Global warming is the new cold war

Fears for the planet Earth — and a determination to save it — are shaping a new generation

For many children and young adults, global warming is the atomic bomb of today. Fears of an environmental crisis are defining their generation in ways that the Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam and the Cold War’s lingering war games etched souls in the 20th century.

Parents say they’re searching for “productive” outlets for their eight-year-olds’ obsessions with dying polar bears. Teachers say enrolment in high school and college environmental studies classes is doubling year after year. And psychologists say they’re seeing an increasing number of young patients preoccupied by a climactic Armageddon.
It’s not just a phenomenon in the U.S. and Canada: A United Kingdom survey, by the Somerfield supermarket chain, of 1,150 youngsters age seven to 11 found that half felt anxious about global warming — and many were losing sleep over it, convinced that animal species will soon die out and that they, themselves, will be victims of global warming.

Hamilton Spectator