Feeling Climate Change: Intersections of Everyday Cycling and Climate Change

Abstract

This thesis deals with ways in which everyday cyclists will be uniquely impacted by climate change. While cyclists have a rich sensorial and embodied understanding of Seattle’s weather and climate, when prompted, they cannot pinpoint symptoms of climate change in their commute over time—although transpired and transpiring, climate change is difficult to perceive due to its generational time scale. Therefore, this project sought to make speculative tools that ‘bend time’, by enabling future climate change projections to be experienced in the present. The High Water Pants developed in this thesis raise up in geofenced areas where Seattle will be impacted by rising sea levels. The focus on sea level rise relates to Seattle‘s unique geography and hydrology and confronts the hard-to-imagine, longer-term nature of its impacts. Water levels in the Seattle area have already risen about 8 inches in the last century, and are projected to rise 10 more inches by 2050 and 28 inches by 2100 (by moderate estimates).Through the in-motion experience offered by the High Water Pants, a cyclist’s history of practice can mesh with future data about sea level rise, creating spaces for speculation about the future impacts of sea level rise on everyday cycling practices. The goal of this project is to create embodied tools for speculation that make climate change tangible and shift conversations around climate change from global, catastrophic narratives to more local, personal and nuanced narratives.