Paper short abstract:

In Longyearbyen at 78 degrees north, climate change is happening fast. Yet the essentially unsustainable settlement keeps developing, invests in tourism and struggles with growing inequality. How do different groups relate to climate change and how do they make sense of the changing world?

Paper long abstract:

At the margins of Europe, the northernmost human settlement of Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen witnesses rapid changes and embodies several fundamental dilemmas of our era. Climate change is fastest there in Europe, with annual temperature increase by 5 °C since 1970s and projections (if CO2 emissions stay high) foreseeing 10 °C more on average by 2100. The impact is already significant: less sea ice, higher temperatures, permafrost thaw, more precipitation including heavy rain, shorter winter season, avalanche and landslide danger. At the same time, the ecological footprint per capita is probably highest in whole Europe since the place is uninhabitable, everything is flown up, Norway runs its only coal power plant there, plus the only viable economic future seems to be tourism. The priviledged in Longyearbyen are Norwegians employed by the state, the underpriviledged are those dependent on private markets both in terms of jobs and housing. Perception of climate change among Longyearbyen's residents varies from denial and mocking to deep concern and even fear. Some cannot relate to the issue at all since they are too busy worrying about satisfying their basic needs. The paper narrates how different groups make sense of the changing world, depending on their worldviews, life stories and position in the community. A unique quintessence of the rich global North, a town only for the fit and wealthy," still faces climate change as a problem to be solved by technological means. Yet there are signs of changing attitudes on the individual level.

Paper short abstract:

Through the case of generational conflict in a Norwegian oil-city about the dual role of oil as a carrier of economic privilege and destroyer of sustainable futures, this paper explores the significance of CO2 in the formation of generational identity among youth in a time of climate crisis.

Paper long abstract:

In Norway oil has played a significant role in the narrative of Norwegian progress and in the formation of generational identity of both Generation X and Millennials. Currently youth in Norway and the rest of Europe are making demands on the older generations to ensure major transitions that will mitigate the destructive consequences of carbon emissions from the continued use of oil and other fossil fuels.

This paper explores the significance of CO2 as a novel alternative to oil in the formation of generational identity among youth in present-day Norway. The paper does so by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among young climate activists and their local community in the Norwegian oil-capital Stavanger. The economic and environmental privilege of Stavanger makes for an especially interesting case as the city and its inhabitants both prospers from and depends on the oil and its related industries, while being acutely aware of the destructive consequences of such industry for the global climate.

What generational negotiations over meaning and authority are at play, when youth and adults imagine post-petroleum worlds and the transitions necessary to realize them? What visions of the future crystalizes when carbon rather than oil is at the center of attention?

By unpacking these questions, the paper shows how age and generation are made meaningful and performed in significant ways by both youth and adults as they imagine and negotiate possible, and perhaps conflicting, sustainable futures.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we will demonstrate how local climate cultures in Europe influence the possibilities for claim-making and framing of climate change as climate crisis by the global Fridays for Future movement (FfF).

Paper long abstract:

Adding to the debate on societal barriers to climate change adaption as well as to environmental activism' framing, we analyze local formations of climate change related strategies and framings by the FfF movements in Germany and Estonia. We assume that cultural coding and logics are decisive for how global climate change is experienced and interpreted locally and therefore argue that it is the local climate culture, which enables or disables possibilities for climate change activism in both countries. The contribution will thus focus on the questions how FfF's global blueprint of a climate strike that builds on the notion of crisis is transferred into different societal contexts. Therefore, we will ask three related of overlapping questions a) how Fridays for future activist perceive and interpret climate change. b) What are their visions and values in terms of climate change related action. c) what strategies to the to overcome when urging decision-makers and individuals to translate climate-related knowledge into action? Based on multisided ethnographies and an analysis of the public media discourse on and by the FfF movement (local news and social media), similarities and differences in discursive knowledge formation and protest actions in these two countries are elaborated on the example of FfF groups in Berlin and Frankfurt (Germany), Tallinn and Tartu (Estonia). Going beyond a mere description of different climate cultures, the contribution of this chapter is to show how local interpretations of climate change shape global climate action.

Paper short abstract:

European youth facing climate crisis may be "privileged" as physically secure, but exist where existential insecurity meets widening empathy zones - becoming "globally attached" to the planet. Thunberg pierced individualism's paralysis to change, and youth went from self-harm to collective agency.

Paper long abstract:

This discussion is based on transferred concepts from my study of former Norwegian Foreign Service children. Moving globally, diplomat children are privileged in socio-economic terms, but not as existential security. Their childhood is embedded in morally judging cultural narratives of assumed privilege, putting further pressure on their mental health: In neoliberal terms, you have only yourself to blame for any imperfections. Furthermore, they have bodily reactions when events occur in regions of the world where they lived, showing different empathy zones of closeness and distance compared to those who are nation-state orientated. This intersectionality of "privileged" existential insecurity and embodied global attachment has transfer value to understanding European youth facing climate crisis. They belong to the assumed privileged, yet daily vivid information of the planet "dying" adds to rising existential pathologies expressed as mental and psycho-somatic illness. Fires in the Amazon and Australia is no longer cold cognitive information - it causes hot bodily reactions of crisis, widening their empathy zones to people, nature and animals far away. A growing sense of the planet as small and sensitive leads to an identity as "globally attached". However, this existential state is paralysing to a young generation served a mainstream culture of individualism. Thunberg provided the cultural tools that enabled them to act collectively and express anger towards systemic power structures. Not only does this have the potential to create change, it is also healing for a generation that has otherwise not known alternatives to pointing inwards for self-realisation and self-harm.

Paper short abstract:

Eco-Anxiety is a term increasingly used by journalists and activist communities in Europe, however within the psychotherapy space 'eco-anxiety' often reveals itself not to be an anxiety about the environment but about other human relationships. What are we not talking about?

Paper long abstract:

Eco-Anxiety is a term increasingly used by journalists and activist communities in Europe, however as a psychotherapist and ethnographer my research shows that people who self diagnose as experiencing eco-anxiety typically aren't experiencing anxiety about the environment, but that external 'crises' become an opportunity to transfer uncomfortable feelings about human relationships onto the natural world. I will present reflections on the framing of environmental concerns drawing on theoretical assumptions and clinical observations within the practice of Nature Allied Psychotherapy.

Whilst concern about the environment is entirely valid, 'eco-anxiety' often presents a rescuing dynamic in which the environment become a focus away from painful feelings within human relationships with significant others that we don't feel safe to confront.

The concept of eco-anxiety as it manifests in Europe, amongst people not directly impacted by the immediacy of climate change has grown out of response to a breakdown of intimacy within our emotional relationships, increased social fragmentation and increasing isolation within our individualised culture. Young people in particular are facing unprecidented changes in how we (don't) relate to each other as human beings with fewer intimate emotional relationships, leading to the highest rates of mental ill health. Yet this socio-emotional crisis is being under estimated in understanding loss and how it is being processed. What are we not talking about and how is this relevant t improving our relationship with the natural world?

Paper short abstract:

How has Europe responded to the plight of Pacific island states and what influences these responses? The paternalistic attitudes of European leaders are reflective of both a (post)colonial mindset as well as the projection of fears of their own loss of agency in the face of climate change.

Paper long abstract:

There is scientific consensus that climate change poses severe social and economic risks and that these risks - and the ability to adapt/mitigate to them - are not evenly distributed geographically. Low-lying states such as Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the Pacific are particularly vulnerable to climate catastrophe. There remains, however, a dichotomy between how risks are framed by the Global North and how SIDS would see them framed. Using insights from French pragmatic sociology, we show how the European positioning of itself as expert (or saviour) clashes with the moral-political right of SIDS to articulate their own plight.

In this article we analyse a number of specific European responses to climate change risks in the Pacific to see how risk is framed and the narratives that are prevalent. These include institutional programmes, such as the Global Climate Change Alliance+, as well as public and policy statements issued by European and Pacific leaders. In particular, we look at countries with strong historical, cultural and economic relations with the Pacific region or which have been particularly active in this topic.

We show that a key issue in the relationship between Europe and the SIDS is that of agency, with European attitudes characterised by paternalism while the SIDS seek to reject the label of victim imposed on them. This can be understood within the context of (post)colonial relationships but should also be seen as reflective of Europe's own fears regarding the loss of agency climate catastrophe implies.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing from the Greek ethnographic context, a less privileged part of Europe, following mobilisations to save the future of people and land in the face of environmental catastrophes, the aim is to to problematize privilege, future and urgency in the context of rising awareness of climate change

Paper long abstract:

Considering Europe as the privileged global north, not having experienced climate and environmental disasters yet being home to public discourse about the science and fears regarding climate change doesn't imply that all Europeans and European countries are homogeneously privileged in other respects. This paper draws from newly emergent reactions to climate change and environmental awareness in Greece, a peripheral European country with a recent past of economical turmoil. By following "Parents for future Greece", "Fridays for Future", "Extinction Rebellion Hellas", and the initiative "Save Agrafa" (save the Agrafa mountain range from windturbines), the aim is to ethnographically elucidate the people behind these movements, in some cases clearly originating from a local elite while in other forming a more diverse pool, as well as the key meanings ascribed to these initiatives especially as they became part of the public discourse. Nature, climate, environment, mountains, wellbeing, are all at stake. Drawing from this "less privileged" part of Europe, from mobilisations with nevertheless close affiliations towards sister mobilisations in other parts of Europe characterised by global identities and scopes, as well from clearly localised mobilisations, this paper wishes to problematize and add context to the notion of privilege when it comes to environmental awareness and will to act; the notion of future, in terms of what is at stake, who is entitled responsibility for the future and in what ways human and non-human futures become one; and the notion of urgency as a key driving force of mobilisation often uniting diverse stakeholders.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation will consider some of the evolving affects and socialities arising around climate emergency in the context of affluent regions still relatively untouched by actual changes, based on fieldwork within the XR movement across Europe and amongst the climate-distressed.

Paper long abstract:

New mass movements concentrating on climate emergency have quickly galvanised people across the world. Focussing on countries where its message of urgency cannot refer to already emerging climatic changes, I will explore the juxtapositions of complacency, mobilisation and distress, and the role of privilege in the evolving affects and socialities. I will consider comparatively what evolves in the place of privileged unknowingness when the reality that some can still afford to unsee becomes increasingly visible, and how this happens. Based on the ongoing fieldwork amongst the members of the Extinction Rebellion movement in the UK and in Estonia, I will consider where privilege might reside in such circumstances and what forms of social relations might it trigger. As this research is only just starting, the final version of this presentation might be taking a rather different direction. For now, I am intrigued by both the impact of global privilege on such movements, as well as the way privilege shapes climate protest movements locally.