{"id":8355,"date":"2023-06-30T07:34:57","date_gmt":"2023-06-30T07:34:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=8355"},"modified":"2023-06-30T07:34:57","modified_gmt":"2023-06-30T07:34:57","slug":"symptoms-disease-and-climate-literacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2023\/06\/30\/symptoms-disease-and-climate-literacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Symptoms, Disease and Climate Literacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I've written a couple of posts recently on <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2023\/06\/21\/a-climate-literate-person\/\">climate literacy<\/a>. \u00a0 I'm writing again just to record an unease.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">Climate Literacy crops up a lot these days, in part at least because of the need to think about climate education; indeed, some say that the former ought to be the outcome of the latter. \u00a0But both are loose sets of ideas.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400\">The broad set of interrelated issues encapsulated by the term climate education is summarised in Greta Thunberg's 2022 publication, <em>The<\/em> <em>Climate Book<\/em>\u00a0which states that climate education \u201ccovers the climate, ecological and sustainability crisis holistically\u201d\u00a0 This has to be the focus, the book continues, as \u201cthe climate crisis is \u2026 only a symptom of a much larger sustainability crisis\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed it is. \u00a0It surely follows that any understanding of climate literacy has to reflect this larger sustainability crisis.<\/p>\n<p>That being so, there is a need in any understanding to draw a distinction between specific manifestations of the crisis in the here and now, and the causes of the crisis in the first place: between symptoms and disease, if you like. \u00a0It would be a mistake, for example, to treat the following medical symptoms as free standing and unrelated to a deeper-seated issue:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li data-block-key=\"ctqsj\">high temperature or shivering<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"3ovd6\">a new, continuous cough<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"bnnl6\">a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"bq6e2\">shortness of breath<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"6ihku\">feeling tired or exhausted<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"bo8vq\">an aching body<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"e4g30\">a headache<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"2btjm\">a sore throat<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"bfr84\">a blocked or runny nose<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"cqep4\">loss of appetite<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"7bbgm\">diarrhoea<\/li>\n<li data-block-key=\"fa25\">feeling sick or being sick<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>... without, that is, an understanding that all these are symptoms of Covid 19.<\/p>\n<p>So it is with global warming \/ heating.<\/p>\n<p>I was struck, therefore, by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rmets.org\/sites\/default\/files\/2022-09\/rms_climate_literacy_report_1.pdf\">research carried out for and released<\/a> by the Royal Meteorological Society last year which purported to measure school students' climate literacy.<\/p>\n<p>One question was: <em>How much, if at all, do you think the following have contributed to global warming? \u00a0 <\/em>The choices provided were:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Transport (cars, lorries, planes, trains, ships etc)<\/p>\n<p>Industry, electricity and heat production<\/p>\n<p>Deforestation, agriculture and other land use changes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 6\">\n<div class=\"section\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<blockquote><p>Production of plastic and management of plastic waste<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 6\">\n<div class=\"section\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<blockquote><p>Natural changes such as volcanoes and variations in the Sun and Earth\u2019s orbit<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The report noted: \"Almost a quarter incorrectly attribute transport as the biggest contributor to global warming vs 18% who correctly identify industry, electricity and heat production.\" [<strong>*<\/strong>]<\/p>\n<p>There was no opportunity here for the students to think about the root cause of global warming \/ heating; rather, they were directed towards only thinking about its symptoms; that is, its manifestations in the everyday economy.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the question that was asked was a nice safe one; no boats being rocked here. \u00a0The alternative <em>root-cause<\/em>\u00a0question, however, would have been far from safe in curriculum terms as it would necessarily have explored the socio-economic underpinnings of how we live. \u00a0The DfE would surely not have been best pleased had this been in the survey. \u00a0Just imagine ...<\/p>\n<p>.......................................................<\/p>\n<p><strong>*<\/strong> It turns out that secondary school students know less than the Royal Meteorological Society about the symptoms of global warming. \u00a0Who'd have thought it?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I've written a couple of posts recently on climate literacy. \u00a0 I'm writing again just to record an unease. Climate Literacy crops up a lot these days, in part at least because of the need to think about climate education;...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}