A Flanking Manoeuvre on Climate Change

I initially developed this post as a brief abstract for a climate change talk before transitioning it for Environment and Climate Change Canada’s “Have your say on Climate Change” website (link included at the bottom of the post). While I emphasize climate change here, other human-driven environmental threats, such as ecosystem degradation and pollution (not mutually exclusive), could be substituted.

The Frontal Attack: An Inherently Reactive Approach

Efforts to combat climate change have largely been aimed at emissions-heavy countries, economies, and industries, which are all led by matured generations. So, in military-speak, we are combating climate change by attacking its front, where its offensive force and power are concentrated. While a frontal attack on climate change is necessary to fix global warming to the 1.5°C target established in Paris, the approach is also inherently reactive; Endeavours to gain compliance will deliver impact, but unless environmentally connected value systems and associated behaviours are created within societies, we will continue to face the current driving front of global warming, as generation after generation assumes decision-making posts. Worryingly, research continues to signal a weakening connection between societies and the natural world, stressing the detrimental impacts to both.

The Flanking Manoeuvre: A Proactive and *Complementary Approach

Not surprisingly, enhanced nature connectedness induces pro-environmental behaviours. Combined with the knowledge that values systems form during childhood and adolescent years, emphasis on younger generations adds a proactive approach to climate change mitigation to complement the frontal attack. I call this a flanking manoeuvre on climate change, concentrating efforts on subsets of the population where values can be influenced, and increasing the likelihood that desirable behaviours emerge to steer countries, economies, and industries.

Environmental Education Reform: Competing for the Desired Future State

Environmental education is positioned to conduct this flanking manoeuvre on climate change. To achieve and sustain the 1.5°C global target in today’s digital world however, environmental education must modernize. Technology continues to be perceived as an antagonist rather than as a tool to propel children and youth toward meaningful nature connections. Environmental education could indeed fixate less on why nature connections are important and more on how captivation is created and the subsequent journey facilitated. Without innovation in this field, environmental education will be outflanked in the attention economy, rendering it ineffective, and ensuring we continue to combat climate change (and other human-driven threats to the natural world) well into the future. But with some innovation and reform, environmental education can foster self-reinforcing environmentally connected behaviours, lessening the need for the resource-heavy frontal attack, and securing the future for generations to come.

@Alan Keeso

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My previous posts on the nature connections theme are:

1. On Nature Connections: My Talk at TEDxOxbridge 2015, “The Rescue Mission”
2. On Nature Connections: E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops”
3. Attention Economics, The Digital Age, and Nature Connectedness: Introducing Environmental Education to Disruption

Top 5 Links

1. “Have your Say on Climate Change” hosted by Environment and Climate Change Canada. Share your ideas, although be advised there’s some trolling on the site.
2. “What is Climate Change?” from the David Suzuki Foundation.
3. “How ‘Pokémon GO’ is improving mental health”. How can environmental educators leverage these platforms? Could it be paired with youth citizen science, for example?
4. “Welcome to the Anthropocene” (noting that this is a hotly contested topic):

5. Ludovico Einaudi — “Elegy for the Arctic”