There was some good news in Powell last month. It wasn’t what happened, but rather what didn’t happen.

Across the world in September, kids walked out of class in droves to demand action on climate change. Here in Wyoming, there were reports of such events in Cody, Casper and Jackson Hole, but students in Powell appear to have stuck to their studies.

Putting aside the issue of students leaving class to pursue political interests, there’s nothing wrong with young people voicing their opinions on important issues and being engaged in solving societal problems. However, the discourse on climate change is increasingly taking on a dark, apocalyptic outlook that is neither scientific or rational. And it’s harmful to kids’ mental health.

Based on what many adults are wrongly telling them, more and more kids believe climate change poses an existential threat to our civilization that leaves them with no future unless we take infeasible, drastic actions to stop it. There are reports of kids seeking therapy for depression and anxiety stemming from concerns about climate change. Some young people are not planning to start families for fear that having children will further the planet’s demise. 

Greta Thunberg, a Swedish teenager, has lately been at the forefront of this nihilistic view of climate change. She gave a speech before the United Nations a couple weeks ago in which she chastised world leaders for not adopting radical policies that would decimate world economies. Nearly in tears, she claimed their failure to act in the way she believes best is killing people and stealing her dreams.

Some of the criticism lobbed at Thunberg since that speech has been extreme and cruel. But it is fair to say her rhetoric, which received widespread coverage and praise, is grossly inaccurate and potentially harmful.

According to the International Disaster Database, the number of climate related deaths has fallen to historic lows. Fewer people than ever die in natural disasters. To say people are dying is ignoring a lot of scientific data showing otherwise.

In a special report released last year, the International Panel on Climate Change calculated what would happen if climate change produced the absolute worse-case scenario and we did nothing to abate CO2 emissions. It concluded that global GDP in 2100 would be 8.2 percent lower than it would be without any climate change.

Putting those numbers into individual terms, average income would be only $90,000 per person instead of $98,000, based on the global GDP divided among an estimated 9 billion people in 80 years. Today, the average global GDP per person is $10,500.

Keep in mind, this is the worse-case scenario and assumes we do absolutely nothing about it. In that highly unrealistic scenario of complete inaction, the result would be a problem, but it’s hardly going to prevent kids today from realizing their future dreams.

We live in an era of the longest average human lifespans in history, lowest infant mortality rates, highest rates of access to clean water sources and food, and unprecedented declines in abject poverty. These trends are not reversing, and we aren’t facing the end of our civilization. Kids today have every reason to plan futures with prosperous careers in a world full of great opportunities in which to raise healthy families.

We need to stop filling kids’ heads with this gloom and doom view of climate change and other environmental problems. Not only will they grow up much more well adjusted, these future leaders will be more likely to enact sane and effective solutions to the world’s problems, including climate change.