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Enlisting the Power of Youth for Climate Change
Albert Bandura
Stanford University
Lynne Cherry
Young Voices for the Planet, Smithsburg, Maryland
Despite efforts by the adult generation to stem the rise of global warming, the planet is getting
hotter every year. The present article analyzes, within the framework of social– cognitive
theory, highly resourceful youth conducting environmental programs that curtail heat-
trapping gases and protect various ecological supports of life. The children’s intuitive
principles of change closely matched the formal principles of social– cognitive theory. Social
media equip youth with unlimited reach and promote large-scale environmental impact. Their
ingenious practices provide the foundation for a powerful youth environmental movement.
Public Significance Statement
Climate scientists report mounting alarm over massive destruction of the ecological supports of life.
Twenty years of annual UN summitry produced no binding commitment by world leaders to reduce
heat-trapping gases. The present article focuses on development of an international youth movement
designed to preserve a habitable planet. It documents the effectiveness of youth as agents of
environmental change.
Keywords: climate change, U.N. Summitry, social– cognitive theory, youth movement, social
diffusion
The most daunting challenge facing humanity in this mil-
lennium is the preservation of a habitable planet. Climate
scientists have been sounding increasingly urgent alarms about
the catastrophic consequences of climate change. Twenty an-
nual U.N. Summits provided no international commitment to
reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases. During this time,
emissions have soared yearly at an increasing rate, setting new
hot-weather records (Lindsey & Dahlman, 2018). The violent
storms and heat waves we are seeing will increase in intensity
as the planet continues to get hotter.
In the concluding Paris Summit, each country pledged to
cut carbon emissions by an amount of their own choosing.
However, the pledges were nonbinding and unenforceable.
Vague goals without consequences rouse no motivation for
social change (Bandura, 1991). Even if the promises were
met, they were insufficient to curb the further rise of global
warming (Plumer & Popovich, 2007). In the Poland
follow-up to the Paris commitments, nations were falling
short of their already insufficient voluntary pledges. Under
political pressure, some nations, dependent on coal-based
economies, were abandoning their pledges to curtail heat-
trapping emissions altogether (Sengupta, 2018).
The ecological support systems are being massively de-
stroyed as well, including widespread deforestation, ex-
panding desertification, topsoil erosion, sinking water ta-
bles, increasing loss of fertile farm land, earth’s temperature
rising, ice sheets and glacial melting, flooding of low-lying
coastal regions, severe weather events, depletion of re-
sources, collapse of fish stocks, and massive loss of biodi-
versity (Bandura, 2016). With massive extinction of the
ecological supports of life, there are less than 2 decades left
to avert catastrophic planet changes (Plumer, 2019).
The most alarming aspect of global warming is the thaw-
ing of the Arctic permafrost, releasing vast amounts of
methane and carbon dioxide that have been trapped under
the permafrost over many millennia. Once this process is
unleashed, it feeds on itself uncontrollably, producing ever-
higher atmospheric temperatures. As the earth continues to
get hotter, life will become more miserable for generations
to come. The growing environmental crisis is an urgent call
to action to protect and preserve what we have, lessen the
more severe consequences of a progressively hotter planet,
and try to adapt to the adverse climate changes that are
already baked into the global system.
This article was published Online First August 22, 2019.
Albert Bandura, Department of Psychology, Stanford University; XLynne
Cherry, Young Voices for the Planet, Smithsburg, Maryland.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Albert
Bandura, Department of Psychology, Stanford University, 820 San Fran-
cisco Court, Stanford, CA 94305. E-mail: bandura@stanford.edu
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
American Psychologist
© 2019 American Psychological Association 2020, Vol. 75, No. 7, 945–951
ISSN: 0003-066X http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000512
945
