Education and Climate Change

Living and Learning in Interesting Times

Fumiyo Kagawa, David Selby, Fumiyo Kagawa, David Selby

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135235420
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

There is widespread consensus in the international scientific community that climate change is happening and that abrupt and irreversible impacts are already set in motion. What part does education have to play in helping alleviate rampant climate change and in mitigating its worst effects? In this volume, contributors review and reflect upon social learning from and within their fields of educational expertise in response to the concerns over climate change. They address the contributions the field is currently making to help preempt and mitigate the environmental and social impacts of climate change, as well as how it will continue to respond to the ever changing climate situation. With a special foreword by Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town.

1 Climate Change Education and Communication
A Critical Perspective on Obstacles and Resistances¹

Edgar González-Gaudiano and Pablo Meira-Cartea

OPENING IDEAS

Over the last few years, climate change has become an issue frequently addressed not only in the media but also in multiple areas of everyday life. From the point of view of the lay public, and with or without a basis in fact, many current events are now blamed on climate change, including food shortages and the consequent increase in food prices, mass migration from rural to urban regions and to developed countries, the growing vulnerability of coastal areas in the face of extreme weather events, and the spread of desertification, to mention just a few of these. The emergence of public and political interest in climate change has renewed the importance of environmental concerns in national and international political agendas, where their relative weight had declined since the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Brazil.

In addition to its recent emergence in the political and public arena, climate change is an extremely complex epistemological phenomenon. Not only does it cover a range of issues that have been studied individually and by separate scientific disciplines, but the connections between these have given rise to a whole new architecture of inquiry and set of challenges to conventional available knowledge. It is thus a hybrid theme essentially founded on uncertainty. Such uncertainty derives from the impossibility of controlling—or even identifying—all of the relevant variables, and to know how these are linked to each other. This is particularly true in relation to the goal of making predictions and moving from a global scale to a regional, subregional, or even local scale of knowledge on climate and climate change. As far as we know, according to the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007), climate change is real and has been caused, beyond reasonable doubt, by human activity. In the face of ever more conclusive evidence produced by climate change science, and despite the efforts of interest groups to obstruct international negotiations, progress has been made in furthering agreements and policy, in addition to the growth of environmental literacy within society as a whole.

We understand environmental literacy to mean not only the acquisition of information about the environment, but that such knowledge rests on a political and ethical substrate as well as a critical social practice linked to the concept of citizenship (González-Gaudiano 2007; Caride and Meira 2001). In contrast, the predominant notion of environmental literacy derives from a variant of environmental education initially promoted by UNESCO and UNEP, through their International Environmental Education Program (González-Gaudiano 2007), and in particular by its editorial series. This variant treated environmental education as an element of formal schooling. It was therefore viewed more as part of a curriculum than as a social process, and was very much focused on the natural sciences. In this chapter we will broach the implications of this inconvenient legacy for the development of educational programs to address climate change, and we will then discuss some of the main obstacles and social objections to the promotion of these programs.

ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION OR SCIENTIFIC LITERACY

Environmental education is a multidiscursive field. In addition to the environment per se, multiple theories and conceptions of education converge here, ranging from the most instrumental teaching approaches to the most critical perspectives and including a wide range of stances on environmental problems allied with both deep and social ecology.² We see it as a space of both struggle and opportunity for the reconstruction of a web of relations between humans and the environment and with each other. This web has faded with the advance of civilization, but could enable us to develop new treaties between cultures, societies, and nature and give rise to new values, languages, and meanings that could lead us responsibly to the social change that is so critical at this time. Thus, we do not share the view that environmental education should be promoted as separate from political and ethical content and focused exclusively on scientific-technical knowledge with the notion that this permits everyone to act autonomously according to their own principles and criteria (Aldrich and Kwong 1999). That is, we disagree with a vision of science as deus ex machina capable of solving complexity and uncertainty. Such a view depicts scientific knowledge as a mirror of reality, and hides the fact that science is part of a process of social construction and not a finished and infallible product. That said, and regardless of their objects of study, all sciences are social and, therefore, not so much subjected to an alleged objectivity but to an objectification that makes them intelligible, following normative and normalizing conventions established by specific scientific communities where nonscientific interests are also present. The problem is that science, understood as a value-neutral and aseptic (allegedly nonsubjective) product, has been the dominant approach in educational programs on climate change.

Within this view, the climate change crisis stems from a generalized lack of understanding of the energy and material flows between society and nature (Foladori 2000). Therefore, educational programs become processes of scientific literacy aimed at reinforcing the teaching of science and based in the transmission of scientific content, particularly of ecology (see Orr 1994 and Capra 2003).³ For this reason, educational proposals related to climate change revolve around a series of issues relative to atmospheric composition, fluid dynamics, the basic principles of thermodynamics, the carbon cycle, the hydrogen economy, the oceans and the Gulf Stream, among many others (see Flannery 2006). The idea implicit in such an approach is that the problem is so complex and serious that only scientists and specialists know the answers, and thus that they are the only ones capable of defining what political actions should be taken.

This is not the end of it. Such a perspective starts from the premise that once people acquire updated and valid scientific information, their attitudes, values, and behavior will change and they will become environmentally literate citizens. This, however, is a simplistic, mechanistic, and deterministic assumption which has already been much discussed, not just in terms of the instructional approach (transmission of knowledge) (Sterling 1996), but also, above all, because of the precariousness of the results after years of implementation, as well as the undesirable side-effects observed (Sterling 2001).

Thus, a fundamental question is, what kind of social representation is in the best interest of society? Is it a ‘scientific education or literacy’ that tries to adjust social representations to the best available science or an ‘environmental education’ grounded in those aspects most significant in people’s lives and as a means of motivating changes in lifestyles? For example, the social dimensions of climate change are as little known to Western citizens as the energy model (Meira and Arto-Blanco 2008).

In addition, scientific literacy is impregnating popular culture by way of intermediaries who are typically not scientists. More commonly it is transmitted by a wide range of spokespeople, including politicians, the news media, and communicators of science who ‘bring’ or ‘explain’ the scientific truths to the general public—that undifferentiated and scientifically illiterate mass that presumably requires scientific knowledge in order to live more environmentally friendly lives—and thereby displace common sense. This repetition of information on the climate change problem on television—the medium that many people depend on to guide their lives—becomes a new means of legitimating scientific knowledge through what Lyotard (1984) calls “performance,” that is the “capacity to produce reality.” In this way, a new meta-narrative, or total philosophy of history, takes shape, establishes ethical and political prescriptions for society, and tends to progressively regulate decision-making and determine what can be legitimately claimed as truth.

Thus, there are numerous climate change educational programs in circulation that provide recent facts, longitudinal studies, expert opinions, reports produced by prestigious institutions, and other sources. A social representation of this complex phenomena thus emerges that, in the end, rests on a small group of simplistic, atomized, and disarticulated actions, which are individual in nature and without a broader program. These measures fit within the range of possibilities based on the economic conditions of each person, from buying a hybrid car to changing from incandescent light bulbs to energy-saving lamps. Normally, this set of suggestions and recommendations for ‘saving the world’ is delivered from a perspective of general and undifferentiated responsibility: since we are all responsible for the problem, we are all equally responsible for the solution. Beyond a broad criticism of those who have failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, such rhetoric obscures specific responsibilities, the extravagance of our way of life is not questioned, nor is the style of growth based on consumerism. This is particularly true in periods of international financial crisis, whose ‘solutions’ rely on a dynamization of the market.

This raises question such as: Do we need to know the carbon cycle and the laws of thermodynamics in order to accept the need to change the type of light bulb used? Are these simplistic measures substitutes for structural actions that would genuinely allow us to move toward the kind of change that is required and so often postponed?

Before moving to a more detailed analysis of the complexity implicit in the implementation of educational programs for climate change, we would like to make a few points to clarify our position. Nothing is further from our intentions than to suggest that people should stop the specific actions that they are beginning to take to reduce high levels of energy consumption, particularly because electricity generating plants are the single largest source of greenhouse gases (although many people think that electricity is clean because it does not produce emissions during consumption). Millions of individual actions obviously can have significant effects on the climate system. What we are against is the transmission of an implicit idea that through these actions the problem is solved, and thus individual responsibility is exhausted. The substitution of all the incandescent bulbs in the houses of the developed world will not resolve the problem unless measures are taken in the diverse areas that now constitute the Western lifestyle. Neither are we opposed to the diffusion of available scientific knowledge. Today it is one of the most valuable resources for understanding to some extent the atmospheric changes that are occurring and their consequences. But this does not imply that broad scientific literacy will automatically trigger the change in behaviors, habits, and values expressed in peoples’ everyday lives. At the very least this belief should be considered naive. Rather, we need a pedagogical strategy that is based on scientific knowledge and social experience among other factors, that establishes organized collective action toward clear ends and, above all, that challenges the normative values that organize life in society and is oriented to weaken the resistances, and the cognitive, psychosocial, and cultural barriers that impede change. Only in this way will individual action become meaningful and contribute to overcoming the current state of things.

THE REPRESENTATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN ‘POPULAR CULTURE’

Climate change has a series of characteristics that make it a fundamentally complex object, both from the scientific viewpoint, as well as from that of popular culture. Climate science has deepened its knowledge through the multidisciplinary and prolonged collection, analysis, and interpretation of direct and indirect evidence, in a process subject to permanent debate, negotiations, and controversy. This process has occurred fundamentally within the framework of the IPCC and of the negotiation processes that originated in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The IPCC’s reports are thus generally considered to be the principal scientific reference, given the broad consensus in their development and the independence from spurious interests that has characterized the scientists responsible for their preparation. The complexity of climate change is expressed also in the socioeconomic and political arena. The need to take decisions with the urgency required by this threat runs up against the dominant model of development sustained by fossil fuel energy sources that have become indispensable for our mode of exploitation, production, and consumption. It is practically impossible to conceive of or to apply structural policies and programs that mitigate the effects of climate change without affecting central aspects of the current economic model and the sociocultural order tied to it.

It is probably the first global environmental problem that is radically systemic: practically all ecological and human systems are implicated and are being or will be affected by its consequences in the short, medium, or long term. The ‘solutions,’ whatever the strategic definitions adopted (mitigation or adaptation), require a fundamental change in the established means of transforming, distributing, and consuming energy in order to significantly reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the preservation and promotion of natural carbon storage and sinks. The necessary direction of change has been identified, but many resistances and social inertia hinder this route. One of these forms of resistance is the social representation of climate change, that is, the way in which human societies, particularly the most advanced, are culturally constructing their representations of climate change. This process not only involves science and its intermediaries, as mentioned above. Cultural production that responds to an ‘epistemology of common sense’ also plays a fundamental role in the social representation of climate change. In the construction of this representation, the transfer of scientific knowledge to citizens as part of ‘environmental literacy’ plays a role, but there are also other processes and factors outside the logic of scientific knowledge production that we seek to briefly identify. Some of these have to do with the ‘complex nature of the problem,’ and others with the logic of ‘common sense,’ and others more with the reelaboration and reinterpretation of knowledge when it becomes part of socially shared knowledge.

Consideration of the roots of the threat is essential in order to correctly focus the educational and communicational challenge presented by climate change. In fact, the main ‘cultural barrier’ is the structural nature of the problem. On this basis we can identify the various cultural, sociocognitive, and psychosocial obstacles that condition the social representation of the problem and hinder the adoption of the changes in individual and collective lifestyles that are most related to activities that unbalance the climate. For the purposes of categorization and systematization we have grouped these in three broad areas:

1. those derived from the complex nature of the problem;
2. those emerging from the moral and sociopolitical implications; and
3. those related to the psychosocial and cognitive processes that condition
   the representation of climate change.

The Difficulty Complexity Poses to Social Understanding

Change in Climate: Natural or Human Factors?

One of the difficulties for public comprehension of climate change is that both human and natural factors (which have been the climate-transforming forces in the past) are at work. The IPCC’s reports include natural factors in their explanatory models for climate change and consider them to have had a definitive effect in the abrupt climate transformations of the past. This possibility feeds the arguments of the “climate change deniers” who question the existence of climate change as well as the policies to address it: if this is of natural etiology then such policies would make no scientific or economic sense and an adaptive approach should be adopted. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (2007) includes a detailed analysis of the climate system’s energy balance, and weighes the influence of factors such as the increase in concentrations of greenhouse gases, terrestrial albedo, the role of aerosols, and fluctuations in solar radiation in the changes leading to global warming. Even including natural processes, for the IPCC it is clear that the largest share of observed climate “forcing” is attributable to human action.

Causes of Climate Change: An Aggregate Effect

At the present moment, in...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• LIST OF FIGURES
• LIST OF TABLES
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE ON OBSTACLES AND RESISTANCES
• 2 GO, GO, GO, SAID THE BIRD’: Sustainability-related Education in Interesting Times
• 3 PEACE LEARNING: UNIVERSALISM IN INTERESTING TIMES
• 4 CLIMATE INJUSTICE: HOW SHOULD EDUCATION RESPOND?
• 5 THE ENVIRONMENT, CLIMATE CHANGE, ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY, AND ANTIRACIST EDUCATION
• 6 LEARNING IN EMERGENCIES: DEFENSE OF HUMANITY FOR A LIVABLE WORLD
• 7 SUSTAINABLE DEMOCRACY: ISSUES, CHALLENGES, AND PROPOSALS FOR CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN AN AGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
• 8 SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT IN TRANSITION: AN EMERGING AGENDA FOR INTERESTING TIMES
• 9 CRITIQUE, CREATE, AND ACT: ENVIRONMENTAL ADULT AND SOCIAL MOVEMENT LEARNING IN AN ERA OF CLIMATE CHANGE
• 10 TRANSFORMING THE ECOLOGICAL CRISIS: CHALLENGES FOR FAITH AND INTERFAITH EDUCATION IN INTERESTING TIMES
• 11 PUBLIC HEALTH THREATS IN A CHANGING CLIMATE: MEETING THE CHALLENGES THROUGH SUSTAINABLE HEALTH EDUCATION
• 12 WEAVING CHANGE: IMPROVISING GLOBAL WISDOM IN INTERESTING AND DANGEROUS TIMES
• CLIMATE CHANGE EDUCATION: A CRITICAL AGENDA FOR INTERESTING TIMES
• CONTRIBUTORS