TakingITGlobal

This trend is reflected in literature (Narksompong and Limjirakan, 2015; Bermudez, 2012; Field, 2017) which discusses how adults demonstrate an unwillingness to share power and often express a belief that youth are generally incapable. It is clear from team members' pre-project experience that adult society still excludes youth from meaningful participation in climate change decision-making in many different regions. Compounding the problem of ageism was discouragement and disengagement from fellow youth. All team members report that their peers rarely engaged with climate change. Honestly, some of my friends are like, 'Why are you doing this? We are all going to die anyways.' … and sometimes, it will get to me, 'Ok, I'm going to die anyways, like why care about it?' ( A C C R A , I N T E R V I E W ) . In my school most people say 'climate change is a boring topic because it is for hippies, or that climate change problems, we need to leave them for the government, or the organizations in charge of that, and we shouldn't have anything to do with that. ( B O G O T Á 2 , I N T E R V I E W ) One participant expressed empathy for her peers, understanding boredom as a problem that develops when a topic like climate change is constantly repeated. Climate change was always, this is going to sound strange, but it was boring for me. Because we talk a lot about it and no one wants to hear about it… we have a weird saying that has been spread around our school that "every time you participate in these kinds of projects that are related to environment and climate change, you lose 5 of your friends"... because they are really annoyed by these projects, because there are so many of those and we are kinda bombarded by all of them. ( P T U J , I N T E R V I E W ) . From different countries and cities all over the world, team members received negative feedback from their peers. Considering that peer support is especially important for youth in identity formation (De Vreede et al. 2014), this constitutes a powerful and consistent social barrier to climate change engagement. Perhaps most importantly, team members' emerging concern for the climate was discouraged rather than reinforced. Current research suggests many reasons for apathy and disengagement with climate change, which may shed light on the students' experiences. At a personal level, climate change is difficult to see as urgent and certain; rather, it is often conceptualized as abstract and distant (Hibberd & Nguyen, 2013; Scannell & Gifford, 2013; Markowitz & Shariff, 2012). Further, individuals may want to avoid the difficult and overwhelming emotions that come with climate change, and do so by psychological distancing 30 | F I N D I N G S

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