Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When we hear about the emissions scenarios used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, do we really understand what they’re assuming about future fossil fuel combustion? And what do these emissions scenarios imply about the steps needed to achieve climate policy goals and decarbonize our energy system?
In this fourth episode of our climate science mini-series, we dive into the carbon cycle to understand how the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels accumulate in the atmosphere. We also discuss how climate science is taught, the concepts that students struggle to understand, and what the science of human reasoning and teaching can tell us about how best to communicate this enormously complex subject to a lay audience.
I started to write a brief review of David W. Orr’s 2016 book Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward. I found, however, that a longer “essay” was what I felt called to write. Orr’s book is the best thing I have read on the overall social-change challenges of this century.
Humans are motivated by love, belonging, meaning, and mattering. People love good stories—even ones (or especially one) that have shame, fear, guilt, and anxiety. To understand such stories, one has to have a conscience and care about the world. There’s no need to sugarcoat the situation we’re in; let’s put a rest to that argument. What we need is heaps of fierce compassion and bravery.
Suffice it to say that, at a time when our president openly denies that climate change is real, let alone the most consequential challenge we face, the NYT screwed up by hiring yet another columnist to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that immediate action is necessary to avoid the collapse of human civilization.
Given that most people in industrialized countries accept that climate change is a scientific reality, why do so few rank climate change as one of their high priorities? Why do so few people discuss climate change with their families, friends, and neighbours?
We study environmental politics, and believe the health care debate holds an important lesson for green advocates: Policies that create concrete benefits for specific constituencies are hard to discontinue.
With so much utter disconnect between the science and the unprecedented risk that further delay or lack of effective policy countermeasures will likely have on public health and societal well-being, it’s probably a good time to look (yet again) at why most climate scientists believe what they do and why theri warnings need to be urgently heeded.
In the first part of this review, we looked at the climate and energy disruptions that have already begun in the Middle East, as well as the disruptions which we can expect in the next 20 years under a “business as usual” scenario. In this installment we’ll take a closer look at “the perpetual transmission of false and inaccurate knowledge on the origins and dynamics of global crises”.
Why is there a big gap between Americans’ stated interest in global warming and our discourse about it?
Why are we failing at communicating the danger of climate change?
Regrettably, the American electorate chose a president and vice president who believe that climate change is a hoax – that the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change that is shared by hundreds of institutions and thousands of researchers is some kind of conspiracy against a vibrant economy.
