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Using Social Psychology for Climate Change Education
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Climate change can be a pretty scary and depressing topic, and that makes a lot of us just want to tune it out. Social psychologists have been studying this for a while now, and have some interesting ideas.

1) Future discounting. Humans are pretty bad at long-term planning. Economists, dieticians, and anyone who’s tried to get their dads to quit smoking can tell you that. Climate change moves slowly, and while impacts are being felt here and now, people still perceive it as distant in time and space.

2) Motivated reasoning. We’d like to think we’re rational creatures, weighing evidence and making decisions based on facts, but we’re not. Humans are highly emotional, social beings that seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

3) Emotional numbing. People have been hit over the head multiple times with images of polar bears on melting ice sheets, or the earth on fire. These scary visuals are emotionally jarring, and tend to disengage people from the issue. It’s a lot to take in. So we just tune out.

So how can we effectively engage people in the biggest challenge of our time? Well, knowing is half the battle. Climate & Urban Systems Partnership (CUSP) has been using what we have learned from social psychology to create climate change education programs that counteract some of those more negative reactions.

CUSP is a network of climate scientists, learning scientists, informal educators, and community organizations in four cities in the U.S. Northeast. CUSP develops and delivers programming both in museums and in the community that focus on local climate risks and educates about tangible solutions people can get involved in at the community level. CUSP is currently active in New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., and is led by the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Community programs range from short tabletop interactions at festivals, to eight-week programs at senior centers or afterschool centers, to educational workshops at community meetings. For example, in one tabletop activity, participants learn that climate change can lead to increased heavy downpours. They are then challenged to re-engineer their neighborhoods to absorb more water, using sponges to represent green infrastructure. A recent evaluation suggests that this approach not only teaches people about potential climate change impacts and responses but also leads to an increase in conversations about climate change at home. We are continuing to test the idea that engaging in a locally framed and solution-focused activity that promotes hope and empowerment will lead participants to want to learn more about the issue as a whole.

Similarly, the CUSP Map, currently active in New York City and Pittsburgh, allows visitors to make connections between their daily lives and climate impacts. The map, which is used in conjunction with other CUSP programs and products, pairs hard data with local narrative information, creating a local picture of climate impacts and solutions that values the public’s experiences and observations. For example, map users might explore a dataset about precipitation projections or floodplain changes in conjunction with a dataset that shows the location of subway lines, helping them make the connection between a projection (increased heavy downpours and flooding) and an impact (a delayed subway commute).

Our approach of keeping climate information local, relevant and solutions-focused is in line with the latest learning research and science communication research. Ultimately, we want to give hope and empower people and organizations to work beyond personal choices to make an impact on a community and city level. Collectively, we can reduce further damage to the climate and prepare for those changes that are already underway.

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Are we doing what we should?
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There’s one simple fact that we have to accept: Climate Change is real and it is here now.

This has been reflected in the rising of temperatures across the globe - last year was the hottest year on planet Earth since records began. Sea levels are also rising, with island nations such as Kiribati in the Pacific and even cities like Miami under threat!

It’s time to direct our energies to what we can do to get out of the situation we have got ourselves into. For centuries, humans have managed to solve many of the problems that had been tormenting them.  This is reflected in The Power of Man! - a Green Hatters video that tells the compelling story of mankind and its impact on our planet.                                                                                                                                                                 

At last, we are slowly waking up. There are lots of organizations which are focused on trying to reduce their impact on the environment. Governments, NGO’s, different industries and even oil and gas companies are acting. Efficient energy use and green focused strategies are in…LEED certification too. Electric cars are making inroads and there are more and more charging stations on the streets.  Applying carbon pricing on internal projects is a good start to show we are taking social impact into consideration -  even if it sometimes  seems too insignificant.  The truth is that it is being recognized.

But that is not enough!

It is not enough for large employers and government just to talk and act on carbon emission at the work place. They should assume they are in a pivotal position to take this beyond their work borders and follow the example of a lot of companies that are engaging employees in managing their carbon emission, by incentivizing them to make smart daily choices - reduce energy use at home, alternative commute options - sharing rides, bike, use public transportation available et.al.

Products are now out on the market that enable both companies and individuals to calculate their carbon emissions and encourage changes in behavior.  It is time for the rallying call for action, as global citizens, with an individual focus. 

 

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MIT Climate CoLab: Seeking high-impact climate change solutions
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On MIT’s Climate CoLab, Connect4Climate’s proud partner, your climate change solution can win a $10,000 cash prize and be part of national or global plans for climate change.  New contests seek proposals for low-carbon energy, building efficiency, transportation, smart cities, adaptation, shifting public attitudes and behaviors and many more.

Authors of winning proposals will be invited to MIT to present their proposal, enter the Climate CoLab Winners Program, and be eligible for the $10,000 Grand Prize. Plus: If your proposal is included in a top global climate action plan later this year, you will receive CoLab Points, which are redeemable for cash prizes.

Even if you don’t have new ideas yourself, work with over 50,000 members in improving other people’s ideas and support the ones you find most promising.

Entries are due May 23, 2016. Enter soon to receive feedback from Climate CoLab community members and the experts who are overseeing the contests.

Can crowdsourcing save the planet? Find out at the Climate CoLab!

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Time to End Solution Delusion?
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Circular economy is not a long difficult journey, it’s a quick easy choice between binary options.

The 8th March 2016 is an important day for everyone concerned about resource consumption and waste issues, including climate change. It’s the 50th anniversary of the solution to these problems being offered by Kenneth Boulding. Boulding’s poetic vision of a future ‘spaceman economy’ on a ‘spaceship Earth’ more than encompassed today’s vision of a ‘circular economy’. He set us the challenge that ‘man must find his place in a cyclical ecological system which is capable of continuous reproduction of material form’. The economy must ensure that resources are continually renewed, not abandoned and lost as wastes.

Given 50 years to work on this challenge, how have we done? Would Boulding be proud of our progress? The world has not been idle. A global environmental movement of millions of people has undertaken millions of initiatives every year for decades. The circular economy vision has been reinvented and relaunched with new language roughly every decade since the 1960s. There have been multitudes of conferences, hefty reports and case studies of circular resource flows. All that’s missing is any actual circular economy.

When Boulding pointed out the option of running the economy without destroying the resources it depends upon, annual global materials consumption was around 20 billion tonnes. Today we collectively get through four times more of the Earth’s resources every year, around 80Gt. As little as 6% of this is recycled into circular flows. Boulding’s warning that “the atmosphere may become man’s major problem in another generation” turned out to be well-founded. The reckless, exploitative and violent behaviours characteristic of Boulding’s ‘cowboy economy’ remain pervasive.

We shouldn’t assume we have another 50 years to make circular economy happen. So what should we assume? The easiest assumption, that our problem-solving is on the right track, offers the least incentive for new thinking. The toughest assumption, that our efforts been on the wrong track for 50 years, offers the greatest scope for disruptive thinking and new possibilities. Real solutions to looming global problems remain possible to the extent that we can look beyond conventional solutions. Ending our collective self-destruction requires first ending our collective self-delusion, which I call the solution delusion.

Tackling the solution delusion is a special category of problem, deeper and less tangible than the logistical challenge of realigning product designs and business model designs so resources flow one way rather than another. For 50 years the solution delusion has been the problem we least want to face, because it insulates us from our persistent failure with sustainability. As the tangible local and global consequences of a non-circular economy become more overwhelming, we rely even more on it to make all these problems feel less overwhelming.

Why has circular economy felt like an uphill struggle? Photo: Craig Sunter/flickr.com

Can we overcome the solution delusion and make circular economy happen for real? Certainly, if we are willing to tackle our self-delusion as well as our self-destruction. We can be aware not only of global problems and of practical solutions but also of the likelihood that some of our most common ideas on these topics may be unintentionally reinforcing the systems we seek to change – even when we talk about system change and struggle to make it happen. It may turn out that the biggest struggle with system change is not to do it, but just to see how to do it.

Our minds trick us into translating big visions such as circular economy into the smallest initiatives that we can fool ourselves into calling ‘ambitious’. Initiatives based on long-established methods, within areas of expertise where we are most familiar, are everywhere most favoured. The assumed theory of change is that gradual incremental improvements will add up over time to trigger a spontaneous shift to a new status quo, where people’s values and behaviours align with sustainability imperatives.

The alternative viewpoint is to be wary of the solution delusion. We can deliberately cultivate the non-incremental non-reductionist thinking that is trained out of us by our education, our jobs and a half-century of too-big-to-admit collective failure. From this viewpoint, circular economy is not a long difficult journey, it’s a quick easy choice between binary options. Resources become either new resources for nature or for people, or wastes in land, air or water. The materials in a shoe, a phone, a chemical or a building can become in future either new resources or wastes. The same binary choice applies to economics as a whole.

The economics can be set up to either incentivise or ignore the need to preserve current resources as future resources. Today it’s set up as linear economics, to generally ignore the systematic conversion of all kinds of resources into wastes, causing diverse problems and diverse exponential threats. This choice of economic models is not the outcome of an international committee of experts that meets every year, weighs up both options and votes to proceed with global self-destruction. It’s the default; it’s the choice we get when we don’t make a deliberate choice. It has remained the default for the past 50 years even whilst the other choice was constantly available.

Conventionally, circular economy has ended up being about design choices in the economy. It has become the logistical challenge of rearranging products and businesses so fewer resources get trashed. What has been missed is the design choices of the economy. We could, if we weighed up the options and made the decision, simply replace linear economics with circular. Ordinary market forces, of prices guiding decisions, would then take care of the logistics just as it does today when linear outcomes prevail. As a bonus, the new economics would define a new cultural reality that guides new default values and behaviours.

Photo: Jeff Golden/flickr.com

The circular economics to get circular economy is simple, though it departs radically from traditional proposals for green economies such as taxes, cap and trade, recycling fees and degrowth. To anyone pursuing incremental reductionist change, circular economics might look like theoretical nonsense. For a start there is a new term to encompass the range of possible practices in switching to circular resource patterns. Existing language could only specify individual practices such as recycling or energy efficiency or biodegradability.

‘Precycling’ is action taken now to ensure that something does not later become waste in any ecosystem. This pre-waste focus corrects the systemic error of trying to manage waste when it’s too late, at the point when all that people can think about is how to get rid of it. For example preparing for recycling, by a new product design or setting up boxes for different materials, is precycling. Waste management is the subsequent collection and recycling of the discarded materials. In one way or another every product can be precycled, so none need become wastes. Every household, business and community can prevent future waste by precycling.  

Today there is no effective incentive to get everyone precycling. Every item that ends up dumped in landfills, burnt in an incinerator or discarded in oceans is a glaring clue about missing or misguided incentives. If not ignored, these clues tell us that the conventional ragged patchwork of incentives, targets and regulations, to encourage for example more recycling or less landfilling, is futile against the scale and urgency of the challenge. Circular economics can create a circular future for products of all kinds by quickly installing an effective incentive at the necessary scale, throughout the whole economy.

Circular economics can be based on financial responsibility for the circularity of market decisions rather than intervention in those decisions. This responsibility can be fairly shared among all market participants via prices but first it needs to be allocated somewhere. Producers are given this responsibility since their decisions have the biggest influence over the circularity of their products. They should be responsible for the quantifiable likelihood of their product ending up as waste in land, air or water ecosystems, which I call ‘waste-risk’.

No existing economic tool is adequate for circular economics. My proposed new tool extends existing producer responsibility and recycling insurance from just recycling particular product types to all the ways of preventing all products from becoming wastes. Producers pay a ‘precycling premium’ to insurers according to their product’s waste-risk. Premiums go into an independent ‘circular fund’ which receives crowdsourced proposals for activities that contribute to cutting waste-risk throughout society. The circular economics would then pay to build the circular society.

What will this mean in practice? For example, fossil fuels, nuclear fuels, biofuels and all the equipment to make and use them are products. Even solar panels are products. Each of these has a waste-risk that can be used to calculate a premium to account for their compatibility with a circular future. Materials with high waste impacts, such as greenhouse gases and radioactive wastes, would pay higher premiums which would be reflected in energy prices. These prices will carry a strong message for shoppers and investors, whether or not they care about climate or circular economy or sustainability.

After a 50 year delay, we can now start the race to circular economy for real. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

Precycling premiums also carry a strong message when they are spent; ‘we’re serious about making a circular society and here’s the money to make it happen’. For example, premiums from high waste-risk fuels are not just an effective way to price carbon. The premiums are spent throughout society to phase out our waste-dumping habits, including our dependence on burning fossil fuels. Premiums would support work to boost energy efficiency and substitute fossil infrastructure with renewables. Funds would be available for expansion of ecosystems, which regenerate dispersed wastes into new resources for nature and people.

What would everyone do in a future of circular economics? Firstly, those who have been saying they want circular economy would ask governments to institute circular economics. Governments would legislate, potentially across regions such as the European Union. In order for precycling premiums to be accountable, governments would regulate to ensure transparency, fairness and effectiveness but they would not handle the funds. Scientists would provide a template for producers to calculate their waste-risks. Insurers would collect premiums from producers, which would then be spent cutting waste-risk everywhere. The public would provide crowdsourced oversight.

What would happen to conventional regulatory options such as targets, taxes, bans, product design rules and public procurement criteria? With circular economics in place, these would be little needed, just as today’s linear economy is able to generate massive waste without explicit targets and rules to encourage waste. However conventional regulation can still express a nation’s particular concerns. For example, tougher targets for cutting emissions can inform higher premiums for products with high risks of becoming emissions. Green public procurement or subsidies can support favoured solutions.

The precycling approach to circular economy is a fresh response to Kenneth Boulding’s 50 year old challenge. This is the moment in history when we will continue with the default solution delusion – or choose to meet this challenge. We will continue to explore how much circularity is possible within the default linear economics – or how fast circular economy is possible within new circular economics. We will continue to struggle with the default of accelerating unsustainability – or we will learn to correct the systems that keep causing it. I hope you will join me to help make this choice!

The article was originally published here. Banner photo: Carsten Tolkmit/flickr.com

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Connect4Climate awarded Green Oscar at the Global Green Pre-Oscar Party
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13th Annual Global Green Pre-Oscar Party to honor World Bank Group's Global Partnership program - Connect4Climate, UN Foundation & Global Green Champions

Global Green will roll out the green carpet for the eco-conscious stars and allies at its 13th annual pre-Oscar party on Feb. 24 at the Mr. C Beverly Hills Hotel that will feature an opening act by Charlie Puth, special headlining performance by Stevie Wonder and dinner program emceed by renowned journalist Soledad O’Brien. The event will recognize the World Bank’s Connect4Climate initiative, as well as the UN Foundation and Global Green Champions who include elementary and middle school student gardeners who will help launch a global educational curriculum through a partnership with the MUSE School.

The World Bank Group’s global partnership program, Connect4Climate, will be awarded for public outreach, youth engagement and advocacy work that it has been doing to advance environmental and climate change education, and to find innovative ways to take climate change concerns to a wider public, especially by working with the creative industries to maximize exposure of the issues at stake and encourage the acceleration of solutions. 

“We are so pleased to recognize the extraordinary impact of Connect4climate,” said Global Green CEO, Dr. Les McCabe. “It’s especially appropriate to acknowledge the World Bank during Oscar week because of their successful engagement of the film community. Their Action4Climate competition enabled more than 260 young filmmakers from 70 countries to present their local stories to a global audience, and they brought together over 170 Film Commissions and other film industry organizations to pave the way for an international ‘greening of the silver screen’ through the work of their ongoing Film4Climate initiative.”

Lucia Grenna, Program Manager of Connect4Climate, who will accept the award, notes, “my organization is dedicated to ending poverty. But, as World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has said many times, we will never end poverty if we don’t tackle climate change, in part because climate change hits the poorest the hardest. Celebrities and the creative industries, including the film industry, can all make a difference in raising awareness for climate action and motivating lower carbon lifestyle changes.  We need a global movement for climate change: everyone’s action counts and it is everybody’s business.”

This article was originally published here.

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'The X-Files' went green
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As FOX's iconic sci-fi series The X-Files returned to television in January 2016, the cast and creative team worked to ensure that the show remained as timely and ambitious as ever. The new six-episode event reunited David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, and continued to enrich its mythology, introducing new characters and conspiracies at every turn. Yet, even as the series built on its own fictional history, it also built on its legacy behind the scenes, including its long-running commitment to environmental sustainability.

The previous entry in the franchise, the 2008 feature The X-Files: I Want to Believe, was one of the first films to go into production following the launch of 21st Century Fox's corporate sustainability program in 2007, and it was among the first to implement the green production practices that Fox helped pioneer, such as prioritizing alternative fuels and recycling materials used on set.

"When I first started working in the business, we would just take sets and throw them away," said series creator Chris Carter in an interview on green production for the movie's DVD release. "That's changing. There is a new directive, and I think Fox is at the forefront of that directive, using recycled materials whenever possible, recycling what you do use, and looking at it as a total approach. I was very excited about that."

The film's green efforts behind the scenes helped define best practices for the entire industry, so when the Fox Television Group gave Carter the chance to revisit The X-Files once more, he and the crew picked up where they left off, integrating sustainability into every department's daily operations.

However, the new series was not without its challenges. It filmed across 40 individual locations in British Columbia, with each requiring elaborate set construction, lengthy transportation demands, and long shooting hours calling for sustained electricity and fuel use. To mitigate these challenges, Fox brought on a dedicated green production consultant to work with each department, including set construction, transportation, wardrobe, props, catering, hair & make-up, and more, to find ways to make the production as efficient as possible.

Thanks to these efforts, the production managed to divert more than 81% of its total waste from landfill, recycle 100% of the aluminum and steel used in set construction, use only lauan plywood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), replace plastic water bottles with refillable ones, avoiding the use of 45,760 plastic bottles, and recycle more than 35 tons of "dirty" EPS foam used for set construction, breaking new ground for the entire industry.

For more information on green production behind the scenes of The X-Files, read our detailed case study and check out the exclusive video below published on 21st Century Fox Social Impact.

The X-Files airs Mondays on FOX at 8:00 PM EST/PST.

This article was originally published here: https://impact.21cf.com/what/2016/02/x-files-green-production.html

Two Weeks of COP 21 in 10 Minutes

[video:https://youtu.be/gOgTxo_4Tgo]

An historic pact to combat climate change and unleash actions and investment towards a low carbon, resilient and sustainable future was agreed by 195 nations in Paris. See the best moments of COP21.

Source: UNFCCC 2015

Climate Change Explained

[video:https://youtu.be/ifrHogDujXw]

This is a simple explanation of Climate Change: the heat from human emissions is roughly equal to exploding 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs every day. Historically, every time carbon dioxide levels increase in Earth's atmosphere, the average surface temperature increases, ice melts, and the seas rise.

Source: The Daily Conversation