Presque Isle
Project Director Dr. Kati Corlew was joined by four participants at the Mark and Emily Turner Memorial Library on January 10th and 17th in 2020. The participants, Elyse Kiehn, Sonja Plummer Eyler, Orpheus Allison, and John Kiehn, come from a variety of backgrounds. Yet, despite their varying lives and histories, the four shared similar thoughts and ideas concerning climate change. Most notable were the realization of guilt being placed on individuals over corporations, the changes in temperature and weather over the past decades, and the multiple sides to the issues associated with climate change.
"Sometimes unnecessary onus and guilt is put onto individuals, specifically vulnerable individuals within our culture. Meanwhile, there are large corporations that are dumping waste into various areas..." - Elyse Kiehn
"With seven plus billion of us on the planet, how much can we actually minimize our impact, or find a way to feed [it] back in on itself in a positive manner? That seems a very overwhelming thought to me." - John Kiehn
"If you go around looking at the world as a catastrophe, you're going to have a catastrophe. Whereas, if you start looking around [and say] okay, I can't solve this problem, but I can make a difference, [you] can come up with a solution..." - Orpheus Allison
"The question that comes before me is do I want my plastic straw, or do I want places on the planet that look like the untouched natural world that it is?" - Sonja Plummer Eyler
The Photos
"Sometimes as early as mid-October, it is winter. Then it is winter for about six months, and then sometimes [on] my birthday in May there's still snow. We just go, well, it's a long winter. We shrug our shoulders." - Elyse Kiehn
"Forty years ago, this time of year, [January,] was the coldest part of the winter. We would maybe have a week, 10 days, of minus ten or lower on the Fahrenheit scale. This year is extremely unusual." - Orpheus Allison
"I worry a lot about the fact that climate change affects vulnerable people." - Elyse Kiehn
"We’re an aging population. I feel like the warmer temperatures are going to wake up the amoebas that we don’t want awake and the viruses and bacterium and all of that. The aging population that we have here, they tend to be very susceptible to those diseases. That terrifies me for our population." - Sonja Plummer Eyler
"[With] the lack of hay last year, people hoard[ed] hay. I got a look into what happens when there's a scarcity of resources. A very cooperative horse community became kind of selfish..." - Sonja Plummer Eyler
"When I talk to my classmates from high school, so many of them say, I want to go back. I want to come home. This is home. But there are no jobs for me. There are no jobs of - that I can get it." - Orpheus Allison
"The older machinery caught my attention because to me [it's] very indicative of how change gets dealt with here, at least, from my experience." - John Kiehn
"Going back to the guilt issue, we as human beings we have an inane ability to put guilt on anything. One of them is plastic. I would not be here if it were not for plastic. It was not steel that saved me, it was plastic, because all of my medicines are delivered through plastic. How do you replace the plastics that pump the fluids that are used to attach devices and implements and such? That’s all plastic." - Orpheus Allison
"We need plastics. You need plastics. I need plastics. Without them, my life expectancy is about six days. That’s just the way it is. So to say: we’re gonna eliminate them, that’s fine, but if we don’t have a replacement first then elimination is just – it’s a death sentence for us." - John Kiehn
"What worries me is that it is a very highly complex web of social structures and real material sciences that get involved at any level of this. You try and say, okay, how do we stop polluting to the degree that will stop hurting our environment long enough to live in it, but still practically be able to continue to live here?" - John Kiehn
ABOUT CHANGE
CHANGE is a climate change research project directed by Dr. Kati Corlew and is dedicated to reaching a better understanding of peoples' perceptions of climate change. Our research was conducted using a qualitative research method called PhotoVoice. PhotoVoice, is a method “by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community”. (Wang & Burris, 1997, p. 369) Our participants met in focus groups to discuss the research topics, and then went out into their communities to take photographs according to their conceptualization, values, and priorities regarding the topic. They then selected photographs to present and discuss in a final focus group (Gleason & Corlew, 2019). By placing participants’ photos, stories, and conceptualizations at the center of the study, we hope to expand the exploratory nature of this research to include themes outside of current climate change conceptualizations. For more information, please visit our Main Page.