Climate anxiety declining among young people in Germany – survey
Clean Energy Wire
The percentage of young people aged 14 to 17 in Germany who experience “great fear” of climate change has decreased from 39 to 31 percent since 2021, according to a survey commissioned by health insurance company BARMER. The share of respondents who said they do not experience any anxiety regarding climate change has increased by eight percentage points to 22 percent.
“Climate change does not seem to instil as much fear in young people as a few years ago,” said BARMER’s board chairman Christoph Straub in a press release. “Nevertheless, they still fear its effects on their health.”
The representative survey – conducted in October 2025 among 2,000 respondents between 14 and 17 years of age in Germany – showed that more than half of young people (52%) think that climate change will have a negative effect on their personal health. In contrast, about one third of respondents (33%) said they do not believe climate change will affect their health, and 14 percent said they did not know.
Perceptions of the importance of climate change as a topic have also changed over time, the survey showed. Between 2021 and 2025, the share of respondents who say that climate change is a “very important” topic has decreased from 59 to 42 percent. The percentage of young people who say climate change is “not important” increased from 9 to 17 percent.
These findings stand in contrast to a few years ago, when the importance and urgency of climate change was more widely perceived among young people in Germany. The Fridays for Future youth movement, which mobilised up to 1.4 million people in Germany alone at its peak in 2019, played a crucial role in advancing the country's debate on climate action, and pushing parties across the political spectrum to commit to policy in line with limiting global warming to 1.5°C.
Overall, climate action ranked among the German public's top policy priorities for several years. More recently, however, issues such as a worsening economic outlook, geopolitical challenges, or the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic have taken precedence. Still, a large majority of citizens continue to call for greater climate ambition and strongly support the shift to a low-carbon economy.