Module 4 Learning Activity
Let's wrap up this Module 4, “Why Are We Here” when it comes to climate change today and the learning activity for this module?
In terms of recapping the module, there are lots of reasons. We really only covered a few of them, but there are a whole bunch of reasons as to why we are not effectively tackling climate change and explaining why we are where we are today from the psychology, to the nature of climate change itself, to polarization of the discussion, to misinformation about climate change.
The cartoon you see here in the slide is one of my cartoons that tries to visualize the problem of climate change as really the ultimate communications challenge. On the one side of the Great Wall, you have the growing mountain of information about climate change, whether it's accelerating change, greater extremes, the fact that models are getting better. But then you have this Great Wall that's made up of misinformation, self-interest, cognitive barriers, and the fact that climate change is a wicked problem. On the other side of the Great Wall, you have politicians and individuals in terms of making decisions but not getting the information that they need to arrive at good, effective thinking about climate change. It shows how there are plenty of reasons as to why we are where we are today. We need to try and get past some of these barriers.
In this module's PDF, I'm going to point you to some great resources for digging deeper into some of these communications issues and topics. In the ebook, you can dig even deeper into the question of why are we here if you want to go into the next level.
We've talked about why are we here, and it really does help point to the challenges of making progress on climate change and preventing climate breakdown. The next module that we'll get into is the question of should we give up. Is it too late to practically do anything or to really believe that we can do anything about climate change, even though as we saw in the module on can we prevent climate breakdown, there are tons of things we can do. What's less and less clear is whether we'll do them.
In that context, does it make sense to give up? There are people who are coming to that conclusion. That is what we will dig into in the next module.
Additional Materials
We’ve again covered big topics in this Module that normally don’t get enough attention, and you could literally spend weeks exploring them in the Climate Web.
For starters, our Climate Change Psychology Ebook in the Climate Web is a great introduction to one of the biggest variables in explaining why we are where we are, namely the psychology of climate change.
A trickier topic is that of thinking of climate change as a wicked problem, or even as a super-wicked problem as some people do. One way to start exploring the question is through the topic of “systems thinking,” and our Systems Thinking Ebook is available for that. In addition, check out:
- Our Why is Climate Change a Wicked Problem? Insights Page