Beginning to Know What I Do Not Know

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You can not know what you do not know is a statement I have used throughout my professional and academic career to help humble myself and keep my mind open. I entered the MACAL program with 12 years of experience leading climate action within the energy management sector through the reduction of building emissions and thought I had an inside track. An assumption that has been proven incorrect with each course I have taken so far. This was made more apparent in the recent CALS500 Climate Science, Impacts, and Services course in a way I did not foresee. Unexpectedly, this external experience has helped me realize how little I had actually known within how much I thought I already knew. What I thought would serve as an advantage in the MACAL program has been highlighting how much further my thoughts need to expand. It has also shown how much greater of an effort I need to put forth to achieve the level I had previously thought I was at. With this in mind, I was privileged enough to be able to question my own abilities and began a journey of both personal and professional growth.

With the realization of how much I still needed to grow, I began questioning whether I was ready to be a part of this journey or if I was here prematurely. As a result, I began suffering from imposter syndrome and began to question my fundamental understanding of climate change and climate action. One of the most useful and validating pieces of knowledge gained for me came from the class conversation in week seven’s live recording where Trevor mentions that the high-level goal is for our cohort to leave the course with the ability to find and understand climate-related information (Murdock, 2022, 11:40-11:55). While processing this, I began to question my image of academic conversations where statistics and dates recited verbatim portray one’s level of knowledge and competency in the field being discussed. I still believe that knowing and stating statistics is useful for holding conversations. But not as important as being able to have a detailed and insightful discussion regarding the topic in question. Furthermore, I find that knowing where to find the resources, how to understand the information being presented, and how to communicate the information processed is more important than being able to recite statistics. To me, this displays true competency in a dynamically changing field such as climate action. This focus on comprehension of concepts over reiteration of facts has helped me to begin overcoming the feeling of being an imposter in such a vast field of study by highlighting the importance of knowing where to find and how to process information instead of focusing on the need to try and know everything.

Entering CALS500, as challenging as it was personally, aligned itself with my professional career as I was beginning to draft a strategic energy management plan for the institute I work within. With this in mind, resources such as PCIC and Climatedata.ca provided more localized information through statistically downscaled models and scenarios allowing access to information unique to your geographic location. Furthermore, with these newly found resources, I was able to access data that better-represented scenarios that could occur in our communities instead of relying on national or global averages. In addition, these global averages may have been correct; but they do not accurately portray climate change experienced in Canada due to warming occurring at an accelerated rate of approximately double the global average (Bush et al., 2022, p.32). As a result, both the accuracy and relevance of my report were increased by using more localized data. CALS502 highlighted the importance of keeping effects localized, where possible, to encourage action and garner greater support from the intended audience (Corner et al., 2015, p.32-35). Prior to CALS500 and CALS502, I would have unknowingly generated a report that was globally accurate yet locally inaccurate and would not have realized that I was lessening the chances of gaining the Executive support I was seeking through globalizing instead of localizing.

I am both fortunate and privileged enough to be in a position where I have the ability to question both my personal and professional approaches and adapt to these new experiences and lessons as they appear. Such as, being able to bolster my own confidence that I do belong in the climate action community through deeper knowledge of the resources available and my ability to share them, despite not being able to recite every statistic out there. Being able to shift my perspective from global to local, creating a potentially larger impact within my profession is an opportunity that I am also grateful for. With the journey through CALS500 and CALS502 coming to a close and CALS503 about to begin, I am excited to once again begin knowing what I do not know.

References

PCIC. (2022, December 18). Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium. https://pacificclimate.org/       

Climatedata.ca. (2022, December 18). Climate Data for a Resilient Canada. https://climatedata.ca/

Murdock, T. (2022, November 5). Week 7 Live Session Recording Biophysical Impacts. [Live Recording]. CALS500 Climate Science, Impacts, and Services. 11:40-11:55. Royal Roads University.

Bush, E., Bonsal, B., Derksen, C., Flato, G., Fyfe, J., Gillett, N., Greenan, B.J.W., James, T.S., Kirchmeier-Young, M., Mudryk, L., Zhang, X. (2022). Canada’s Changing Climate Report in Light of the Latest Global Science

Assessment. Government of Canada. p.32. Corner, A., Webster, R., & Teriete, C. (2015). Climate Visuals: Seven principles for visual climate change communication (based on international social research). Climate Outreach. https://climateoutreach.org/reports/climate-visuals-seven-principles-for-visual-climate-change-communication/