Transcript Yet as nations and the international community seek

Rutgers Energy Institute
How can social sciences be integrated into
climate literacy principles?
Rachael Shwom
Assistant Professor, Department of Human Ecology
Associate Graduate Faculty,
Bloustein School of Public Policy and Sociology
Rutgers University
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Talk today:
• Introduction to me
• Introduction to our SESYNC project on integrating learning
across natural and social sciences
• The argument for social science as a part of climate literacy
• What could social sciences say?
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About me
• Undergraduate studying biogeochemical cycles and English,
masters in resource economics and policy but masters on
how scientists communicate uncertainty about climate change
before congress, worked in energy efficiency for 4 years, PhD
in Sociology with a fellowship in Environmental Science and
Policy Program at MSU
Research interests:
1. Public opinion on climate change
2. Inter-organizational networks and energy policy change
3. Lifestyles and environmental behavior
And now climate social science literacy…
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Learning to Integrate Across Natural and Social
Sciences
The Development of a Social & Ecological Framework for
Understanding Climate Change Mitigation & Adaptation
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Alan Berkowitz, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
David Blockstein, National Council for Science and the Environment
Anthony Broccoli, Rutgers University
Diane Ebert-May, Michigan State University
Robert Evans Kopp, Rutgers University
Cindy Isenhour, University of Maine
Aaron McCright, Michigan State University
Jennifer Robinson, Indiana University
Amanda Sorensen, Rutgers University
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Advisory Role: Thomas Dietz, Michigan State University
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Goal of the Project:
To develop tools that will help
undergraduate instructors develop
integrated social and natural science
classes in relation to the human-climate
system.
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Building on ideas that:
• Model-based reasoning can be an important skill to teach
undergraduates how to move from abstract to specifics/
theory to empirical
• Teaching human-climate dynamics provides an important
opportunity to link social and natural science ways of knowing
and practices
• Teaching human-climate dynamics provides an important
opportunity to teach around issues of data variability,
uncertainty, and probability
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Objectives of the Project
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To build a “human-climate” dynamics model that identifies the
main components of the systems and examples of data that
could be used in classes
• Identify what “habits of mind” are necessary for understanding
the relationships in a human-climate model and help us
identify similarities and differences in various disciplines
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Develop and refine a rubric for assessing students habits of
minds so we know how students are doing.
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Model of Human-Climate Dynamics
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Objectives of the Project
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To build a “human-climate” dynamics model that identifies the
main components of the systems and examples of data that
could be used in classes
• Identify what “habits of mind” are necessary for understanding
the relationships in a human-climate model and help us
identify similarities and differences in various disciplines
•
Develop and refine a rubric for assessing students habits of
minds so we know how students are doing.
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Essential Principles of Climate Literacy (2009)
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A climate-literate person can:
• Understand the essential principles of earth’s climate system
• Assess scientifically credible information about climate
change
• Communicate about climate and climate change in a
meaningful way
• Make informed and responsible decisions with regard to
actions that may affect climate
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What it says about the social sciences?
“This climate science literacy document focuses primarily on the physical and
biological science aspects of climate and climate change. Yet as
nations and the international community seek solutions to global climate
change over the coming decades, a more comprehensive,
interdisciplinary approach to climate literacy—one that includes
economic and social considerations—will play a vital role in
knowledgeable planning, decision making, and governance. A new effort
is in development within the social sciences community to produce a
companion document that will address these aspects of climate literacy.
Together, these documents will promote informed decision-making and
effective systems-level responses to climate change that reflect a fundamental
understanding of climate science. It is imperative that these responses to
climate change embrace the following guiding principle.”
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Can a stronger understanding of
the human dimensions of climate
change (or climate social sciences)
advance climate literacy goals?
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Structural model of activism for climate change
mitigation (Roser-Renouf et al., 2014)
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Lorenzoni, Nicholson-Cole, and Whitmarsh (2007)
• Many people do perceive climate change to be a collective
problem hardly affected by the behavioral changes of
individuals.
• At the same time, their work also suggests that many people
are hesitant to spend much time politically organizing
because of the belief that the government is mostly unwilling
to act.
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What if we not only have to correct
misconceptions and address people’s mental
models of climate change processes to
advance climate literacy?
Rationale 1 for further Integrating Social
Science in Climate Literacy :
Naïve models of politics, economics, and
human behavior may be equally responsible for
the public’s failures to communicate and act
responsibly and effectively
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Rationale 2 for further Integrating Social
Science in Climate Literacy :
• There are overlapping concepts and “habits of mind” that are
utilized in social science research practices are the same that
are needed for understanding climate change processes are
the same and can re-inforce overall scientific literacy
– Model-based reasoning
– Variation and uncertainty
– Integration across scales and systems
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Claims, Evidence and Practices
Claims: Human Drivers
Evidence with exemplars?
Archeological data, societal histories
Humans influence
climate and climate
influences humans
Population and Affluence
(GDP per capita) are
major drivers of GHG
emissions at the national
level
Fossil fuel energy is
combusted to produce
and transport the majority
of material goods
Humans factors that drive
deforestation and
reforestation are “cattle
raising complexes in
Hassan 2009; deMenocal 2011, Fagan
2009
National longitudinal datasets on
population, CO2 or methane
emissions, GDP, other variables
York et al 2003
Jorgenson 2006
The energy input output model is
based on 1967 financial transactions
in the U.S. economy.
Costanza, 1980
Data on trade, economic input–output
by sector, GDP, population, energy
consumption, and combustion-based
CO2 emissions of each region sector
were all taken from Version 7 of the
Global Trade Analysis Project
(GTAP), which compiles the primary
data from voluntary contributions of
each region (21).
Davis et al, 2010
composed of 270 case
studies that were published before 2004—
includes studies of forest regeneration
as well as forests 1970-1980, 1990s
Rudel 2013
How Scientists Know
Climate reconstruction,
archaeology, historical
ecology, energy capture
analysis - evidence of
historical relationship
between climate and human
adaption.
Multivariate Regression of
panel data on GHG emissions
from various nations over
time
Student Practices
When creating dataset (s) linking social
and natural science variables :
Individual can list/identify
variables/elements within a dataset/system.
Individual can discuss the general method
by which the information is known (i.e.,
how does the source know what they
know).
Life cycle analysis/
Input-output analysis
(for Davis - the multiregional
input output analysis is based
on monetary flows between
industrial sectors and regions
(in practice, most regions in
the present analysis are
individual countries)
Individual can evaluate suitability of a
particular method for a particular question
or set of questions.
Individual can define and discuss the use
of models (esp. integrated) to generate or
support claims. Individual can generate
models and support these with evidence.
Student can analyze and interpret
Meta-analysis of several
regional case studies
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What climate social science insights
might be most effectively integrated
into climate literacy?
Fields of geography, anthropology, psychology,
literature, science education and sociology on our
social science team:
1. Most useful to advancing climate literacy goals
2. Most robust findings – APA, ASA, and AAG all
just released reports on what they can say
about climate change
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Climate Literacy Principles
• The sun is the primary energy source for the earth’s climate
system
• The climate is regulated by complex interactions among
components of the earth system
• Climate varies over space and time through both natural and
man-made processes
• Life on earth depends on, is shaped by, and affects climate
• Our understanding of climate is improved through
observations, theoretical studies and modeling
• Human activities are impacting the climate
• Climate change will have consequences for the earth system
and human lives
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Life on earth depends on, is shaped by, and
affects climate
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Long term droughts and societal development or demise
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“The lessons of historical responses to climate stress and adaption are instructive.
The pace and scale of CC today is unprecedented in human history. Its effects on
humans will likely be both broader in scale and intensity, exacerbated by various
contemporary socio-political factors that increase vulnerability. These factors include
high population densities, urbanization, static geopolitical borders that reduce the
ability to migrate, and inflexible systems of governance.”
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Our understanding of climate is improved
through observations, theoretical studies and
modeling
• Social scientists note that many scientific estimates in integrated
climate science assessments (i.e., IPCC reports) are inherently
conservative.
• Also, much is known about the nature and extent of the scientific
consensus on anthropogenic CC debunking a popular trope that the
scientific consensus in the 1970s was for global cooling and
confirming that extremely high percentages of peer-reviewed
scientific studies and surveyed scientists affirm that anthropogenic
CC is occurring.
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Human activities are impacting the climate
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Cross-national analyses of human drivers of greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions consistently find that nations’ population size and gross domestic
product per capita are the principal direct driving forces of GHG emissions.
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Direct and indirect household energy consumption has been studied
extensively for decades. Household daily uses of direct home energy use,
household transportation energy use, and food consumption (particularly
meat and foods produced by industrial agriculture) are the top three
categories of GHG-intensive consumption. GHG-intensive patterns of
consumption are highly influenced by levels of development and also, to a
more variable extent, by cultural factors—such as institutions, values,
beliefs, and norms. For example, California has development equal to other
U.S. states but uses 42% less electricity per household than the rest of the
U.S. due to different economic and institutional policies.”
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Climate change will have consequences for the
earth system and human lives
• Climate risk is a function of both exposure to physical hazards and
societal vulnerabilities such as levels of poverty and inequality,
political power, social capital, and access to productive resources.
Some societies are much more vulnerable than others, and levels of
adaptive capacity are highly uneven on a global scale.
• Migration, for example, is often necessary when climatic conditions
make some locations inhabitable, but the option is most available to
those with adequate economic resources. When low-income
migrants are able to move, they often end up on low-cost marginal
lands equally prone to physical risks. To date, those most
vulnerable to CC often have been the least responsible for GHG
emissions. Further, the adaptive efforts of well-resourced societies
have, in some cases, worked to reinforce the status quo and
generate negative impacts for other societies, or the system as a
whole”
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Topics that don’t fit under current climate
literacy clearly that might be effective in
advancing literacy goals:
• Public opinion on climate change is a social and psychological
phenomenon
• Governance and political systems
• What role for the humanities?
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Public opinion as a social and psychological
phenomenon
Skepticism
• Public understanding of CC varies considerably crossnationally, even as it has generally increased over time due in
large part to increasing media coverage. The modest
percentages of US citizens who are skeptical of climate
science and who deny the reality and seriousness of CC are
somewhat anomalous in cross-national comparison. General
publics around the world perceive the impacts of CC to be
less severe and more temporally distant then the more
immediate impacts of other environmental problems.
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Public opinion as a social and psychological
phenomenon
Individual predictors:
Most analyses in the United States and many elsewhere find that
pro-environmental values or identity, political orientation (either
political ideology or party identification or both), and gender are
among the most consistent predictors of CC understanding. , ,
Of these, political orientation, which is sometimes measured by
proxies such as free-market ideology or cultural worldviews,
typically has the strongest effect, while the effect of gender is
often only modest. Briefly, females, liberals/Democrats, and
individuals espousing pro-environmental values or identities are
more receptive to the CC consensus claims of the scientific
community.
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Public opinion as a social and psychological
phenomenon
What’s the weather today?
A much smaller, but growing, body of studies examines how
meteorological or climatic conditions influence CC
understanding. Several studies find that temperature trends or
anomalies are weakly associated with citizens’ belief in or
concern about CC. Yet, climatic conditions more broadly do not
seem to influence CC beliefs and attitudes.
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Political and Governance Systems
• Knowledge of political systems can empower the public to
participate in collective actions to address CC. Some citizens
believe that government is not interested in or is ineffective at
addressing CC and are therefore not inclined to engage
politically or support policies. , The US has not ratified an
international treaty, but coal plant GHG emissions are being
regulated under the Clean Air Act, and many CC policies are
being implemented at the state and local levels.
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How do we advance this climate social science
literacy?
• Strengthening the knowledge where needed
• Building an approach that advances understanding of how the
natural and social sciences produce knowledge and where
students can understand “how they know what they know”
• Teaching interdisciplinary classes (maybe happening more at
college – but K-12?)
• Your ideas?
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Acknowledgments
This work benefited from support from the National SocioEnvironmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) - NSF award DBI1052875
Integrated Learning Theme: Socio-Ecological Framework for
Understanding Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
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References
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NOAA, The Essential Principles of Climate Science. (2009).
C. Roser-Renouf, E. W. Maibach, A. Leiserowitz, X. Zhao, The genesis of
climate change activism: from key beliefs to political action. Climatic
Change 125, 163-178 (2014).
I. Lorenzoni, S. Nicholson-Cole, L. Whitmarsh, Barriers perceived to
engaging with climate change among the UK public and their policy
implications. Global environmental change 17, 445-459 (2007).