Framing and Re-Framing in Environmental Science: Explaining Climate Change to the Public

The authors discuss how tangible user interface objects can be important educational and entertainment tools in environmental education. The authors describe their interactive installation artwork Reefs on the Edge, which incorporates tangible user interface objects and combines environmental science and multiple art forms to explore coral reef ecosystems that are threatened by the effects of climate change. The authors/artists argue that the use of tangible user interface in an installation-art setting can help engage and inform the public about crucial environmental issues.

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Taking Lessons from Silent Spring: Using Environmental Literature for Climate Change

Literature ◽

10.3390/literature1010002 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 2

Author(s):

Craig A. Meyer

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Public Engagement ◽

Environmental Science ◽

Environmental Literature ◽

New Era ◽

The Public ◽

Silent Spring ◽

Climate Crisis ◽

Contemporary Climate ◽

Insight Into

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) created a new genre termed “science nonfiction literature.” This genre blended environmental science and narrative while ushering in a new era of awareness and interest for both. With the contemporary climate crisis becoming more dire, this article returns to Carson’s work for insight into ways to engage deniers of climate change and methods to propel action. Further, it investigates and evaluates the writing within Silent Spring by considering its past in our present. Using the corporate reception of Carson’s book as reference, this article also examines ways climate change opponents create misunderstandings and inappropriately deceive and misdirect the public. Through this analysis, connections are made that connect literature, science, and public engagement, which can engender a broader, more comprehensive awareness of the importance of environmental literature as a medium for climate awareness progress.

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The Fight Against Doubt

10.1093/oso/9780190869229.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Inmaculada de Melo-Martín ◽

Kristen Intemann

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Scientific Community ◽

Vaccine Safety ◽

False Beliefs ◽

Scientific Process ◽

The Public ◽

Scientific Consensus ◽

Scientific Claims

Current debates about climate change or vaccine safety provide an alarming illustration of the potential impacts of dissent about scientific claims. False beliefs about evidence and the conclusions that can be drawn from it are commonplace, as is corrosive doubt about the existence of widespread scientific consensus. Deployed aggressively and to political ends, ill-founded dissent can intimidate scientists, stymie research, and lead both the public and policymakers to oppose important policies firmly rooted in science. To criticize dissent is, however, a fraught exercise. Skepticism and fearless debate are key to the scientific process, making it both vital and incredibly difficult to characterize and identify dissent that is problematic in its approach and consequences. Indeed, as de Melo-Martín and Intemann show, the criteria commonly proposed as means of identifying inappropriate dissent are flawed, and the strategies generally recommended to tackle such dissent are not only ineffective but could even make the situation worse. The Fight against Doubt proposes that progress on this front can best be achieved by enhancing the trustworthiness of the scientific community and being more realistic about the limits of science when it comes to policymaking. It shows that a richer understanding is needed of the context in which science operates so as to disarm problematic dissent and those who deploy it in the pursuit of their goals.

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Climate Ethics

10.1093/oso/9780195399622.001.0001 ◽

2010 ◽

Cited By ~ 32

Author(s):

Stephen M. Gardiner ◽

Simon Caney ◽

Dale Jamieson ◽

Henry Shue

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Justice ◽

Environmental Science ◽

Human Dimensions ◽

Individual Responsibility ◽

General Reference ◽

Science And Policy ◽

Climate Ethics ◽

Climate Economics ◽

Intergenerational Ethics

This collection gathers a set of seminal papers from the emerging area of ethics and climate change. Topics covered include human rights, international justice, intergenerational ethics, individual responsibility, climate economics, and the ethics of geoengineering. Climate Ethics is intended to serve as a source book for general reference, and for university courses that include a focus on the human dimensions of climate change. It should be of broad interest to all those concerned with global justice, environmental science and policy, and the future of humanity.

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Climate Justice

10.1093/oso/9780198813248.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Sustainable Development Goals ◽

Climate Justice ◽

Policy Discourse ◽

Mary Robinson ◽

The Public ◽

Development Goals ◽

To Come ◽

Run Up ◽

High Level

Climate justice requires sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its resolution equitably and fairly. It brings together justice between generations and justice within generations. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals summit in September 2015, and the Conference of Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015, brought climate justice center stage in global discussions. In the run up to Paris, Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, instituted the Climate Justice Dialogue. The editors of this volume, an economist and a philosopher, served on the High Level Advisory Committee of the Climate Justice Dialogue. They noted the overlap and mutual enforcement between the economic and philosophical discourses on climate justice. But they also noted the great need for these strands to come together to support the public and policy discourse. This volume is the result.

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Green Deal as a Climate Changes Dam on the Road to Health

European Journal of Public Health ◽

10.1093/eurpub/ckaa165.295 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽

Author(s):

M Jevtic ◽

C Bouland

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Climate Change ◽

Circular Economy ◽

Clinical Medicine ◽

Health Sector ◽

The Public ◽

The Road ◽

National Public Health ◽

On The Road ◽

The Impact

Abstract Public health professionals (PHP) have a dual task in climate change. They should persuade their colleagues in clinical medicine of the importance of all the issues covered by the GD. The fact that the health sector contributes to the overall emissions of 4.4% speaks to the lack of awareness within the health sector itself. The issue of providing adequate infrastructure for the health sector is essential. Strengthening the opportunities and development of the circular economy within healthcare is more than just a current issue. The second task of PHP is targeting the broader population. The public health mission is being implemented, inter alia, through numerous activities related to environmental monitoring and assessment of the impact on health. GD should be a roadmap for priorities and actions in public health, bearing in mind: an ambitious goal of climate neutrality, an insistence on clean, affordable and safe energy, a strategy for a clean and circular economy. GD provides a framework for the development of sustainable and smart transport, the development of green agriculture and policies from field to table. It also insists on biodiversity conservation and protection actions. The pursuit of zero pollution and an environment free of toxic chemicals, as well as incorporating sustainability into all policies, is also an indispensable part of GD. GD represents a leadership step in the global framework towards a healthier future and comprises all the non-EU members as well. The public health sector should consider the GD as an argument for achieving goals at national levels, and align national public health policies with the goals of this document. There is a need for stronger advocacy of health and public-health interests along with incorporating sustainability into all policies. Achieving goals requires the education process for healthcare professionals covering all of topics of climate change, energy and air pollution to a much greater extent than before.

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Confidence in Local, National, and International Scientists on Climate Change

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13010272 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 272

Author(s):

Aaron C. Sparks ◽

Heather Hodges ◽

Sarah Oliver ◽

Eric R. A. N. Smith

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Public Policy ◽

News Media ◽

Internet Survey ◽

Party Affiliation ◽

The Public ◽

Research Findings ◽

Scientific Report ◽

Media Reports ◽

Change Beliefs

In many public policy areas, such as climate change, news media reports about scientific research play an important role. In presenting their research, scientists are providing guidance to the public regarding public policy choices. How do people decide which scientists and scientific claims to believe? This is a question we address by drawing on the psychology of persuasion. We propose the hypothesis that people are more likely to believe local scientists than national or international scientists. We test this hypothesis with an experiment embedded in a national Internet survey. Our experiment yielded null findings, showing that people do not discount or ignore research findings on climate change if they come from Europe instead of Washington-based scientists or a leading university in a respondent’s home state. This reinforces evidence that climate change beliefs are relatively stable, based on party affiliation, and not malleable based on the source of the scientific report.

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Pedagogical publics: Creating sustainable educational environments in times of climate change

European Educational Research Journal ◽

10.1177/14749041211005618 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 147490412110056

Author(s):

Lovisa Bergdahl ◽

Elisabet Langmann

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Public Pedagogy ◽

Sustainable Living ◽

The Public ◽

Educational Environments ◽

Adults And Children ◽

Emotional Dimensions ◽

The Public Sphere ◽

Sustainability Challenges ◽

Educational Scholarship

The paper offers a pedagogical response to the complexity of sustainability challenges that takes the existential and emotional dimensions of climate change seriously. To this end, the paper unfolds in two parts. The first part makes a distinction between ‘public pedagogy’ as an area of educational scholarship and ‘pedagogical publics’ as a theoretical lens for identifying certain qualities within educational environments, exploring what potential this distinction has for rethinking public pedagogy for sustainable development. Turning to Bonnie Honig (2015) and her call for creating ‘holding environments’ in the public sphere as a response to the democratic need of our time, the second part translates her political notion into an educational notion asking what fostering pedagogical publics as holding environments might involve. In relation to sustainability challenges, it is suggested that an environment that ‘holds’ people together as a pedagogical public has three main qualities: a) it makes room for new rituals for sustainable living to be developed in order to offer a sense of permanence; b) it invites narratives that can frame sustainability challenges in more positive registers; and c) it reinstates an intergenerational difference that serves to give back hopes and dreams to adults and children in troubling times.

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Climate Change Inaction and Optimism

Philosophies ◽

10.3390/philosophies6030061 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 6 (3) ◽

pp. 61

Author(s):

Philip J. Wilson

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Economic Growth ◽

Collective Action ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Collective Action Problem ◽

The Public ◽

Policy Context ◽

Positive Action ◽

Ideological Fantasy

The problem of climate change inaction is sometimes said to be ‘wicked’, or essentially insoluble, and it has also been seen as a collective action problem, which is correct but inconsequential. In the absence of progress, much is made of various frailties of the public, hence the need for an optimistic tone in public discourse to overcome fatalism and encourage positive action. This argument is immaterial without meaningful action in the first place, and to favour what amounts to the suppression of truth over intellectual openness is in any case disreputable. ‘Optimism’ is also vexed in this context, often having been opposed to the sombre mood of environmentalists by advocates of economic growth. The greater mental impediments are ideological fantasy, which is blind to the contradictions in public discourse, and the misapprehension that if optimism is appropriate in one social or policy context it must be appropriate in others. Optimism, far from spurring climate change action, fosters inaction.

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Public perceptions of who counts as a scientist for controversial science

Public Understanding of Science ◽

10.1177/0963662519856768 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 28 (7) ◽

pp. 797-811 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Brianne Suldovsky ◽

Asheley Landrum ◽

Natalie Jomini Stroud

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Political Ideology ◽

Genetically Modified Organisms ◽

The United States ◽

Public Perceptions ◽

The Public ◽

The Us ◽

Science Media

In an era where expertise is increasingly critiqued, this study draws from the research on expertise and scientist stereotyping to explore who the public considers to be a scientist in the context of media coverage about climate change and genetically modified organisms. Using survey data from the United States, we find that political ideology and science knowledge affect who the US public believes is a scientist in these domains. Our results suggest important differences in the role of science media attention and science media selection in the publics “scientist” labeling. In addition, we replicate previous work and find that compared to other people who work in science, those with PhDs in Biology and Chemistry are most commonly seen as scientists.

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