Harris Sparked Debate Over Her Remarks on “Climate Anxiety” | Opinion

The recent Democratic National Convention (DNC) brought reproductive freedom to the forefront, but some of Vice President Kamala Harris’ most impressive remarks on the issue came shortly beforehand.
In the run-up to the convention, an unearthed video of Harris from a college tour stop in 2023 began making the rounds on X/Twitter. In the clip, Harris addresses the burgeoning issue of “climate anxiety,” a broad descriptor for negative emotions around how climate change impacts people and the planet.
“You know, I’ve heard young leaders talk with me about a term they’ve coined called ‘climate anxiety,’ right,” she said. “Which is fear of the future and the unknown, of whether it makes sense for you even to think about having children, whether it makes sense for you to think about aspiring to buy a home because what will this climate be?”
Harris was spot on. Both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association have highlighted the connections between climate change and mental health, indicating that more people are feeling dread and despair as the climate crisis worsens. Though climate anxiety is not inherently a medical condition, it represents a range of sentiments that have the potential to become preoccupying and stifling, leaving folks with serious questions about how to architect their lives and approach family planning.
That’s not how certain well-known figures chose to see Harris’ veritable assertion. Soon after the video went viral, Donald Trump Jr. seized the moment, tweeting, “Resurfaced video shows Kamala Harris suggesting that young people should not have children due to climate change.” Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance followed minutes later with, “It’s almost like these people don’t want young people starting families or something. Really weird stuff.”
Without question, this is a complete mischaracterization of Harris’ view. Harris never discouraged family-building in the face of the climate crisis; instead, she merely gave voice to a deep-seated concern that some folks hold about the precarious outlook for the future.
What’s more, though, is that these figures’ decision to openly distort and deride her remarks—and by extension, trivialize the concept of climate anxiety entirely—flies in the face of both lived experiences and a bevy of research.
In a large-scale survey involving youth across 10 countries, more than half of the American respondents felt that their government was “dismissing people’s distress” as well as “betraying me and/or future generations” with regard to climate change. Moreover, a greater proportion of Americans believed that their government was not “taking my concerns seriously enough,” compared to the global aggregate of respondents.
This summer has only added fuel to the proverbial fire. A string of shattered heat records—leading to more than 1,300 deaths during the Hajj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, likely hundreds of deaths in Arizona’s Maricopa County, and at least 40,000 cases of heatstroke in India—has brought the fragility of life on Earth into sharp relief. For many young people just beginning to stake out their lives in this destabilized environment, it’s beyond refreshing that a leader at Harris’ level would acknowledge the psychological toll that climate change imposes.
Instead of jeering at those who endorse climate anxiety or some form of distress stemming from familiarity with the gravity of climate change, folks like Vance should consider being part of the solution. Rather than courting oil money or touting policies that would undermine our progress on renewable energy, Vance could recognize that being pro-family also requires being pro-climate action in service of a greener, cleaner world.
This election cycle will surely continue to center the issues of reproductive freedom and family-building in contemporary America. So long as the climate crisis endures, we cannot afford to decouple these topics from the wider discourse about the planet we’re leaving behind for future generations.
Henna Hundal is an MD candidate and researcher at the Stanford University School of Medicine. You can follow her on X/Twitter @hennahundal.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.