2 .1. 2 Social L andscapes o f Clima te Change
Team members' climate change experiences
before this project were heavily influenced by
family, peers, and teachers. All team members
first experienced climate change as a concept
before relating it to realities in their personal lives.
Literature on the topic indicates that climate
change experiences are often communicated
to youth through peer, collective, and virtual
experiences (Yonezawa, Jones & Joselowsky,
2009; Pina, Torres & Royo, 2017), while direct
experiences of a changing climate are not
necessary for high levels of engagement (Riemer,
Lynes, & Hickman, 2014). Here, we focus on
the social landscapes these youth inhabited to
understand the origin of their climate change
knowledge, as well as their reasons for engaging
in this project.
On average, team members were introduced to
climate change between the ages of 7 and 11, but
they did not begin to engage with the relevance,
seriousness, and complexity of climate change
until they were older, often between the ages of
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Y O U T H A N D C L I M A T E C H A N G E
2 0 1 8 E D I T I O N
