TakingITGlobal

3.1 T he Conundr ums o f You th Engagemen t The youth in this study face both ideological and social barriers to effective climate change engagement. Ideologically, we witnessed a persistent tendency to revert to small-scale individual solutions to address climate change. We also saw a trend for youth to adopt an— all or nothing, stop climate change, save the planet!—outlook, which we believe will become emotionally exhausting, as preparation for the improbable. The largest social barriers to engagement were a consistent lack of peer support, as well as the ageist structures that prevent youth engagement at the political and community levels. Taken together, these barriers may create a very difficult social experience of climate change for many youth, that may culminate in disengagement, further reinforced by the dispassionate and technical approach to climate science offered in the classroom. The 14 youth who traveled to Edmonton outlined five systemic areas to address climate change in their White Paper, but we still found their default response was to revert to small-scale, individual, lifestyle solutions, preferably carried out by many people. The youth we interviewed wanted to spread a message of empowerment. Yet, this message was often conflated with a conception of the individual as a consumer, primarily capable of small-scale solutions like 'buying green', recycling, and minimizing waste. Though team members began to delineate social structures like capitalism that exacerbate climate change and reinforce inequality, they expressed limited perception of the need for organized collective action to realize substantial changes to those social structures. Why did youth from 12 different countries and cities around the world, by default, engage with climate change from an individual, consumer- based position when addressing a global environmental problem? Their responses reflect how Kent (2009) defines neoliberalism: both an ideology and an economic system that "generates rationalist models of individual responsibility towards environmental problems which are encouraged through consumerism" (146). Dimick (2015) similarly defines neoliberalism as an ideology that privatizes responsibility for the environment. Compounding this, youth and many ordinary adult citizens believe they don't have the platform, affluence, or confidence to be heard by local governments, schools, or corporations, and thus, one of the primary locations where hope is envisioned is in what can be achieved by individuals in their daily lives. The realization of this aspiration, however, would be enhanced if informed by a more critical understanding of individual responsibility and agency, which envisions all people as political actors, who must work together. As noted by Cuomo (2011, 708 -9), "if more corporate and governmental actors are pressured (or inspired) to take responsibility for the causes of climate change, their decisions and innovations can in turn create more options for carbon- free lifestyles, which will also help reduce the insufficiency and disempowerment problems for average consumers." 66 | D I S C U S S I O N

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