There is an image I have been thinking about lately. It shows climate change and human health as two concentric circles. Around the Earth are people at different stages of life — pregnancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and later life. Around them are the hazards we have come to associate with a changing climate: rising temperatures, air pollution, floods, droughts, storms, wildfires, sea-level rise and salinisation.
At first glance, it looks like another climate-health framework. But the longer I look at it, the more human it becomes.
Because climate change does not happen to the planet alone. It happens to people across the entire course of their lives. And one of its most important impacts is also one of the least visible: what it does to our mental health.
I look at this issue from two places.
I am a professor working in sustainability. I teach climate risk, resilience and sustainable development, and much of my professional life is spent looking at climate change through data, policy, systems and institutional responses.
But I am also a parent.
And when I look at that image, I do not see only a framework. I see a child. I see a young person trying to imagine adulthood. And I hear the question that increasingly sits quietly in the minds of parents:
What kind of world will our children inherit?
The climate crisis is usually measured in degrees Celsius, emissions, economic losses, damaged infrastructure and lost livelihoods. These measures are essential. But there is another loss that is harder to quantify: the erosion of certainty.
For a child, extreme heat may mean sleepless nights, disrupted schooling or not being able to play outdoors. For an adolescent, climate change can become an existential question: What kind of future am I growing into? For a young adult, it can influence decisions about careers, homes, migration, relationships and whether to have children.
For parents, the anxiety acquires another dimension. We are not only worrying about our own future. We are worrying about someone else's.
For older adults, climate change can bring another form of distress — the loss of familiar seasons, landscapes, livelihoods, communities and ways of life.
The same climate crisis therefore produces different psychological experiences at different stages of life.
And somewhere in the middle of all this is the parent.
Parents are expected to make the future feel safe. We tell our children to study, dream, build careers, travel, create and plan for tomorrow. But climate change has made tomorrow feel less certain.
Another heatwave. Another flood. Another storm. Another warning about water scarcity.
And somewhere in the back of the parental mind comes the question: Will this become normal for my child?
A child may never say “climate anxiety”. They may simply ask, “Why is it so hot?” or “Why can't we go outside?”
An adolescent may not describe “ecological grief”. They may simply wonder whether it makes sense to dream about a future that appears increasingly uncertain.
And a parent may never say, “I am anxious about climate change.”
We simply lie awake thinking about our children.
That, too, is climate anxiety.
The evidence is beginning to catch up with these experiences. A multinational study involving 388 adults across 44 countries found that 83.5 per cent had experienced at least one extreme climate event in the preceding five years. Those exposed to extreme events reported higher levels of affective, behavioural and personal-impact anxiety. Climate-related disruption to everyday functioning emerged as the strongest predictor of climate anxiety.
That phrase — everyday functioning — matters.
Climate change becomes psychologically significant when it interrupts ordinary life.
When heat disrupts sleep. When floods interrupt education. When disasters destroy homes. When livelihoods become uncertain. When displacement separates people from communities. When uncertainty begins occupying mental space that was once available for ordinary life.
Climate change does not always arrive as a single dramatic catastrophe. Sometimes it arrives as a series of disruptions. Slowly, uncertainty becomes part of everyday life.
But the psychological burden is not distributed equally.
A family with financial security may be able to leave a flood-prone area. Another may have nowhere to go. One household can afford cooling. Another may struggle to pay its electricity bill. One student may have access to psychological support. Another may not have access to basic healthcare.
This is why climate mental health is also a question of climate justice.
We cannot talk about resilience without asking who has the resources to be resilient.
For vulnerable communities, a climate event can mean much more than temporary fear. It can mean displacement, interrupted education, loss of income, weakened social networks and prolonged uncertainty. These are not separate from mental health; they are part of the conditions that shape it.
As a professor, there is another question I increasingly ask: How are we teaching climate change to the next generation?
We have a responsibility to tell students the truth. Climate change is serious. The risks are real. The transition will not be easy.
But how we communicate climate change matters.
If every climate conversation ends with catastrophe, what happens to a young person's sense of agency? If students are repeatedly shown frightening projections without being shown pathways for action, do we create informed citizens — or overwhelmed ones?
We should not soften the science. But neither should helplessness become the unintended outcome of climate education.
Young people need to understand climate risk. They also need to understand adaptation, innovation, collective action and resilience.
They need to know that the future is uncertain.
But they also need to know that it is not predetermined.
This is where hope becomes more than a comforting word.
Hope is not pretending that everything will be fine. It is not denying the science.
Hope is the belief that our choices still matter even when the outcome is uncertain.
That may be one of the most important forms of climate resilience we can build.
We speak constantly about resilient cities, infrastructure, agriculture and economies. We should. But perhaps we also need to speak about resilient minds.
A climate-resilient school is not only one with cooling systems and green spaces. It is also a place where children can talk about their fears without being dismissed.
A climate-resilient university is not only one that measures its carbon footprint. It is one that prepares young people to understand climate risks without losing their sense of agency.
And a climate-resilient family may be one where difficult conversations about the future are allowed.
There is one question I find increasingly difficult to answer as a parent.
When we say we want to leave a better planet for our children, what exactly do we mean?
We usually mean clean air, safe water, stable ecosystems and liveable cities. We should.
But perhaps we need to leave them something else too: the psychological capacity to live in the world we are leaving behind.
The capacity to hope. The resilience to recover. The relationships that help them cope. The knowledge to understand risk. And the confidence to participate in solutions.
Because the climate crisis is not only changing the physical world. It is also changing the stories people tell themselves about the future.
If we tell an entire generation that its future is doomed, we risk taking away something precious before it has even had the opportunity to build it.
But if we tell them the truth — that the risks are profound, that much more needs to be done, and that their choices still matter — we give them something more powerful than reassurance.
We give them agency.
As a parent, I cannot promise my children a world without uncertainty.
As a sustainability professor, I cannot pretend that the climate crisis is anything less than serious.
But I can believe in something between those two truths.
We can face the science without surrendering to despair. We can acknowledge fear without allowing fear to define the future. We can teach our children the reality of climate change without taking away their capacity to imagine something better.
Perhaps sustainability is not only about the planet we leave behind.
It is also about the state of mind in which the next generation inherits it.
The climate question we have not asked often enough may therefore be this: When our children inherit the planet, will they inherit our fear — or our courage to change it?
Shruti Sharma is Associate Professor & Head, Department of Management Studies, TERI School of Advanced Studies. Her work and teaching focus on sustainability, climate risk, ESG and sustainable development. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.