CLIMLIFE
The cross-disciplinary CLIMLIFE project studies how Norwegian citizens relate the challenges of climate change to their normal, day-to-day life choices.
Main content
While there is broad agreement on the urgency of the situation, people must also go on living their daily lives. We all need to attend to our own needs and interests, our family and community.
Recent research shows that, when asked about solutions to tackle climate change, Norwegian citizens generally say “we must all contribute”. However, what does this mean more specifically? How willing are we to change our lifestyle? How do people, in particular young people, relate these challenges to their everyday life choices? And how do politicians and the media address lifestyle questions?
We suggest that people use mainly four strategies for integrating, or not, the challenges of climate change into their lives:
- Activism: People engage actively to influence policies to mitigate climate change.
- Responsiveness: People respond in accordance with incentives designed for climate-friendly behaviour.
- Resignation: People recognize the problem but give up engaging with the complex challenges of climate change.
- Rejection: People actively choose not to consider climate change in their choices.
The CLIMLIFE project studies these questions through a cross-disciplinary collaboration, including researchers from linguistic, media, political and natural sciences. Our material consists of a combination of Facebook data and data from open-ended survey questions (Norwegian Citizen Panel/DIGSSCORE), where citizens, politicians and journalists can answer in their own words. We use different tools for language analysis, in a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods.
Project goals:
- Develop knowledge about the role of the climate in questions about lifestyle, about both obstacles and opportunities for a climate-friendly lifestyle
- Examine what motives or strategies people have for changing - or not changing - lifestyle
- Compare the concordance or inconsistency between the opinions of citizens, politicians and journalists
- Explore in particular the young people's perspective on climate and way of life
- Further develop interdisciplinary research based on linguistics
Major outcomes of CLIMLIFE will be vital knowledge about the role of climate change in everyday lifestyle matters, revealing barriers and opportunities, conflict and consensus. This will be applicable knowledge for stakeholders in general and politicians in particular.
