Investigations into Human Involvement in Climate Action
To prevent climate change’s rapid deterioration of the environment, more people need to be involved in climate action. The purpose of this study is to investigate why people get involved. Interning at Cascadia Climate Action I created a survey of the members. Most people get involved and interested in climate action due to concern for the environment and continue their involvement because of concern for the future. These results can be used to advertise to a broader audience these same concerns and also by advertising the least selected responses to get a different group of people involved in climate action.
“WHY I DID IT”; Rationale for project: The International Panel on Climate Change recently published a study showing that increasing the average global temperature by 1.5-degrees Celsius will have most of the negative effects as a 2-degree Celsius increase over pre-industrial levels. This means that original plans to maintain global average temperatures below 2-degrees Celsius need to be edited and humans need to act more immediately with personal actions and governmental policy changes to stay below the 1.5-degree Celsius mark. Interning with Cascadia Climate Action, I was able to have access to members of the organization who are involved in some sort of climate action, so I designed a survey to find out why people get involved in the first place. Cascadia Climate Action can use the data to advertise their organization and gain members, and also increase the number of people involved in climate action.
“HOW I DID IT”; General methodology for project: The purpose of this study is to investigate why people get involved in climate action. While interning at Cascadia Climate Action I created an active social media presence and guide in addition to a survey of its members. The survey included basic knowledge questions about climate change, questions about one’s involvement in climate action, and demographic questions. The three critical questions asked about why people became interested and involved, and why they continue to be involved in climate action. I gave them limited responses to choose to more easily analyze the data, but also gave them the option to elaborate on their responses. The survey was sent to the members of Cascadia Climate Action via the monthly newsletter, the two Facebook pages, an Instagram account and a Twitter account. Thirty-eight responses were collected and analyzed.
“WHAT I DISCOVERED”; Results of the capstone project: Based on the responses of people already involved in climate action through Cascadia Climate Action, I found that most people become interested in climate issues because of their concern for the environment. They also become involved in climate action because of their concern for the environment. But they continue to be involved in climate action due to their concern for the future. I found that most people elaborated that once they were involved, they had some form of education, either independent or through the organization. Their increase in knowledge about climate change and the environment is what keeps them involved. No one selected financial reasons for involvement. In responses to other questions, I found that most people took personal actions (such as biking instead of driving) against climate change, but almost all of them took political action against climate change (such as writing to representatives and voting for carbon fees).
“WHAT I LEARNED”; Skills and knowledge gained during the capstone project:
- To communicate consistently and effectively with my team members
- To update myself on the news in relevant areas and quickly return to my supervisor with useful social media posts
- To write and communicate in a non-polarizing way for a politically controversial topic
- To manage time well with a busy schedule on my own time
- To create an investigation useful for my organization and manageable for myself, my resources, and my limited time (3 months)
- To produce and present a final project that clearly communicates my capstone experience
“The Big Picture”: The damages of climate change are becoming increasingly unavoidable, and more people need to be involved in prevention. Organizations that promote environmentalism and climate action should increase their membership base using advertising increasing environmental concern, looking into the future, and financial incentives (to increase membership among a different population).