Archive for the ‘environmental literacy’ Category
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Breathing Earth—Watch real-time changes in emissions, population
Friday, November 20th, 2009
One of the challenges of environmental literacy is to help people visualize information so that it’s easy to digest. The Breathing Earth Simulation is a new graphic simulation that allows people to watch the geography of carbon emission, births, and deaths real time.
As you can see from the graphic above, in the short time I watched, world population rose by almost 2000 people, and more than 500,000 tons of CO2 were emitted. Countries glow red every time 1000 tons of CO2 is emitted—about every 5 seconds for the U.S.
This is a good first step, but they could do more. Most people can’t relate directly to tonnage of CO2. 547,000 tons? Is that a lot or not much if you don’t know that Earth’s atmosphere holds 750 billion tons of carbon and annual emissions are ~9 billion tons of carbon? Emissions masses could also be represented in more familiar equivalencies—e.g., numbers of Empire State Buildings, total world grain harvests, number of cars piled on top of one another, combined weight of a group of people, etc.
Related post: Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 1: Environmental Literacy
Posted in environmental literacy | No Comments »
In this week’s issue of Science: Climate communication —Has ‘climate fatigue’ set in?
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
Richard Kerr asks this question1 amid new polls by Pew and Gallup suggesting that fewer Americans (from 2007 to 2009) think warming is happening (71% to 51%) and that the seriousness of warming is being exaggerated (30% to 41%).
Scientists and politicians have been doing their part to convey the seriousness of our situation:
- Chris Field (Stanford ecologist): We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we’ve considered seriously.
- Ban Ki-moon (UN Secretary General): The [2007 IPCC] report is a wake-up call. The time for hesitation is over.
- Stephen Schneider (Stanford climate change scientist): Things are looking much worse than was thought in the 1970s and ’80s.
But Roger Pielke, Jr. suggests that climate scientists may have boxed themselves into a corner after such a strong consensus statement in the 2007 IPCC report: “Where do you go after ‘unequivocal’?”
One direction, which some scientists have turned to, has been to ramp up the sense of urgency by emphasizing how changes in the Arctic are happening faster than expected, as we saw in the last post on accelerating Greenland ice thaw. As someone who studies climate impacts in boreal and Arctic ecosystems, I can attest that this approach is not exaggeration.
However, this may not be working. Matt Nisbet suggests there is still a messaging and communication problem:
“[I]t’s very difficult for any single [climate] event to break through competing issues and information.” For Americans, those issues now include two wars, a lurching economy, and health care reform. “Given the complexity of climate change,” Nisbet says, “any one event will be downplayed [by partisan critics]. I think the real long-term challenge is public education, to prepare people. What does it mean to be an American in an era of climate change?” Climate scientists need to refocus their message, he says, from the broad sweep of global warming to small regions such as New England and the Southwest and to immediate issues such as personal health. At the same time, new conduits to individuals need to be created to replace crumbling traditional media. A tall order (underlining mine).
That’s part of the purpose of this blog, and it needs to become part of the mission of higher education.
Update: Nisbet also wrote this week about the reach of scientific claims at his blog, Framing Science.
Related posts:
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Overview
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 1: Environmental Literacy
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 2: Communication
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 3: Personal perceptions, values, and behaviors
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 4: Political-economic context
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 5: A perfect storm of climate change denial
1Kerr, R. (2009) Amid worrisome signs of warming, ‘climate fatigue’ sets in. Science 326:926.
Posted in communication and framing, environmental literacy, higher education | 1 Comment »
Climate Literacy—A new blog
Friday, November 13th, 2009
Here’s a new blog to keep an eye on. It’s called Climate Literacy by Mark McCaffrey in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado.
It’s aims:
Because climate science is inherently interdisciplinary, it can fall through the cracks in traditional science education. Students sometimes graduate from high school or even college without learning climate basics. Climate literacy is aimed at helping address these gaps.
Related posts:
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Overview
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 1: Environmental Literacy
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 2: Communication
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 3: Personal perceptions, values, and behaviors
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 4: Political-economic context
- Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 5: A perfect storm of climate change denial
Posted in climate change science, environmental literacy | 1 Comment »
What should every citizen know about ecology?
Friday, November 13th, 2009
That’s the title of a new paper1 by a team of ecologists in the current issue of Frontiers in Ecology (subscription required). They offer several suggestions for the ongoing conversation on environmental literacy.
Here’s their framework for ecological literacy (in a nutshell, excerpts and paraphrases)…
Posted in environmental literacy, higher education, nature and culture | No Comments »
Introducing film to scientific meetings
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Here’s a great way to link the humanities and the natural sciences: Showcase film festivals at annual scientific research meetings. That’s what the Southeastern Estuarine Research Society is proposing at their upcoming Benthic Ecology meeting at UNC-Wilmington.
This is not just a film showing. It’s a call for original works by filmmakers, from students to professionals, alongside the usual call for papers and posters. That’s cool.
The program announcement…
Posted in environmental literacy, higher education, nature and culture | No Comments »
This week’s good ideas in campus sustainability: 11/9/09
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Let’s take a look at five innovative and exciting ideas from Stanford University, City College of New York, Western Michigan University, UC-Davis, and the University of Arizona…
Posted in campus sustainability, environmental literacy, environmental science, higher education, sustainability, sustainable development, technology, transportation, urban | 1 Comment »
Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 5: A perfect storm of climate change denial
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
Climate change skepticism and denial are fueled by a perfect storm of all four problems coming together. This is why skeptics and deniers won’t go away, and as long as they’re influential, some people will stay disengaged.
- Problem 1—Environmental literacy: When people don’t know enough about climate change, they can be easily persuaded by contrarian arguments. If the average person can’t explain (1) why modern warming is more influenced by greenhouse gases than natural causes and (2) how we know we are breaking out of natural ranges of climate variability (i.e., a clear sign that warming is anthropogenic), then climate deniers will always be able to peddle credible-sounding misinformation to the public (more on how to answer these correctly in a future post).
- Problem 2—Communication: As mentioned in an earlier post, media plays a role here. Traditional media balancing of competing claims adds to the perception of uncertainty. And when there is uncertainty, people tune out because they think the issue is not resolved. By keeping climate warming shrouded in as much uncertainty as possible, skeptics prevent people form forming strong opinions about it. The media needs to do a better job distinguishing legitimate criticisms of climate science vs. dubious claims from deniers.
- Problem 3—Personal perception, values, and behavior: We saw how sociodemographic factors and cultural identity affect whether people engage climate warming. Half of Americans have not yet accepted the idea that warming is real, and 82% have not taken personal action. When political parties, certain religious groups, and some conservative think tanks align themselves on the anti-warming side of the issue, there will always be a political base for denial.
- Problem 4—Political-economic context: The enormous inertia built into techno-institutional complexes and the huge sums of power and money exchanged by politicians and the fossil fuel industry ensure that there will be constituencies at the highest levels of government who deny warming and fight mitigation.
The question is how much resistance will these problems pose to enacting real reform?
Posted in behavior, climate skeptics deniers and contrarians, communication and framing, environmental literacy, nature and culture | 3 Comments »
Why don’t people engage climate change? Problem 1: Environmental Literacy
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Prerequisite post: Why don’t people engage climate change? Overview
When awareness of or engagement in an issue like climate change is low, we often assume education will help. And it can, but only to a point, as we will see in this and other posts.
With respect to climate change, there are at least four challenges with environmental literacy:
Challenge 1: People don’t know enough about how human and environmental systems work and interact.
This report by the National Environmental Education and Training Foundation presents ten years of research describing the state of environmental literacy in America.
As you might expect, it’s filled with stories of some basic facts that people get wrong, such as
- 45 million Americans think that the oceans are our source of fresh water (it’s not –rivers, rainfall, reservoirs, and aquifers are)
- 120 million Americans think that spray cans are still a source of ozone-damaging CFCs (these were phased out with the 1989 Montreal Protocol; most propellants nowadays include a variety of gases—interestingly, for food these gases include CO2 (which contributes to warming) and N2O (which contributes to both warming and ozone destruction)).
- 120 million Americans think that disposable diapers are the #1 landfill problem (paper is actually).
- 130 million Americans think hydropower is America’s top energy supply (it’s coal).
Posted in climate change science, environmental literacy, higher education, nature and culture | 7 Comments »
Why don’t people engage climate change? Overview
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Last week, Pew published a new poll suggesting a declining number of Americans believe there is solid scientific evidence of climate warming and that warming is a serious problem.
In the next several posts, I’m going to address the question of why it appears that people don’t seem to engage climate change. This work is based on research for a talk I gave a few days ago.
Helping people understand and become active in dealing with climate change is challenging, but it’s also an incredibly fascinating interdisciplinary enterprise. You’ll see that disciplines across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities are needed for this conversation.
And you’ll see some things that are counterintuitive and may surprise you.
I’m going to consider five major problems contributing to this challenge, shown in order of what I consider to be increasing difficulty to deal with:
Posted in behavior, climate change science, climate skeptics deniers and contrarians, environmental literacy, higher education, nature and culture, policy | 5 Comments »
Does environmental literature beget environmental literacy and behavior?
Monday, October 26th, 2009
In the fast-paced world of science and policy, the contributions of the humanities are often overlooked in the transition to a more sustainable world.
In this week’s Online First edition1,2 of Environment and Behavior, Catherine Mobley and colleagues argue that reading environmental literature might be an important factor promoting environmentally responsible behavior (ERB), such as cutting back on driving, recycling, buying organic foods, using public transportation, using renewable energy, reducing home water and energy use, etc.
The study of ERBs is complex, owing to a number of sociodemographic factors like education level, income, and political orientation that can influence behavior:
Sociodemographic factors –> values, attitudes, and worldviews –> ERB
This team asked whether reading three texts, considered by many to be part of environmental literature’s canon,
- Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac
- Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring
- H.D. Thoreau’s Walden
might be an additive factor in explaining ERBs above and beyond socioeconomic factors. They used a survey of >7,000 people to assess the degree to which people exhibit ERBs.
Their results suggest that this may be the case. Controlling for the confounding sociodemographic factors, they found a small but significant increase in ERB for people who read environmental literature compared to those that didn’t.
The results spur more questions than they answer:
- Why does reading environmental literature affect ERBs? For example, as the authors state, does environmental literature increase ecological foundations, conceptual awareness, or action skills? Does it allow one to vicariously experience these issues or reinforce the reader’s prior experiences with environmental issues?
- How do these results factor into environmental literacy outreach? The authors suggest community book clubs or combining book discussions with specific community actions or analyses of contemporary environmental issues and solutions.
- What might be the value of other environmental texts and readings that appeal to a wider constituency (e.g., environmental justice)?
- What should be included in an environmental literary canon?
1Mobley, C. et al (2009) Exploring Additional Determinants of Environmentally Responsible Behavior: The Influence of Environmental Literature and Environmental Attitudes. Environment and Behavior (Online first).
2Bowdoin people can access the article here.
Tags: literature
Posted in behavior, environmental literacy, environmentalism | No Comments »
Subscribe & Share
Follow on Twitter