Socially Organized Climate (Non)Responses: How Social Position Impacts Individual Perception of Climate Change Risk

This research considers a range of public explanations making sense of the current climate crisis. Through 16 in-depth interviews with high status individuals, I highlight the role of economic stability in individual understandings of climate change. Informed by the theoretical work of Kari Norgaard (2011) on living in denial and Ulrich Beck’s (1996) understanding of risk perception in modernity, this work unpacks how individuals narrate the problem of climate change in their lives, and what impacts their security in the environment surrounding them has on their choice of action to the perceived risk of climate change. This research is one of the first qualitative studies examining individual risk perceptions as they relate to climate change