Essay | Young people and the climate seen by an unusual student

There are many generalizations about the younger generation and their response to climate change. In an essay drawn from his doctoral research, the former rector of Laval University Michel Pigeon offers a nuanced insight into the values, vision, behaviors and concerns of students in terms of climate.

Let’s first highlight the exceptional and very atypical career of this 77-year-old student. An engineer by training, former professor and researcher at Laval University, Michel Pigeon is recognized for his research on the durability of concrete. He was rector of this same university before being elected MP for Charlesbourg in 2008. Interested in social issues and the environment, he went back to school to do a master’s degree in sociology, then write a doctoral thesis on vision. young people in the face of climate change. These are the “general public” parts of his qualitative research that he shares in Young people and climate change – What societal choices?

With this book, he wants “that people who have a certain influence on the future know what young people want,” he said in a text published on the Laval University website.

In 2020, Michel Pigeon conducted semi-directed interviews with 34 students from Laval University and Cégep de Limoilou. This is admittedly a small sample and one can assume that those who raised their hands initially had an interest in this issue. These are the limits of the exercise, which nevertheless offers an interesting glimpse into the thinking of young people which, contrary to the image sometimes conveyed, is not monolithic.

After a detour through major social surveys and research work on the values ​​of young people carried out elsewhere in the world, Michel Pigeon sets out to understand the values ​​that drive the members of this generation as well as the changes they believe are necessary and those they are ready to implement to limit global warming.

From the outset, all said they value nature, and the author finds that most have a good understanding of climate change. Although alongside the optimists, who believe in technological salvation, stand others, more pessimistic, who evoke the end of humanity, one senses little eco-anxiety among them.

The young people interviewed, writes the author, “are not, without exception, radical ecologists, and their behavior seems in fact quite typical of that of young people of their generation”. They mostly eat meat, but try to eat less of it, some have a car, some don’t, but many travel, and are not ready to give it up.

On the other hand, with one exception, they declared that they wanted changes to the current economic system, ranging from a slowdown in growth, or even decline, to a more egalitarian, even cooperative system.

In their vision of society in 2050, despite their attachment to freedom, respondents want some form of control to regulate behavior in order to ensure respect for the environment. This leadership must, according to them, come from governments.

Proof that young people are not made from a single block, the author noted three fracture lines among the interviewees, namely that between radicals and moderates, that between those who trust humans and those who believe that rules should be imposed and, finally, that between those who have expressed or not the wish for a more just and egalitarian society.

A panorama that is certainly limited, but in-depth and nuanced, which shows that in terms of climate, despite some contradictions and blind spots, young people are rather well informed.

Young people and climate change – What societal choices?

Michael Pigeon

Laval University Press

148 pages