Pillar 1 : Systems Understanding - (SILVER AWARD)

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After completing Bronze, you use take a chapter of The Climate Academy Student book to teach climate change from a systems perspective.

It is when we teach something that we learn most deeply, so you will develop a certain expertise in this area of the programme that interests you the most. If you are more scientifically minded it is likely that you will explore an early chapter from the text book. If you are more interested in the human sciences, such as psychology, economics, sociology or other cultural things, then you might want to indulge a later chapter. 

This teaching can happen inside or outside of school.

Inside school:

Option1:

Give a presentation:

• In a Geography lesson about tipping points and how close they are.
• In an Economics lesson about the limits to growth and the paradox of innovation.
• In a Physics or Chemistry lesson about carbon budgets and why they matter.
• In a Literature lesson about how rational climate anxiety is and how irony can help.
• A History lesson about the ‘3.5% rule’ and how social tipping points can be triggered.
• In a Psychology lesson about ‘motion blindness’, ‘status quo bias’ or about ‘the grammar’ of our climate awareness.
• In a Sociology lesson about Dan Kahan’s insights into the public communication of science.
• In an Ethics or Religion class about the injustices exposed by the CUTx Index.

Option2:

• Read a book, research paper, or article - Watch a documentary or lecture  - about the sustainability crisis. Present your findings to your Climate Academy group.
  • How did the research advance your understanding?
  • How did the research confirm or challenge your previous understanding?
  • Did the book/paper/documentary/lecture properly recognise the planetary boundaries and the background reality of the CUTx Index? 

Outside school:

Give a presentation to:

• Your mum’s Tuesday Evening Knitting Group
  • Present the latest science on the carbon budgets and outline the role that Global North consumerism plays in pushing us over different planetary boundaries.
  • Pictured – Vappu Väänänen (Climate Academy, 2019) does exactly this.

• Your uncle’s place of work
  • Present the basic science of climate tipping points and how they expose our limited and misleading media coverage of the crisis.
• A local NGO that is committed to the environment or social justice.
  • Present the CUTx Index and how it can really sharpen our understanding of the causes of climate change and biodiversity loss.  

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