What we found, generalising from results working wih a number of different groups was that:
- Our visual method was productive, though the notion of landscape was problematic
- Most climate change landscapes imagined by participants are apocalyptic
- Many participants were rendered hopeless but not helpless by apocalyptic imaginings
- Participants generally took some degree of environmental action in their everyday lives
- Taking environmental action was often a coping strategy linked to identity
- Participants noted that the images of the future in our culture are mainly negative
- Visualising climate change is generally tied to culturally prevalent images
Here are photos of some landscapes, though what people said about their pictures was perhaps more revealing (see below).
"I don’t think that you can do anything, you know nothing that I do is going to have the slightest bit of effect in the big scheme of things so it pulls me right back into me and the only thing I can do is be like, just what I’m doing, whatever it is, that’s the only thing that matters…. the only thing I can save is me really."