Climate Change Education weblog

Climate Change is really quite simple - it is a "tame problem"

One of the sessions at the climate change conference on December 11th at the Danish School of Education, DPU, Aarhus University was held by Bill Mckibben.

McGibben is a co-founder and director of http://www.350.org/ and co-founder of "International Day of Climate Action" (that was on October the 24th 2009).

Bill McGibben held an inspiring session on how to communicate a complicated topic across cultural and geographical borders.

One solution to this challenge was the international 350 campaign - 350 being the maximum number of CO2 in parts per million in the air (this was actually the most technical part of his session).

The trick was to take a complicated problem and communicate it in a very simple manner.



Earlier this morning at the same conference Professor Mike Hulme from the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, had argued that the climate problem actually is a "wicked problem" (using the words of Horst Rittel) in contrast to "a tame problem".
Click here to read about wicked and tame problems on Wikipedia.

So being activists having to communicate to a wide array of different people, Bill McGibbens and his fellow activists, countered this approach explaining this seemingly wicked climate change problem with one three-digit word - 350!

The argument is, that if we - the population of the world - can agree to keep the CO2 level in the air below 350 ppm we can deal with the consequences of climate change.

Using a simple slogan - 350 - the organisation had build up an international campaign involving many environmental organisations - all communicating the simple 350 message.

Bill McGibbens presented a lot of touching pictures from the campaign from around the world giving a nice example on how to educate grow-ups in an alternative manner while building up an environmental campaign.
See all these pictures on the 350 campaign website.

Afterwards Andrew Revkin from New York Times also talked about media and communication and gave examples from his blog.

One of his examples was a lawyer dressed as a polar bear warning President Obama of failure (The lawyer was actually Brendan Cummings, who was one of the persons ensuring that polar bears was listed under the Endangered Species Act in the US).

Revkin's point with this little example was that - probably - this lawyer would not have gotten his attention if he had been dressed the way a lawyer normally is. Click to open Andrew Revkins' blog on Climate Change from New York Times.

As you might have read a few days ago on this blog - the Danish educational portal - emu.dk - also have a furry - or feathery friend - communicating the climate change challenges to the educational world. The mascot EMU and his furry friend Teddy are visiting the COP15 conference these  day.

This saturday I was also out in the real world as well. Demonstrators and activists from all over the world - literally - gathered in front of the Danish Parliament and marched 5 km to the Bella Center where the COP15 takes place.

In the picture below you will notice at least two large campaign logos and a guy wearing a "Halliburton Survival Suit" (you may know that one from "The Yes Men Fix The World".



So there are many ways the get peoples' or pupils' attention - but do you really have to dress up as a bear or wear that kind of suit?

Posted at 2009-12-17, 09:55 by Anders Raun in Generelt  |  Kommentarer[0]