Zahra Biabani

Thank you so much.

A survey found that 56% of Gen Zers, the generation that I'm a part of and the largest age demographic in the world, believe that because of the climate crisis, humanity is doomed.

This kind of felt like a punch in the gut.

I mean, I had just spent four and a half years, tens of thousands of dollars to studying these things.

Countless time organizing on and off campus and energy getting involved with both local and national groups.

Yet most of my generation viewed it all as pointless.

Now, if we look at the way that younger generations talk about the climate crisis, these feelings of doom and despair make sense.

I mean, we're drowning in bad climate news.

Headline after headline detail each week's latest catastrophe.

Unprecedented has taken on a new meaning, as each day is unprecedented.

And everything is amplified on social media, where there's a remarkable lack of nuance and an oversupply of attention-grabbing rhetoric.

Many of us, including myself, seem to believe that if we just share these awareness posts enough times, that someone, somewhere will finally do something about it.

But unfortunately, Joe Biden probably doesn't follow you on Instagram, and he doesn't follow me either, yet.

I'm part of a diverse 19-person strong collective called EcoTalk, and we use social media to share nuanced climate education through infographics, memes, and you guessed it, TikToks, to our collective audience of over 4 million people, most of whom are Gen Z and millennials.

And through our work, we've picked up on this pattern.

Our comment sections are filled with people who have given up hope.

people who say they have weekly anxiety attacks about the climate crisis, or that they don't want to have kids anymore out of fear of adding to the suffering, or that they see no point in taking action when the powers that stand against us are so strong.

Our generation and younger generations need a new way of addressing the climate crisis that unshackles us from the cycles of doom and gloom that so often lead to inaction, because we cannot play a part in making change if we do not believe that change is possible.

Climate denialism, which for decades has been peddled by oil, gas, and other big business interests, has met its rival.

Climate doomism, the belief that we cannot save our planet, so why take action?