Famous youth climate activist, Greta Thunberg (soure: TheEcologist.org)
Nearly a year ago, I first joined the Climate Action Leadership program at Royal Roads University for a Graduate diploma. It was last May that I first joined my new team in our primary course CALS 501 Leading Climate Action in Society. It was there that we began our year-long journey in a design challenge that took the form of developing a conceptual prototype of an Open Educational Resource (OER) for empowering climate action in the public. In the time-span of working on this design challenge, I have been fundamentally changed by the course and related course’s teachings, as well as by my team’s research on this topic. For in attempting to answer this critical question of mobilizing the public in climate action my normative way of thinking and being on this topic has been profoundly shifted in ways I could have never imagined.
In the beginning, I had a lot of assumptions and preconceptions in answering the design challenge question. For instance, I was assured that only political action would match the scale of the crisis, with anything else being a mere distraction. In the beginning I also would have told you that we need more Greta Thunbergs’ of the world, the famous youth climate activist. Thus, the key was mobilizing youth as they were the next generation to inherit our warming world and we would need to develop their knowledge, as well as skills in addressing the issue. Finally, I would have told you that the climate ‘apocalypse’ is near, echoing what many scientists and advocates remind us in some of the latest reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that we only have the current decade left to drastically cut emissions by half if we have any chance of stabilizing the earth’s climate by the end of this century (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2018; 2021; Stocker et al., 2013). Now fast forward to the present day of this blog post, after a year of transdisciplinary learning and experimenting with the design challenge, my thinking on this topic has significantly changed.
First and foremost, my team’s research question asked: what do we mean by climate action? In answering this, I’ve come to learn about the power of ‘everyday activism’ by such scholars as Carlie Trott (2021a) who describes ‘children’s everyday climate crisis activism’ as a diverse set of ways that children and young people express themselves and take action on the climate emergency. Taking a feminist stance that the ‘personal is political’ and that our everyday actions are situated in political dimensions, Trott argues that ‘small individual behavior changes’ matter (Ibid). In her research on a Climate Change Education (CCE) after-school program in the United States called ‘Science, Camera, Action’ for 10-12 year olds, she explored the implications of ‘everyday activism’ with young people (Ibid). Everyday activism included ‘family action plans’ to reduce household emissions, as well as other small-scale actions, such as tree planting and food gardens (Ibid). Trott advocates for ‘everyday activism’ as she argues that there is a common false duality found in climate action research, specifically between the personal vs. the political change with the former regularly described as mere distraction from the structural change that is necessary (Ibid). Contrarily, her research discovered that there was a ‘ripple effect’ that occurred in everyday activism, whereby youth inspired their families and even communities to engage in climate action (Trott, 2021b). Additionally, Trott contends that there is long-term culture shifting work occurring in everyday activism that is moving the pendulum away from our fossil fuel-based lifestyles (Ibid). Hence, it is not an ‘either or’ scenario of the personal vs. the political in climate action, but rather they are two sides of the same coin and that everyday activism by young people contains transformative potential for helping to shift our collective society towards a more sustainable pathway. That is why our team’s design challenge was fundamentally changed by these kinds of notions in no longer supporting dualistic notions of activism but rather including a plethora of forms of activism, from the everyday to the political.
Next, the question then became about how social change is driven by our intended audience, namely youth? In researching this question it became quickly apparent that there is no one age demographic that is more influential in affecting change than the other. Despite much of the social movement literature focusing on youth demographics historically and presently with Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement, there is evidence to support that intergenerational learning plays a critical role in social change (Elsen & Ord, 2021; Howard-Jones, et al., 2021; Ferrari-Lagos, Martinez-Abad & Ruiz, 2019; Trott, 2020; 2021b). In intergenerational learning, there is a crossover effect of learning between the generations. For instance, research shows that young people are often influenced by the views and attitudes of their adult role models such as family members, and as such young people are more likely to participate in a climate action if their role models endorse, support or are actively involved in it (Hodson, 2014). Contrarily, there is also research to show that adults are swayed by their children’s interests, desires and activities, such as certain behaviors, language patterns or popular culture references that are adopted by adults over time in a way that shifts the older generation’s worldviews and lifestyles (Elsen & Ord, 2021: Hodson, 2014). Hence, while “political power rests with adults, children can influence the ways in which that power is exercised” (Hodson, 2014, p. 89). That is why our design concept shifted substantially with this understanding from a youth-centered approach to an intergenerational approach.
Lastly, the final research question asked: how do our dominant cultural narratives affect climate action? In researching this question, there was much literature uncovered on ‘apocalypse fatigue’ where critical scholars point out that the dominant climate narratives are rife with ‘apocalyptic’ fetishizing (Jordan, Bernier, Zuiker, 2021; Macgregor, 2014; Whyte, 2018), For there has been an acute bombardment of films, books, scientific reports and other cultural texts in which ‘fear is the central trope’ of imagined climate futures (Ibid). These kinds of dystopian narratives entail ‘gloomy’ future scenarios of extreme natural disasters that induce further war, pandemics, social upheaval, political unrest and far-right totalitarianism (Macgregor, 2014). Yet these narratives often work to depoliticize the issue with climate change understood as a universal human threat rather than seen as a political issue with some actors more culpable than others (Ibid). Take for instance the argument by Potawatomi scholar-activist Kyle Whyte (2018), who states that apocalyptic narratives act as a form of setter amnesia that plainly ignores the historical legacy of violence and destruction from colonialism that has performed an ongoing sequence of apocalyptic events to peoples, lands and species (Ibid). Moreover, these narratives also ensue counterproductive responses that can demotivate and demobilize the public to take action through fear-based thinking (Allen & Crowley, 2017). Disciplines such as neuroscience have shown us that emotions play a critical role in learning generally, but especially in learning related to climate change, given it is such an emotionally and politically charged issue (Ibid). For example, emotions can affect how information is acknowledged and assessed, one’s decision-making ability and subsequently how they respond to the issue, such as with action or inaction (Allen & Crowley, 2017, Trott, 2021c). That is why fear-based emotions such as grief or anxiety can be paralyzing for many, while anger and hope are often cited as emotional responses that mobilize people to act (Jones et al., 2021; Ojala, 2016). Hence, ‘emotional literacy’ is so fundamental to the field of climate action, as it relates to a self-awareness by learners in recognizing their own emotions, while being able to manage their responses (Hodson, 2014). Therefore, again we shifted our design concept to focus on solution narratives that motivate people rather than apocalyptic narratives that demotivate, as well as we focused on fostering emotional literacy and well being to the climate crisis as a way to devise coping skills for the crisis.
In summary, the last year has been a profound and transformative experience in reshaping my previously held notions of what public mobilization on the climate crisis can look like. By learning across multiple ways of knowing – including in science, communications, education, psychology, Indigenous knowledge, and much more – we have been able to broaden our understanding of the problem with far more innovative solutions using transdisciplinary thinking. In the end we applied this new thinking to our design concept of a mobile app for climate action. First, the mobile app included a broader range of what climate action and activism mean, including ‘everyday activism’ which makes change-making on the issue more inclusive and accessible to more people. Second, our mobile app switched from a youth focus to an intergenerational focus, by shifting our theory of change that targets parents as role models in their families and who could then share the app or actions across their household. Third, the app is ‘hope’ focused with showcasing tangible climate solutions that anybody can take rather than being problem focused. Finally, the app is centered around fostering well being and mental health as a mechanism for developing sustainable and long-term habits in climate action. In closing, answering the question of publicly-led climate action is far too critical a question to be left to old paradigm thinking. Instead, new ways of thinking and acting in the world are needed to empower many more of us to act as change-agents on the climate crisis. Thus, it is about changing the face of climate leadership in ways never seen before. Our conccept is potentially one way of answering this call.
References:
1. Allen, L.B., Crowley, K. (2017). Moving beyond scientific knowledge: leveraging participation, relevance, and interconnectedness for climate education. Global Warming, 12(3-4). DOI: 10.1504/IJGW.2017.084781
2. Elsen, F. & Ord J. (2021). The Role of Adults in “Youth Led” Climate Groups: Enabling Empowerment. Front. Polit. Sci. 3:641154. doi: 10.3389/fpos.2021.641154
3. Ferrari-Lagos, E., Martinez-Abad F., & Ruiz, C. (2019). Education to mobilize society for Climate Change action: The Climate competence in education. TEEM’19: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality, pp.966–970. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3362789.3362853
4. Hodson, D. (2014). Becoming Part of the Solution: Learning about Activism, Learning through Activism, Learning from Activism. In: Bencze, J., Alsop, S. (eds) Activist Science and Technology Education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4360-1_5
5. Howard-Jones, P., Sands, D., Dillon, J., & Fenton-Jones, F. (2021). The views of teachers in England on an action-oriented climate change curriculum. Environmental Education Research, 27:11, 1660-1680. DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2021.1937576
6. Jones, L. et al. (2021). 2020-Vision: understanding climate (in)action through the emotional lens of loss. Journal of the British Academy, 9(5), pp. 29–68. DOI https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/009s5.029
7. Jordan M, Bernier J, Zuiker S. (2021). The Future Is Open and Shapable: Using Solar Speculative Fiction to Foster Learner Agency. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice.;70(1):309-329. doi:10.1177/23813377211028263
8. Masson-Delmotte, V., et al. (2018). Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5°C (Summary for Policymakers). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In Press. Retrieved from: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/
9. Masson-Delmotte, V. et al. (2021). Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (Summary for Policymakers, Working Group 1). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. Retrieved from: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/#SPM
10. Macgregor, S. (2014), Only Resist: Feminist Ecological Citizenship and the Post-politics of Climate Change. Hypatia, 29: 617-633. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12065
11. Ojala, M. (2016). Facing Anxiety in Climate Change Education: from Therapeutic Practice to Hopeful Transgressive Learning. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 21, pp. 41-56.
12. Stocker, T.F., et al. (2013). Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (Summary for Policymakers). Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. Retrieved from: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf
13. Trott, C.D. (2020). Children’s constructive climate change engagement: Empowering awareness, agency, and action. Environmental Education Research, 26:4, pp. 532-554, DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2019.1675594
14. Trott, C.D. (2021a). What difference does it make? Exploring the transformative potential of everyday climate crisis activism by children and youth. Children’s Geographies, 19:3, pp. 300-308, DOI: 10.1080/14733285.2020.1870663
15. Trott, C.D. (2021b) Youth-Led Climate Change Action: Multi-Level Effects on Children, Families, and Communities. Sustainability. 2021; 13(22):12355. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13221235
16. Trott, C.D.(2021c). Climate change education for transformation: exploring the affective and attitudinal dimensions of children’s learning and action. Environmental Education Research, DOI: 10.1080/13504622.2021.2007223
17. Whyte, K. P. (2018). Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1(1–2), 224–242. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618777621