So much climate change thinking and action is based on individual thinking and actions. This can lead to a simplistic view of the crisis, and to a strong sense of disempowerment and guilt.
The crisis is systemic. It must be understood at a systems level.
This is true, not just for Earth Systems, but for political, economic and social systems. In fact, we even need to sometimes look at paradigms and system dynamics themselves.
By fixing our understanding into a systems perspective, and by orientating projects towards systems solutions, the Academy offers a new, creative and empowering framework of engagement.
All 16 chapters of the Student Guide are written in collaboration with experts. The core science data is supported by the world’s most eminent climate scientists.
Material cuts through to the key systemic issues. Provides a clear vantage point of the science and human dimensions of the crisis. The core content first establishes the scientifically defined planetary boundaries, and then works inwards to define and explore the human puzzles in play.
The Student Book (and accompanying YouTube video series) takes advanced science and makes it engaging and richly informative without compromising on depth of academic rigour. Learners feel empowered and motivated by grappling with the core issues.
Deepens, connects and landscapes the fragmentary pieces of environmental knowledge that might be picked up by schools and the media. Every issue is explicitly or implicitly informed by the planetary boundaries. The philosophical narrative that stitches the content together brings out the interconnectedness of everything.
There are some common worries about education for sustainability – namely, that the content is “too negative”, the issues are “too heavy”, or that things are “too political”.
A systems approach offers a fresh and constructive pathway forward.
The Climate Academy programme does not ignore the depth of the crisis. It does not sidestep its complexity. And, it is not shy about the political and economic realities of what is going on.
By acknowledging these difficulties and putting them into a systems framework, it makes it possible to actually flip these problems into something engaging and rewarding. It is precisely the depth, complexity and interconnected nature of the crisis that makes it interesting to plug into and respond to.
It is often said that we must be careful, when teaching or communicating about the climate crisis, to “not be too negative”.
There are many layers to this concern. Part of this common fear about negativity might be a product of the reduction of human beings into merely consumers. When we think inside a standard economic way about our situation, humans are quickly relegated to just having the simplest motivations: being happy, and avoiding pain or sadness. This crops out the deeper drives that we have, for truth, meaning, and purpose.
The Climate Academy is not only committed to a full view of the crisis, it is also committed to acknowledging and respecting the full range of systems at work inside a human. We are not just creatures of pleasure and pain. Beyond our desires, we are wired into questions of justice, identity and meaning. Our appetite for knowledge and understanding is not just transactional, it is a deep part of who we are.
The pull to understand, to get to the bottom of things, is a real part of what it is to be human. We should not let our response to the climate crisis be framed by a simplistic ‘emoji’ view of life.
From the earliest age to the latest age, we enjoy games.
We enjoy discovery, we enjoy projects, even if they include difficulties.
There is an energy which fires up in us when “we are onto something”. It is an energy known both by scientists doing research and by activists fighting for a cause.
The human pursuit of truth, beauty and justice are all part of the same game.
If we only think about climate change in terms of simplistic individual actions, of “more this, less of that” then we shut down so much. The flat narrative of the individual carbon footprint does not sustain the imagination of learners much beyond the doors of primary school.
In traditional climate education there is no puzzle to be solved, no game to be played, so engagement typically drops off. Throwing things into a systems perspective opens up a whole new set of challenges.
And this game of understanding the crisis systemically absolutely involves questions of politics, economics, psychology, sociology and everything.
How could it not?
Why would we want to reduce our understanding to simplistic collection of bite size facts and actions?
The climate itself can only be properly understood as a complex system, it cannot be understood as a few individual weather events. Likewise, the wider climate crisis can only be properly understood if we consider all the human systems that are in play, and this must include a critical examination of democratic systems, capitalist systems, social systems, psychological systems… everything. Why would we leave anything unexamined?
A Systems Understanding is not just a new way for education to look at the sustainability crisis, it is the only way we could properly do it.
