This study was designed to determine how youth climate activists conceptualize their life trajectories of climate activism. Data was collected by way of semi-structured, life memory interviews using Internet-based methods. Seventeen youth climate activists (age 17-28) living in 14 different countries and in multiple cultures participated in the study.
All participants identified themselves as activists, and all recalled ways in which they were involved in actions with collective and political aims relating to climate change mitigation. The participants were recruited from seven electronic mailing lists associated with the international youth climate movement. The interviews, lasting from 45 minutes to 2 hours, were conducted individually via Internet-based instant messaging and Internet-based voice chat. Each interview started with the invitation for the participants to describe how they became actively engaged in addressing the problems of climate change. Follow-up questions were based on each participant's responses as well as themes identified in the literature, including the role of concern for nature versus the role of concern for social justice. A copy of the interview was emailed to each participant for edits and accuracy checking.
While most of the participants identified both a concern for nature and a concern for social justice as motivators for their activism, some identified only one or the other. And for some, while their activism was initially motivated by a concern for nature, over time this shifted to more of a concern for social justice. This shift tended to be based on either a specific transformative experience (such as witnessing first- hand the devastation of hurricanes and droughts) or a growing realization of the scope and long-term implications of climate change. These findings support previous research indicating that a combination of values tends to influence people to commit to climate change mitigation.
Data analysis included an examination of ways in which participants constructed the meanings and functions of their life experiences as well as how they represented the nature of the process of their committing to climate activism. Some participants indicated that youth activists' organizations played an important role in encouraging them to get and stay involved in climate change mitigation.
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