Education in the Climate Crisis: Perspectives from Science, Students, Teachers, and Policy

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

"When it comes to the climate emergency—we are in deep, deep s***!" recently observed Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, who resorted to the vernacular to viscerally describe humanity’s collective peril.[1] The new 2021 policymaker summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that “climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the globe with human influence contributing to many observed changes in weather and climate extremes.”[2] The United Nations Secretary General just warned that “we are coming to a point of no return.”[3] UNICEF’s recently released a Children’s Climate Risk Index, revealing “that 1 billion children are at ‘extremely high risk’ of the impacts of climate change. That is nearly half of all children. And it is happening today.”[4]

While awareness of the climate emergency slowly percolates into mainstream consciousness, its imminent social, political, and education reconfigurations receive little attention in this unprecedented ecological shift to the Anthropocene age. Governments and international agencies still base long-term planning on the assumption of carbon availability – a classic example is continued airport construction – when, one way or another, carbon-based fuel or biological life will reach an endpoint (through complete extraction or unlivable heat, respectively). This panel addresses the challenges presented for education with the inevitable shift to a post-carbon reality in hopes of having a scientifically-based planning conversation while some decision-making choices remain available. The papers in this panel analyze the science behind and responses of different constituencies - students, teachers, and system-level actors - to our irrevocably approaching post-carbon reality, while reflecting upon the CIES 2022 theme of illuminating the power of idea/lism as an orienting goal for new approaches to education in the climate emergency.

The overarching solution to the climate crisis is restoring balance in the natural world – not balance “with” the natural world, as though the natural world is separate from humans. Given this overarching goal/requirement of balance, which essentially means that we do not overproduce, overconsume, or otherwise distort natural relationships, we must recalibrate how we approach life and prepare our younger generations. In the immediate term, we need to invest heavily in regenerative everything: energy, food, etc. But in education, we need to not only learn about, invent, and invest in regenerative systems in real time, but we also need to reshape and translate our education systems to reflect the underlying principles of a regenerative education approach.

Within education, this means a fundamental redesign of the purpose and approaches of any jurisdiction’s system. Students need to become aware of and adept at what it will take to live on an increasingly ecologically fragile planet. This means a focus on the basics – not math and English – but learning about and doing regenerative food production, inventing regenerative energy systems (if that’s possible), discovering and deploying carbon sequestration methods, redesigning cities, etc. It also means learning how to live together collectively on the planet, rather than devolving into quasi-apartheid autocracies. It is difficult, but necessary, to imagine not only everything students will need to understand, but how a supportive system looks, because we have not yet seen it on the planet. Nevertheless, we do have a few key examples of components of such a system, some of them familiar to many in education. Right now, though, most education systems remain entrapped in global discourses about efficiency, rates of return, and equity of access; they (we) would do well to shift the primary frame to ecological regeneration via social justice as the focus that orients our broader endeavors.

To better understand enact these necessary shifts, three papers and a discussant offer ways forward. The first paper outlines the various ways in which students organise in order to respond to the Climate crisis, including divestment movements and curriculum development. The second paper presents the teacher perspective, including results of studies of climate policy and education system readiness, the development of the Teach for the Planet campaign by Education International (EI), and emerging areas of teacher activism. The third examines future economic conditions and how education might support new modalities of exchange. Finally, the discussant will serve a dual role of both responding to the papers presented and bringing the scientific discourse on the climate emergency to bear on this important conversation.


[1] Harrabin, R. (2021, July 16). Climate change: Science failed to predict flood and heat intensity. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57863205.
[2] IPCC (2021). Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson- Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J. B. R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press.
[3] Milman, O. (2021, June 11). Interview: António Guterres on the climate crisis: ‘We are coming to a point of no return.’ The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/11/antonio-guterres-interview-climate-crisis-pandemic-g7
[4] UNICEF (2021). The Climate Crisis is a Child Rights Crisis: Introducing the Children’s Climate Risk Index. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). https://www.unicef.org/media/105376/file/UNICEF-climate-crisis-child-rights-crisis.pdf

Sub Unit

• 21st Century Socialism and Education: Global Alternatives to Patriarchy, Racial Capitalism, Militarism, and Climate Change

Chair

• Michael Gibbons, American University

Individual Presentations

• The Global Student Movement’s Response to the Climate Crisis - Alexandra Seybal, OBESSU; Sebastian Berger, Global Students Forum

• Teacher Union Efforts to Address the Climate Crisis in Classrooms and Advocacy - Christina Ting Kwauk, Kwauk and Associates

• What Systems Level Changes does the Climate Crisis Require and How can Education Help? - Michael Gibbons, American University; Christina Ting Kwauk, Kwauk and Associates; Frank Adamson, California State University, Sacramento

Discussant

• Frank Adamson, California State University, Sacramento