you sort them from the fake news.
For example: 85% of people think that fewer than 150 of the 195 countries recognised by the UN have adopted the Paris Agreement on climate change. The correct answer is 192 – almost all of them.
And 80% think that fewer than half the people in high-income countries see climate change as a threat over the next 20 years. Actually, 80% see it as a threat.
Responses to climate distress
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Over half of young people reported each of the following emotions relating to climate change:
☹ Sad
☹ Anxious
☹ Angry
☹ Powerless
☹ Helpless
☹ Guilty
This ‘climate distress’ is also associated with beliefs about inadequate governmental response and feelings of betrayal or abandonment.
As Cambridge University Press & Assessment asserts, education is key to tackling the climate crisis.
Education can and should:
✔ Empower young people with the skills and knowledge to take action on climate change.
✔ Amplify student voices and develop their critical, creative and communication skills.
✔ Inspire learners to solve problems and consider the challenge from global and local perspectives.
Mental health-informed strategies
The Climate Literacy & Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) is a climate and environment education organisation in the US that collects free teaching resources for schools and colleges.
They suggest a mental health-informed strategies approach to facilitating the expression, processing and validation of young people’s climate emotions, while also encouraging positive emotions and reducing stress:
Self-care » Learn about self-care strategies that can help you support yourself and the youth as you navigate climate impacts.
Climate Justice » Including conversations about climate justice within the context of mental health is important as the impacts of climate change disproportionately affect low-income, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. This may also influence people's mental health. Learn about resources and strategies to help youth become more aware of these disproportionate impacts and include multiple voices and ways of knowing in conversations and action projects.
Listen and Validate Feelings » Listening to youth about their concerns is one of the first and most important strategies to utilise with youth. Learn about resources and strategies that can support youth in expressing their emotions and help them feel heard.
Encourage and Take Action » Taking action to mitigate the effects of climate change can have a profoundly positive impact in moving through grief and anxiety towards empowerment. Learn about resources and strategies for engaging youth in individual and collective action.
Join and Create Community and Connection » Supporting youth in finding solidarity with others builds positive relationships and a feeling that "I'm not alone". Learn about strategies and resources to support youth in building connections and community with others.
Incorporate a Trauma-Informed Approach » Climate change can cause exposure to potentially traumatic events and in turn, result in trauma-related mental health reactions affecting individuals, families, and communities. Learn about resources and strategies to implement in the classroom that integrate a trauma-informed approach.
Use Social, Emotional, and Positive Coping Skills » Social, emotional, self-regulation, and positive coping practices can help to effectively manage emotions related to climate change. Learn about resources and strategies that support emotional regulation, management, and coping.
Move through Grief » Learn more about understanding grief, coping strategies, and resources that can support youth in moving through grief to build resilience.
Cultivate Hope and Resilience » Hope is a teachable skill. Learn to cultivate hope through time in nature, reframe the problems associated with climate change, and share examples of others doing climate change work.
Start with Social-Emotional Skills
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Given the situation we are in, both climate action and climate anxiety need to be prioritised.
Social-emotional skills that help with understanding climate change issues, and planning responses, for example…
- Processing Information (Life Skill 5)
– Taking the time to consider what someone is trying to tell me
- Critical Thinking (Life Skill 15)
– Being able to consider and analyse what I’ve heard, so I can make my own judgement
- Effective Teamwork (Life Skill 16)
– Playing an effective role within a group, in order to achieve a common goal
…are equally important as those which help young people deal with the climate change realities they are facing, and not give up, such as:…
- Stress Management (Life Skill 2)
– Managing my stress in different situations
- Staying Positive (Life Skill 19)
– Maintaining a positive attitude and believing things will work out well
- Perseverance (Life Skill 17)
– Keeping going, on something worthwhile, even when things get hard
Developing these kinds of skills among your students will help them with their mental health, eco-anxiety, assessing conflicting information, taking social action, and managing their future. (Find all 22 of the Persona Life Skills here.)
In the sections below I provide suggestions on how to start developing each of those six social-emotional Life Skills for climate change resilience among your students. At this first level, we suggest taking an approach where you first increase awareness of the skill, then provide some simple practical advice they can adopt.
Stress Management
Managing my stress in different situations
Stress is a response to mental pressure or a threat. It can be caused by everyday pressures such as taking an exam or performing in front of an audience. In these situations, a certain amount of stress can help. Facing challenges is an important part of learning and growing.
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Staying Positive
Maintaining a positive attitude and believing things will work out well
The first thing to do when feeling negative is acknowledge that this is completely OK, and these feelings are temporary. Being able to describe how you are feeling is the first key step to dealing with negative thoughts.
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Perseverance
Keeping going, on something worthwhile, even when things get hard
Perseverance is about persisting with an activity, project or goal that is worth doing, despite any obstacles. There are also times when ‘quitting’ is the right thing to do, eg. when you are really no longer enjoying an after-school activity.
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Processing Information
Taking the time to consider what someone is trying to tell me
Young people are bombarded with information: Lessons in school, news on TV, updates from friends on phones, celebrity gossip on social media, YouTube and TikTok videos and more.
Their brains are constantly working super-hard to focus on what is important, and filter out the information that they can ignore.
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Critical Thinking
Consider and analyse what I’ve heard, so I can make my own judgement
Critical Thinking is the ability to think in an organised and rational manner. Becoming a critical thinker will help young people decide what to believe – by identifying, analysing, and fixing flaws in their thinking, or what they have seen or heard.
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Effective Teamwork
Playing an effective role within a group, in order to achieve a common goal
Learning to work effectively as part of a team has many benefits:
- Achieve goals more quickly
- Complete goals to a higher standard
- Teamwork is more creative and enjoyable
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Next steps
I hope this blog has given you some helpful initial ideas about using life skills to help students deal with their feelings around climate change, and start to think about possible solutions.
All these ideas and strategies are working at what we call the ‘Start’ level for developing the 22 life skills we work with in our online platform Persona Life Skills. There are two more levels to work through in the platform – which includes many interactive activities – and much more on the six life skills we looked at, plus 16 others.
Why not try it out with a free trial for your school or college? Or get in touch – we'd love to tell you more!
If you enjoyed this article you might also like:
White paper: Guide to student personal development in secondary schools and colleges
Life Skills in the Curriculum – 10 Habits for Developing Social-Emotional Skills in Every Classroom
Delivering the Social-Emotional Element of Student Personal Development
Persona Education offers free access to its Persona Life Skills online learning platform for secondary schools and colleges interested in developing their pupils’ social-emotional life skills, to boost wellbeing, academic and employability outcomes.
About the author: Pete Read co-founded Persona Education in 2019 to bring the benefits of personality insights to young people. Before co-founding Persona, Pete built several consulting and software companies in Europe and Asia, one of which was rated the no.1 consulting company to work for in Asia-Pacific by Vault.com, winning best-in-class on diversity, gender equality and LGBTQ+ equality. www.persona-life.com
