Climate anxiety : Conceptual considerations, and connections with climate hope and action

Climate anxiety is a phenomenon which raises growing attention. Based on a national survey of climate-related feelings and behaviors (N = 2070) in Finland, we analyzed and discussed the concept of climate anxiety and its relationship with hope and action. We found that all our measures for climate anxiety (including worry and some stronger manifestations of anxiety) and hope (including efficacy beliefs) correlated positively with each other and climate action. Furthermore, climate anxiety and hope explained unique parts of variance in self-reported climate action. We propose that, in line with the Extended Parallel Process model (EPPM) that was used as a framework, the interplay of emotions needs to be considered when studying and explaining their effect on climate action. In conclusion, the results provide support for seeing climate anxiety and hope as intertwined and adaptive feelings, which could be needed to motivate humankind in finding solutions to climate change.Peer reviewe

Snow cover trends in Finland over 1961-2014 based on gridded snow depth observations

Snow conditions in high-latitude regions are changing in response to climate warming, and these changes are likely to accelerate as the warming proceeds. Here, we analyse daily gridded snow depth, temperature and precipitation data from Finland over the period 1961-2014 to discover the ongoing changes in monthly average snow depths (SN) and several snow-related indices. Our results indicate that regional differences of changes in snow conditions can be relatively large, even within such a small district as Finland. Moreover, the interannual variation of the various snow indices was found to be larger in southern Finland than in northern Finland. The largest decrease in snow depth occurred in the southern, western and central parts of Finland in late winter and early spring. This decrease was driven by increasing mixed and liquid precipitation and, especially in spring, increasing temperature. In northern Finland, the decreasing trend of snow depth was most evident in spring, but no change occurred during winter months, although the amount of solid precipitation was found to increase in December-February. In the same months, temperature and the amount of mixed and liquid precipitation increased, likely counteracting the effects of the increasing solid precipitation on snow depth. The annual maximum snow depth that typically occurs in March was found to decrease in over 85% of Finland's area, most strongly in western coastal areas. In almost half of Finland's area, this decrease occurred despite increasing solid precipitation. Our findings highlight the complexity of the responses of snow conditions to climatic variability in northern Europe.Peer reviewe

Youth climate anxiety and eco-emotions (in the Finnish Youth Barometer 2021)

Tämä artikkeli tarkastelee nuorten kokemia ympäristötunteita ja niin kutsuttua ilmastoahdistuksen ilmiötä Nuorisobarometrin 2021 tuloksia peilaten. Tunteiden joukosta artikkelissa keskitytään erityisesti suruun, riittämättömyyteen ja mielihyvään. Ilmastoahdistuksesta keskustellaan sekä tuoreen kansainvälisen että suomalaisen tutkimuksen valossa. Erityisinä rinnakkaisaineistoina käytetään Sitran vuonna 2019 toteuttamaa ilmastonmuutos ja tunteet -kansalaiskyselyä sekä syksyllä 2021 ilmestynyttä kansainvälistä tutkimusta nuorten ilmastotunteista. Artikkelin luonne on siis kaksiulotteinen: yhtäältä se sisältää uutta tutkimusta, mutta samalla se toimii johdantona aihepiiriin. Barometrin tulokset vahvistavat entisestään käsitystä ilmastotunteiden moniulotteisuudesta sekä siitä, että ympäristöahdistus on merkittävä ilmiö nuorten keskuudessa. Lähes 60 % oli puhunut ilmastoahdistuksesta viimeisen kuuden kuukauden aikana. On hyvin merkittävä tulos, että nuorisobarometrissa 76 % nuorista ilmaisi kokevansa surua luonnon monimuotoisuuden heikentymisestä ja lajien sukupuutosta. Kaikkinensa 35 % nuorista kertoi kokeneensa riittämättömyyttä ilmastotoimiensa suhteen. Analyysi tuo esiin myös toiminnan ja mielihyvän yhteyden: kestävistä valinnoista tuleva hyvä olo oli erittäin yleistä, 75 %, ja vahvasti yhteydessä oman kulutuksen vähentämiseen. Barometri paljastaa kiinnostavalla tavalla monien eri tekijöiden vahvan vaikutuksen nuorten ympäristötunteisiin, kuten sukupuolen, alueen, koulutustason ja syrjityksi tulemisen kokemuksen

Climate-friendly food-choice intentions among emerging adults: extending the theory of planned behavior with objective ambivalence, climate-change worry and optimism

Climate-friendly food choices are still relatively rarely addressed in studies investigating climate engagement, particularly among young people. To address this research gap, we conducted a questionnaire study with senior high school students (N = 474). Our overarching theoretical framework is the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which we extended with emotional factors (climate-change worry and optimism) and attitudinal ambivalence. We found that all factors included, except for optimism, correlated with the food-choice intentions. In multiple regression analyses, worry was the second strongest predictor, after attitudes. Moreover, a measure of objective ambivalence moderated the correlation between attitudes and intentions by weakening it. The results support the validity of using the TPB model when explaining intentions to make climate-friendly food choices among emerging adults. However, our results suggest that it is also important to consider emotions—in this case climate-change worry—and the existence of conflicting evaluations about choosing climate-friendly food

Dark side of resilience: systemic unsustainability

Resilience is often presented as a championing solution for tackling the multi-level environmental, security, health, and financial threats facing the whole humanity or specific ecosystems, communities, institutions, or individuals. However, the popularity of the concept is not proof of its usefulness. Perhaps the greatest problem is that many of the current socio-ecological systems are operating in both resilient and unsustainable ways. The problem turns into a tragedy if resources are used to maintain or advance such unsustainable resilience. We provide a concise review of the use of the concept of resilience in multiple fields. We highlight the dominance of positive connotations of resilience, originating both from theoretical considerations and practice-oriented applications. This optimistic bias masks the fact that unsustainable systems and practices may be highly resilient. In turn, this can lead to poor understanding and inadequate management of risks related to the attempts to create sustainability innovations. We discuss how path-dependencies and shifting baselines can complicate sustainability initiatives. Managing resilience for sustainability involves defining which system states are desirable and managing the pressures that maintain desired and undesired system states. Our conclusion is that active efforts aimed for maintaining resilience should be initiated only if a thorough assessment has shown that the system under consideration can function in a sustainable way

Right-Wing Populism and Climate Change Denial : The Roles of Exclusionary and Anti-Egalitarian Preferences, Conservative Ideology, and Antiestablishment Attitudes

Populist right-wing politicians and voters tend to dismiss climate change. To investigate possible reasons for this, we tested correlations between climate change denial and variables linked to right-wing populism (Study 1: N = 1,587; Study 2: N = 909). The strongest predictor of climate change denial was an index capturing exclusionary and anti-egalitarian preferences (opposition to, e.g., multiculturalism and feminism), followed by traditional values (Study 1) and Social Dominance Orientation (Study 2). Populist antiestablishment attitudes correlated only weakly with climate change denial, and this correlation vanished when exclusionary and anti-egalitarian preferences were controlled for. Also, the effects of authoritarianism (Study 2) and (low) openness vanished in the full models. Climate change denial did not correlate with (low) agreeableness, which is a personality trait linked to populism. However, both antiestablishment attitudes and climate change denial correlated with pseudoscientific beliefs (e.g., anti-vaccination attitudes) (Study 1). To conclude, we did not find support for a notable linkage between climate change denial and populist antiestablishment attitudes. Thus, when addressing climate change denial, it could be more beneficial to focus on the ideological worldviews that are being protected by denial, such as endorsement of the existing societal power relations, than on the antiestablishment arguments used by some who deny

Climate Change Denial among Radical Right-Wing Supporters

The linkage between political right-wing orientation and climate change denial is extensively studied. However, previous research has almost exclusively focused on the mainstream right, which differs from the far right (radical and extreme) in some important domains. Thus, we investigated correlates of climate change denial among supporters of a radical right-wing party (Sweden Democrats, N = 2216), a mainstream right-wing party (the Conservative Party, Moderaterna, N = 634), and a mainstream center-left party (Social Democrats, N = 548) in Sweden. Across the analyses, distrust of public service media (Swedish Television, SVT), socioeconomic right-wing attitudes, and antifeminist attitudes outperformed the effects of anti-immigration attitudes and political distrust in explaining climate change denial, perhaps because of a lesser distinguishing capability of the latter mentioned variables. For example, virtually all Sweden Democrat supporters oppose immigration. Furthermore, the effects of party support, conservative ideologies, and belief in conspiracies were relatively weak, and vanished or substantially weakened in the full models. Our results suggest that socioeconomic attitudes (characteristic for the mainstream right) and exclusionary sociocultural attitudes and institutional distrust (characteristic for the contemporary European radical right) are important predictors of climate change denial, and more important than party support per se