**2. Background**

Climate change and global warming are two different concepts. Global warming refers to an increase in the average temperature of the Earth's surface due to an increase in the level of greenhouse gases and climate change refers to a long-term change in the Earth's or a region's climate that includes global warming and everything that affects the increase in greenhouse gases. According to the IPCC [5] it is a statistically significant variation in the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting over a period of time, which may be due to natural internal processes or to changes in external forcing such as volcanic eruptions or changes in land use, for example. And according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, it is the change in climate attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

The IPCC published a report in 2018 detailing the most important aspects of understanding the 1.5-degree temperature increase; the associated impacts and risks; the current trajectory of emissions; and possible transitions consistent with the projected warming [6]. On the other hand, there are the SDGs; a Plan of Action for all countries, poor, rich and middle-income, to promote prosperity and protect the planet. The Sustainable Development Goals [7]. Specifically, goal 13 is the one that refers to climate action, and specifically, goal 13.3 which is the one that is most adapted to this research, is based on improving education, awareness and human capacity in climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning.

The main theoretical basis of this research is Serge Moscovici's Theory of Social Representations, which states that a representation is an organised set of knowledge and one of the psychic activities thanks to which people make physical and social reality intelligible, integrate themselves into a group or into a daily relationship of exchanges and release the powers of their imagination by acting in their immediate environment [8].

Denise Jodelet adds that the field of representation designates the knowledge of common sense, whose contents make manifest the operation of certain generative and functional processes with a social character in a way that alludes to a form of social thought [9].

Robert Farr assumes that social representations appear when individuals debate topics of interest or when there is an echo of events selected as significant or of interest by those who control the media [10].

Another interesting contribution is that of Dan Speber [11], who recognises that representation is the relationship between what is represented, what is represented and the user of the representation. He adds a fourth element if the representation is produced by something other than the user, in this case, a scientific object that is difficult to understand, such as climate change.

Basically, representation makes the strange familiar and the invisible perceptible. They are cognitive systems of values, ideas and practices with the function of establishing an order that enables individuals to orient themselves in their material and social world and to master it, and to enable communication between members of a community [10].

In this way we come to speak of social representations of CC, and for an object to be studied from this theory, the following conditions must be met [12] it must constitute a specific object with an entity, it must have social relevance and it must be strictly collective knowledge, arising from the social interactions of a group.

Thus, in order for society to give meaning to CC, it must do so by knowing the information they receive about it. And the socio-cultural contexts in which this information is distributed and recoded must be taken into account. Furthermore, the profile of the audiences, the media and the methodologies used for its dissemination must also be considered, as well as the interferences inherent to any communicative process that hinder its understanding when it becomes "an object of common culture" [13].

Some lines of contemporary research with respect to the social representations of climate change are along the following lines:

*Environmental hypermetropia, i.e. climate change is difficult to perceive, we see it as something distant, as most of the time we see it through the media. But when we perceive it, it is because we are conditioned by our beliefs, i.e. subjectively, common sense interprets reality based on new information that we have shared, even if it is not linked to the scientific representation to which it is related. Heras [13] quotes Markova [14] to emphasise that "objectification" can turn a complex scientific fact into something less differentiated, into something conventional and similar to what is already known. Once simplified, thinking will become less reflexive or nonreflexive. It will be framed within the symbolic social environment and circulated and recycled through the activities of the subjects [14].*

The study of cognitive limitations is another line of research, as CC is a difficult phenomenon to understand and we find it more difficult to comprehend complex and evolving systems such as climate, which is why we are not aware of the distant consequences of our actions [15].

Another line is the value placed on risk, i.e. if we think that an activity is positive, we will think that the risks derived from it will be lower and vice versa [16]. On the other hand, there are the responses to climate change, i.e. intuitive decisionmaking processes will be favourable if the decision-maker has sufficient information to evaluate the available options [13].

There is also the information deficit which means that, although environmental problems are identified in science, information from scientists also needs to be

incorporated into common sense so that they can be treated as real environmental problems [17].

And finally, there is the lack of public confidence in the scientific consensus and in the power that governments may have to put in place effective measures to mitigate the problem [18].

With this in mind, we now turn to some of the studies that have been carried out on the SRs of CC in university students. Some examples are those related to:


The study of social representations of climate change in groups of university students deserves special attention due to the fact that they are supposed to be educated people with sufficient capacity to consider, reason and, where appropriate, disagree with the information received in the media and, in some cases, in the degrees they are studying, and they are also attractive people to study the perception they have of this specific case since, from the results obtained, the future trend towards behaviour more or less involved in the intention to change behaviours that can reduce the phenomenon of climate change can be predicted. The role played by universities in this process deserves special attention as they are institutions of reference in the generation of scientific knowledge and in the training of both professionals and citizens who are sensitive to the threats of climate change and who are involved in the search for social, economic and technological alternatives.

The preamble of the 2015 Paris agreement recognises the importance of education, training and awareness-raising in access to information. But, in addition, article 12 of the agreement calls for cooperation in the adoption of measures to improve education, training, public awareness and participation and public access to information on climate change.

It is therefore hoped that, in the future, the inclusion of content on the climate crisis in school curricula will improve climate literacy, with climate literacy being understood as the understanding of the influence we have on the climate and vice versa. That is, a climate literate person will understand the essential principles of the Earth's climate system, know how to evaluate scientific information, be able to communicate this knowledge in a meaningful way, and be able to make informed decisions regarding actions that may affect the climate [30].

An international reference project in which this research is framed is the RESCLIMA Project which, in general terms, investigates how the social representation of climate change is internalised and expressed in different societies and

*Social Representation of Climate Change among Young Spanish University Students DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98258*

groups, such as university students, paying special attention to the processes of scientific transposition, interpretation and negotiation of meanings that shape this representation. The work carried out in this research is above all an attempt to explore the mechanisms by which certain lay theories about CC spread and become shared by different societies and groups without taking scientific knowledge into account.

To conclude, we cannot fail to mention the social movements and collectives that have emerged since the declaration of the climate emergency. These include Fridays for Future, Mothers for Climate, Teachers for Future and Extinction Rebelion.

These are movements made up mainly of students who are calling on governments to act immediately to avoid exceeding 1.5°C. They reproach them for their inaction. They reproach them for their inaction and the long negotiations without agreements. They reclaim the value of politics and the public and call for useful policy solutions through non-violent civil disobedience in an attempt to stop mass extinction, global warming and minimise the risk of social collapse. Due to these kinds of movements, other movements that already existed such as "NOMO" (No Mather) movements based on not having children for ecological reasons or people opting for more sustainable diets are now being reinforced. This may be determined by a characteristic of culture, which lies in the idea that culture transforms itself through the progressive generation of subcultures, which are attempts to register a change in the environment or a new differentiation of the social.
