Young voters are forming a rallying cry for the federal government to address one of their greatest concerns: climate change.
The climate crisis has become so alarming to some Australians it’s given rise to a little-known term called climate anxiety, also known as eco-anxiety.
Alexa Stuart, 21, has already spent years of her life anxious about the climate.
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The Newcastle environmentalist, who gate-crashed PM Anthony Albanese’s campaign pitstop earlier this month to protest the federal government’s climate policies, told 9news.com.au climate anxiety is a very real issue for many young Australians.
“I’d say from about 15 I’ve had climate anxiety,” Stuart, a member of the climate advocacy group Rising Tide, explained.
“That’s when things started to really sink in for me about the seriousness of the climate crisis, I remember like late nights trying to research the science of it and, and feeling quite emotional about it quite often.”
Stuart recalls the devastating 2019/20 bushfires in Australia as a turning point for her passion – and horror – over the state of the environment.
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She, like millions of others, felt a sense of despair as she watched the country burn.
“It feels like almost a universal experience of young people seeing those bushfires and feeling so deeply that this is what every summer may look like,” Stuart said
“The fear was pretty vivid around that time.
“And I’ve just felt a really intense concern about the impact the climate crisis will have on my future.”
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One in 10 Australian adults is experiencing “significant eco-anxiety” like Stuart is, said the Black Dog Institute’s Chloe Watfern.
More than 80 per cent of 16 to 25-year-olds are worried about climate change, according to research published in The Lancet.
Watfern said this currently undiagnosed feeling can be akin to “the feeling of homesickness that you have when you’re home” or even pre-traumatic stress.
It can also be known as “ecological grief”, which is “a sense of mourning for ecosystems, biodiversity and species lost to environmental damage”.
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The prevalence of climate anxiety has the potential to sway voters during the 2025 federal election too.
A recent report also found 74 per cent of young Australian voters thought the government needs to do more to address climate change.
Stuart sees herself as the voice for millions like her who want to see real change in their lifetime.
“I want my 15-year-old self to be proud of me and I want to be able to tell my grandkids that I did everything that I could,” she said.
“That’s really what drives me to just keep fighting every day.”
Climate anxiety was front of mind for Stuart when she heckled the PM as he announced Labor’s $1 billion mental health package.
Stuart accused Albanese of hypocrisy for his government’s coal policies as he pledged big money for youth mental health.
“You’re condemning young people like me to a life of climate disaster,” she told the PM.
The young climate advocate said she spoke up because she believes “antidote to despair is action”.
“I feel the anger so deeply and the grief that the best way that I can channel those emotions is through action,” Stuart said.
“And, and that’s why on Tuesday when I confronted the Prime Minister, my heart was racing before I did it.
“But as I started talking about the emotion of it… all of these years of emotions and feeling powerless and helpless and dismissed by our politicians, they just all came out so easily.”
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