“Climate Threat and Climate Hope” is a qualitative interview study of four young women’s environmental engagement and climate related feelings.
This essay aims to investigate how four young women, all active members of an environment- and sustainability organization, engage in climate action and how they cope with their feelings related to the climate threat. The informants are acting upon the environment in many different ways, but the three things they reflect on the most when taking climate actions are: meet eating, consumption of clothes and flying. The results of this study show that my informants experience that the ruling norm in the organization is vegetarianism. The informants also experience that their close environment shapes them, and that they also shape their parents, into being more environment friendly. The informants of this study all feel both hope and anxiety when thinking about a climate altered future. They feel though, that hope takes over the negative aspects and that hope makes them more involved and more empowered in their own environmental activism.