Tiny Ecology Post 2
It’s the end of October and it has been a while since I spent time in my sit spot. While we were on our family moose hunting trip to Newfoundland the leaves changed color and now most of them have fallen off the trees. It’s been an unusually warm October for Happy Valley-Goose Bay and we don’t even have any snow yet. It looks like it is going to be a green Halloween; the first since we moved back to Labrador seven years ago. This will be the first time the boys will be able to wear their costumes without a snowsuit. To be honest, I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have snow for Halloween in Labrador, but my memory isn’t as good as it use to be. Mommy brain maybe?? Halloween and Christmas are my favorite time of the year. I love the decorating, costumes, the scary things, and the happiness it brings to people’s faces, especially the kids. Now that I have kids of my own, I have a great excuse to dress up and decorate!
But as I sit in my sit spot, I can’t help but think that I’m a little bit of a hypocrite. I have been tooting the climate change horn sort of speak at work and home. According to the Six Americas framework, I am part of the alarmed audience (Global warming’s six Americas, 2020). You can find out what audience you fall within by taking their quiz. My behavior, however, doesn’t always match my belief in climate change action. All I hear from my sit spot is the multiple fans going from our blow-up Halloween decorations. I tell myself it is for the boys because they love them though I am the one who bought them all, they didn’t ask for them. They are left on day and night. I tell myself that is to protect the blow-ups because my big archway got ripped from being frozen into the snow when it was turned on one previous morning and that the boys love seeing them on when they go to and get back from school. In reality, it is excuses or just plain laziness – I could go out each morning to make sure that each one is not stuck in the snow then turn them on but that takes effort and time. As I sit here in my spot, it is easy to think of all the ways that we are not actioning climate change especially with those blow-up fans going. But there are also numerous ways that we are actioning climate change such as talking about it, eating country foods, turning off the tv when no one is watching it, turning off lights when not in the room, etc. How can I motivate climate action if I am not practicing everything that I preach? As we tell the boys, no one is perfect, and we all make mistakes, but we need to learn from those mistakes and make an effort to change. I believe that being human and admitting to also struggle with climate actions would inspire trust from your audience, which is one step in inspiring action (Armstrong et al., 2018). We are all in this together, right?
Another step to inspiring action from your audience is by knowing your audience (Hine et al., 2016; Global warming’s six Americas, 2020; Wibeck, 2014). As Wibeck (2014) writes, “learning events could be designed in ways that make sense to different groups of learners”. In the Hine et al. (2016) study, they proved that message content can have a positive and negative effect on inspiring climate action depending on which of the three audience categories (dismissive, uncommitted, and alarmed) that the person fell into. While in my sit spot I came up with a couple of messages that may inspire a dismissive person and an uncommitted person into action who are located within NunatuKavut:
- Dismissive: Eating country foods is not only keeping our Inuit culture alive but it is also saving you money and NunatuKavut from harmful transportation pollution.
- Uncommitted: The unpredictable sea ice in NunatuKavut means you cannot always get to your cabins. Climate change is the culprit. How can you help? Eat locally grown foods or traditional country foods.
References
Armstrong, A. K., Schuldt, J. P., & Krasny, M. E. (2018). Establishing trust. Communicating climate change: A guide for educators.: Cornell University Press. Ebook. https://cornellopen.org/9781501730795/communicating-climate-change/
Global warming’s six Americas. (2020). Yale program on climate change communication. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/about/projects/global-warmings-six-americas/
Hine, D. W., Phillips, W. J., Cooksey, R., Reser, J. P., Nunn, P., Marks, A. D. G., Loi, N. M., & Watt, S. E. (2016). Preaching to different choirs: How to motivate dismissive, uncommitted, and alarmed audiences to adapt to climate change? Global Environmental Change, 36, 1-11. https://go.openathens.net/redirector/royalroads.ca?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1016%2Fj.gloenvcha.2015.11.002
Wibeck, V. (2014). Enhancing learning, communication and public engagement about climate change–some lessons from recent literature. Environmental Education Research, 20(3), 387-411. https://go.openathens.net/redirector/royalroads.ca?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1080%2F13504622.2013.812720