Sterling Terrain V02 - Flipbook - Page 12
10 | Sterling College
Why Climate Literacy:
Doesn’t Everybody Already
Know About ‘Climate Change’?
Written By
Dr. Heather Short,
Adjunct Faculty
Whenever I am asked what sort of action
by governments is needed now to address the climate and ecological emergencies, I list three things: 1) Shut down
the fossil fuel industry immediately; 2)
Create an extensive social safety-net
that includes guaranteed income and
housing so that no one is left behind
during the massive economic transition
that will result from #1; and 3) Educate
everyone (including decision-makers
and teachers) about why #1 and #2
need to happen, through a far-reaching
climate literacy campaign.
So what do I mean by ‘climate literacy’?
It is similar to language or mathematical literacy. A person needs to know the
alphabet, grammar, and vocabulary in
order to communicate in a language. In
order to do household math, one must
know what numbers mean, as well as
basic addition and subtraction. It seems
obvious that people need to use language and numbers, but why should we
be climate-literate?
The climate and ecological emergencies
are the biggest existential threats to human civilization and the natural world
that we have ever faced, and they require immediate collective action to give
us a chance at a livable world in the coming decades. It is imperative that every
citizen in a democracy understand the
scale and urgency of the actions that
need to be taken, and what is at stake,
so that we are able to judge whether the
‘solutions’ offered to us are appropriate —
if they are enough to avoid catastrophe.
The following are four points that every
climate-literate person should know:
1) The climate emergency is bad — worse
than you probably think. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) reports, on which the Conference
of the Parties (COP) negotiations are
based, are founded in doubly-peer-reviewed science conducted by thousands of highly-trained specialists from
hundreds of ethnic groups and countries. The science is as solid as it gets.
However, the scientific consensus is
tempered by government officials and
industry gatekeepers in the final published report; that, together with the
cautious language that is central to scientific research, the recommendations
from the IPCC reports are the bare minimum of which the world should aim.
The much-talked-about goal of ‘net-zero by 2050’ CO2 emissions is conservatively a race to a 50/50 chance of avoiding catastrophe. It is a way of kicking
the can down the road, banking on the
development of technologies designed
by kids who are now in grade school to
‘save’ humanity. We need to steer clear of
any mathematical uncertainties in estimates of ‘how much by what date.’ We
must stop using fossil fuels immediately.
Yes, of course that is a ‘big ask’ — but
this is do or die. Please take a moment to
really understand that.
2) The latest climate science consensus
says that the climate will stabilize very
quickly — on the order of years instead of
decades or centuries — once humanity
stops emitting greenhouse gases. This
is amazingly good news, and it is somehow left out of most dialogues about climate mitigation. Perhaps because once
understood, one must admit that we
have the means right now to stop the
climate from degrading further, yet we
choose not to do it. I’ll repeat that: We
could stabilize the climate right now if
we chose to.
3) Privileged humans in wealthy countries do not have much time to dramatically change our course to lessen the
“atlas of human suffering” that the coming decades will see — but we do have
time, and that is key. If we shut down the
fossil fuel industry ASAP and learn to
live with far less consumption of energy
and material goods, we’d have a decent
chance of preserving a livable world for
our kids and our elderly selves. Climate
heating is caused by cumulative greenhouse gas emissions — the more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the
worse the heating consequences and
the higher the chances are of passing
tipping points that will accelerate it.
4) Massive change is coming anyway —
our only way through it is to embrace it.
It is almost cliché now, but it is impossible to have a continuously-growing
economy on a physically finite planet.
Period. Our global economy is dependent on extracting and using up fossil,
mineral, and biological resources. Those
are all either running out or being destroyed. Get used to the idea of having,
consuming, using, and wasting a lot less
stuff. Technology, whether tied to the
decoupling of production from environmental damage, or betting on a future
wiz-bang invention, will not ‘solve’ this
crisis. Each of us needs to understand
that the world we grew up in is gone.
What replaces it, and how we get there,
is up to us: either a controlled descent
and a soft landing, or a hellish crash into
a new low-consumption world.