To strike or not to strike? an investigation of the determinants of strike participation at the Fridays for Future climate strikes in Switzerland

The Fridays for Future strikes involve students striking for increased action on climate change, and this movement has spread to 185 countries and received widespread media attention. This exploratory study investigates motives for participating or not in the climate strikes and future participation among students in Switzerland. In a sample of N = 638 university students, we found that trust in climate scientists, low trust in governments, response efficacy, protest enjoyment and the perceived success of the strikes predicted participation. Contrary to statements in the public media but consistent with the literature, students who participated in the climate strikes reported consuming less meat, flying less and taking more steps to compensate the CO2 emissions from flights compared to students who did not participate. We discuss how the insights from this study help reveal the determinants of youth collective action on climate change.

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Climate Change Inaction and Optimism

Philosophies ◽

10.3390/philosophies6030061 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 61

Author(s):

Philip J. Wilson

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Economic Growth ◽

Collective Action ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Collective Action Problem ◽

The Public ◽

Policy Context ◽

Positive Action ◽

Ideological Fantasy

The problem of climate change inaction is sometimes said to be ‘wicked’, or essentially insoluble, and it has also been seen as a collective action problem, which is correct but inconsequential. In the absence of progress, much is made of various frailties of the public, hence the need for an optimistic tone in public discourse to overcome fatalism and encourage positive action. This argument is immaterial without meaningful action in the first place, and to favour what amounts to the suppression of truth over intellectual openness is in any case disreputable. ‘Optimism’ is also vexed in this context, often having been opposed to the sombre mood of environmentalists by advocates of economic growth. The greater mental impediments are ideological fantasy, which is blind to the contradictions in public discourse, and the misapprehension that if optimism is appropriate in one social or policy context it must be appropriate in others. Optimism, far from spurring climate change action, fosters inaction.

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Caring for the future can turn tragedy into comedy for long-term collective action under risk of collapse

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1916545117 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 117 (23) ◽

pp. 12915-12922 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Wolfram Barfuss ◽

Jonathan F. Donges ◽

Vítor V. Vasconcelos ◽

Jürgen Kurths ◽

Simon A. Levin

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Collective Action ◽

Experimental Testing ◽

The Public ◽

Regime Changes ◽

The Future ◽

The Commons ◽

Future Outcomes ◽

The Impact

We will need collective action to avoid catastrophic climate change, and this will require valuing the long term as well as the short term. Shortsightedness and uncertainty have hindered progress in resolving this collective action problem and have been recognized as important barriers to cooperation among humans. Here, we propose a coupled social–ecological dilemma to investigate the interdependence of three well-identified components of this cooperation problem: 1) timescales of collapse and recovery in relation to time preferences regarding future outcomes, 2) the magnitude of the impact of collapse, and 3) the number of actors in the collective. We find that, under a sufficiently severe and time-distant collapse, how much the actors care for the future can transform the game from a tragedy of the commons into one of coordination, and even into a comedy of the commons in which cooperation dominates. Conversely, we also find conditions under which even strong concern for the future still does not transform the problem from tragedy to comedy. For a large number of participating actors, we find that the critical collapse impact, at which these game regime changes happen, converges to a fixed value of collapse impact per actor that is independent of the enhancement factor of the public good, which is usually regarded as the driver of the dilemma. Our results not only call for experimental testing but also help explain why polarization in beliefs about human-caused climate change can threaten global cooperation agreements.

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Should we believe model predictions of future climate change?

Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences ◽

10.1098/rsta.2008.0169 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 366 (1885) ◽

pp. 4647-4664 ◽

Cited By ~ 164

Author(s):

Reto Knutti

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Climate Models ◽

Computer Models ◽

Future Climate ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Climate Modelling ◽

Policy Makers ◽

The Public ◽

Numerical Computer ◽

Model Predictions

Predictions of future climate are based on elaborate numerical computer models. As computational capacity increases and better observations become available, one would expect the model predictions to become more reliable. However, are they really improving, and how do we know? This paper discusses how current climate models are evaluated, why and where scientists have confidence in their models, how uncertainty in predictions can be quantified, and why models often tend to converge on what we observe but not on what we predict. Furthermore, it outlines some strategies on how the climate modelling community may overcome some of the current deficiencies in the attempt to provide useful information to the public and policy-makers.

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An Assessment of Public Perceptions of Climate Change Risk in Three Western U.S. Cities

Weather Climate and Society ◽

10.1175/wcas-d-18-0068.1 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 449-463 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Abigail Sullivan ◽

Dave D. White

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Collective Action ◽

Risk Perceptions ◽

Metropolitan Areas ◽

Personal Responsibility ◽

Mail Survey ◽

The United States ◽

Public Perceptions ◽

Climate Change Risk ◽

The Public

Abstract Risk perceptions influence individual and collective action related to climate change, and there is an important gap between public and expert perceptions of climate change risk, especially in the United States. Past studies have found that on average 40% of the American public believe climate change will affect them personally. We contribute a study of climate change risk perceptions in the metropolitan areas of three western U.S. cities (Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona), assessing overall patterns and drivers. A representative mail survey (N = 786) of the general public in these cities revealed that 60% of respondents identified climate change as personally risky, with the perception that it will impact either their family or their city in the next 30 years. Our results indicate that the gap in risk perceptions between the public and experts may be decreasing, although we discuss several limitations and reasons why this result requires further investigation. Using regression models, we analyze factors that are hypothesized to drive risk perceptions and discover that pro-environmental worldview and perceived personal responsibility are the most influential predictors. We discuss the implications of our results for fostering collective action to address climate change in dry, western U.S. metropolitan areas.

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Words That Start With E: Why Librarians Should Fight Climate Change and Climate Change Denial

Pathfinder: A Canadian Journal for Information Science Students and Early Career Professionals ◽

10.29173/pathfinder8 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 10-16

Author(s):

Jennifer McDevitt

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Collective Action ◽

Social Responsibility ◽

Public Good ◽

Environmentally Friendly ◽

Intellectual Freedom ◽

Access To Information ◽

Sustainable Practices ◽

The Public ◽

Climate Change Denial

Ecology, economy, equity. Exemplars, educators, enablers. Librarianship centres around the values ofcommunity-building, access to information, and advocating for the public good, and so librarians arepoised to be leaders when it comes to environmentally-friendly and sustainable practices and policies.Our commitment to intellectual freedom demands that we ensure facts about climate change reach thepublic, while social responsibility asks that we consider the harm that can be done by the spread ofdisinformation like climate change denial—the kind of harm that has led to the devastating, irreversiblecircumstances we’re in today. To ensure there will continue to be a community for libraries to serve,librarians must allow sustainability to underpin all their choices, especially with regard to educating thepublic, devaluing disinformation, and advocating for concrete collective action.

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How Are Our Future Agriculture and Natural Resources Projected under Varying Climate?

EDIS ◽

10.32473/edis-ae545-2020 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2020 (6) ◽

Author(s):

Young Gu Her ◽

Ashley Smyth ◽

Zachary Brym ◽

Elias Bassil

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Natural Resources ◽

Public Awareness ◽

Climate Change Impacts ◽

Future Climate ◽

Climate Projections ◽

Biological Engineering ◽

The Public ◽

Management Plans

This 8-page article explains how agriculture and natural resources may respond to projected future climate and how climate projections can be useful in developing management plans for the improved sustainability of Florida’s agriculture and natural resources. It also aims to help increase the public awareness of climate change impacts on Florida and improve understanding of the connections among climate, agriculture, and natural resources. Written by Young Gu Her, Ashley Smyth, Zachary Brym, and Elias Bassil, and published by the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, September 2020.

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Impacts of climate change and environmental factors on reproduction and development in wildlife

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2009.0175 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 364 (1534) ◽

pp. 3313-3319 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Stuart R. Milligan ◽

William V. Holt ◽

Rhiannon Lloyd

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Environmental Factors ◽

Human Population ◽

Environmental Changes ◽

The Public ◽

Public Media ◽

Sense Of Security ◽

False Sense ◽

The Face ◽

Impacts Of Climate Change

The robustness of the growth of the human population in the face of environmental impacts is in contrast to the sensitivity of wildlife. There is a danger that the success of reproduction of humans provides a false sense of security for the public, media and politicians with respect to wildlife survival, the maintenance of viable ecosystems and the capacity for recovery of damaged ecosystems and endangered species. In reality, the success of humans to populate the planet has been dependent on the combination of the ability to reproduce successfully and to minimize loss of offspring through controlling and manipulating their own micro-environment. In contrast, reproduction in wildlife is threatened by environmental changes operating at many different physiological levels.

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