Millions of youth from all parts of the globe, are collectively voicing their concerns about climate change and the risks it poses to their future.
Their messages – aimed at political, industrial, and other influential adult leaders with decision-making power – are simple, strong, and consistent: listen to climate researchers and take effective immediate action so they, and future generations, can look forward to their future with hope, not dread. As Greta Thunberg said to participants at Davos 2019, “I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”
“I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”
Our House is on Fire: Greta Thunberg, 16, urges leaders to act on climate. The Guardian. Jan 25, 2019.
For decades, young people have been considered ‘agents of change’ in environmental education, disaster risk reduction, and related fields. In addition to learning themselves, they were tasked to act as ‘influencers’ for social change by persuading family and peers to change their behaviours around conservation, health and safety, or disaster preparedness (4–7). Information and knowledge flowed from trusted adults, like teachers and other knowledge specialists, through the conduit of youth, whose actions and words, it was hoped, would educate and inspire action in parents and other family members, ultimately rippling outward to influence decisions and policies of elected officials and corporate leaders (7).
The roles of young people, from passive study participants to to active program initiators, are considered explicitly in fields like child-centred disaster risk reduction and resilience, and disaster risk reduction education (5,6), roles that will be increasingly important as the impacts of climate change increase.
However, the hard nut of climate change action has been difficult to crack in this manner. Decades of risk perception and communication research outline the challenges of inspiring climate risk-reducing actions (8). Of particular relevance to youth, are challenges relating to the uneven intergenerational distribution of climate change impacts – the temporal aspect of ‘psychological distancing’ (9). Current leaders are facing decisions in the present about difficult, disruptive, systemic changes (social, economic, political, technological) to prevent future negative impacts for their children and grandchildren. These decisions are also considered alongside immediate and pressing concerns. Current decision-makers are concerned about experiencing potential discomfort relating to changes they initiate without the expectation of experiencing the future benefits in their lifetime. In contrast, young people and generations to follow, will experience the drastic effects and consequences of adult inaction, but are without authority to make system-wide change today to prevent it. But as youth are reminding us, it is ‘Happening to Us‘ today.
“As long as the science is ignored, and the facts aren’t taken into account, and the situation is not treated as a crisis, then world and business leaders can of course continue to ignore the situation.”
Greta Thunberg: Davos leaders ignored climate activists’ demands: Activist says calls to break from fossil fuels have been ignored at World Economic Forum. By Graeme Wearden in Davos Fri 24 Jan 2020 17.38 GMT. Last modified on Sat 25 Jan 2020 00.55 GMT
Many youth express foreboding, anxiety, and despair about the future with respect to climate change (10) while at the same time, influential adult leaders choose to maintain the current course of inaction with considerable societal approval from their cohort, free of the growing urgency felt by youth and young adults. One might assume leaders, many of whom are parents, would be concerned about climate change out of worry for their children (11). Research is limited, but suggests otherwise: For example, a 2007 study found no difference in climate change concern between parents or non-parents (12) although the study authors wonder perhaps whether providing vivid imagery connecting cause and effect would change the result (12).
There is recent evidence supporting the agents of change model for shifting societal attitudes around climate change (13–15). Intergenerational learning (child-to-parent) may be useful for increasing climate change concern, especially among hard-to-persuade adults and to increase concern and individual-level climate mitigation behaviours among children (14,16). However, evidence suggests that, to date, decades of educating children about climate change has had limited effect in terms of influencing the larger-scale actions needed to be taken by adults to affect wide-spread societal change. This is not due to youths’ lack of interest or ability to communicate environmental messages, but due to the educational focus based on the premise that smaller-scale individual actions will suffice. In other words, the agents of change model comes up against the multi-level contextual factors and barriers (household, community, society) (7) that require adult actions and decisions to make effective, widespread, societal shifts. Consequently, societal change is accomplished slowly and incrementally, without generating the momentum for swift, widespread, systemic climate action that is needed (7,14).
It is critically important for young people to learn about sustainability and climate change, but is it fair or realistic to place the burden of changing societies’ attitudes and actions around climate change and sustainable living on children and youth without considering the multi-level barriers they face in taking climate change action and their lack of decision-making power for overcoming them (7)?
Young people learn about climate change and its impacts through traditional or social media, friends, and family (17–19) ; programs delivered in museums, national parks, and zoos; and formally through educational environments like schools and universities (20,21). Children are influenced most strongly by their parents’ environmental values, but also by those of their peers (17). A recent review of climate change education (16) found that, in most schools, curriculum continues to focus on energy conservation (not transformation) and on the sum of individual-level actions (not collective action), and situates climate change education primarily in the science curriculum rather than distributing it widely over educational subdisciplines (22). Yet, many studies show that having scientific knowledge about climate change is not correlated with changes in attitude or behaviour (7,19,21). School-based curriculum tends not to focus on innovative systemic changes to renewable energy sources or methods for collective action that are needed to make widespread societal shifts (16).
“My parents have always raised me to be very aware of what’s going on. And not only to be aware, but also to understand that I need to care about what’s happening. It was just a matter of time before I started to really take that on myself.”
Naia Lee, Grade 12 student. They Call Themselves Sustainabiliteens and They Are Formidable: Meet three young activists taking their elders to school on the climate crisis. By Olamide Olaniyan, 7 Feb 2020. TheTyee.ca
There are examples of youth-focused or youth-inclusive initiatives outside the traditional science-based curricula such as the Art for Change program (23); youth-centred participatory videos for climate change adaptation (24); a participatory digital storytelling program in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Changing Climate, Changing Health, Changing Stories (25); a multi-generational photo, film, and narratives initiative by Nunavimmiut documenting socio-environmental change in Nunavik (26); the Inuit youth-led film ‘Happening to Us‘, recently shown at UN COP 25; the Global Landscapes Forum ‘Youth in Landscapes Initiative’ (27) or Climate Outreach’s research and work with youth. A future blog post will feature some of these participatory, intergenerational learning and communication initiatives.
How do youth cope? Ojala and Bengtsson (17) found that communication styles among parents and young people that are solution-oriented and supportive as opposed to dismissive and ‘doom-and-gloom’ oriented are positively associated with pro-environmental behaviour and problem-focused coping (planning actions and finding solutions) and meaning-focused coping (seeing positive trends and trusting others to act) are positively related with taking action. Taking individual action is often suggested by educators to focus attention to the local, personal, and relevant facets of the hazard to reduce anxiety and feelings of helplessness, but many young people know that the sum of individual actions alone is not enough to address the problem of climate change (7,16). Young adults continue to feel alienated from mainstream politics, distrustful of politicians, and skeptical of political parties (10) so their opportunity to influence decision-makers through voting (if available) in this manner is not exercised as much as older adults.
“The positive thing from our perspective as psychologists, is that we soon realized that the cure to climate anxiety is the same as the cure for the climate change – action. It is about getting out and doing something, that helps.”
DR. PATRICK KENNEDY-WILLIAMS, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST, OXFORD. ‘Overwhelming and terrifying’: the rise of climate anxiety: Experts concerned young people’s mental health particularly hit by reality of the climate crisis. Matthew Taylor and Jessica Murray. Mon 10 Feb 2020 06.16 GMT Last modified on Mon 10 Feb 2020 10.18 GMT.
Having ‘constructive hope’ makes youth more likely to take positive actions (10). In spite of environmental education short-comings, dismissal of the climate threat by parents, and lack of leadership from many adults, young people have discovered that working together on shared goals can be effective, and, fluent in social media, they are harnessing it to build connections and plan actions across the globe (28). The social movements initiated by young people represent their collective voice raised in an effort to persuade parents and other adult leaders to take action as though they care about youth and their future.
Youth and young adults are involving themselves in the climate risk conversation because they know it is their future at risk. Youth in Canada and the USA have launched lawsuits against proposed non-renewable resource developments. They are continuing their roles as ‘agents of change’, but acting collectively (28) , with actions initiated by them, on their own terms, on a global stage, recognizing the strong social justice element to climate change action. Many have moved from passive receptors of information to active leaders, collectively initiating, directing, and participating in the global conversation about climate change and what to do about it. This is consistent with Cutter-Mackenzie & Rousell’s (15) call for climate change education to activate ‘children’s agency in their schools, universities, and the public domain’ and others (7,16) who suggest the educational focus needs to move towards learning about social and political engagement and innovation in the wider social network. Clearly, young people have recognized this need and have moved forward on their own to make their voices heard: But, it’s up to adults to make change happen.
“The point of us being inspiring, is for you to act. It’s not about just us doing our thing and doing it well.” Rebecca Hamilton, 17, Vancouver
They Call Themselves Sustainabiliteens and They Are Formidable: Meet three young activists taking their elders to school on the climate crisis. By: Olamide Olaniyan 7 Feb 2020. TheTyee.ca
Final Note: Three decades of climate change awareness and education. I chatted recently with a friend born in the mid-1980s who learned from the first grade about climate change and the need to live in ways to reduce its effects. As a youth, she could not understand why her family and other adults around her were not ‘walking the talk’ about climate change. She was confused why there seemed to be no sense of urgency to act on this significant problem that teachers and researchers, credible, trusted, and respected adults, were warning her about. She now works as a sustainability program manager for a municipality and is actively making community-wide change happen. She’s made personal and professional commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Her generation was at the vanguard of climate change education, who, at last are reaching positions of influence where they can make much-needed, impactful, systemic changes in support of today’s youth.
Climate Outreach – Recommendations for Engaging Youth in Climate Change Campaigns (Do’s and Don’ts)
More than a checkbox: engaging youth in disaster risk reduction and resilience in Canada. Cox, R.S., Hill, T.T., Plush, T. et al. Nat Hazards 98, 213–227 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-018-3509-3
Tuktoyaktuk teens will show their climate change doc at UN conference. Mackenzie Scott · CBC News · Posted: Oct 09, 2019 4:00 AM CT Last Updated: October 9, 2019.
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