Education for the New Normal

NASA Satellite Image (NASA/Getty Images)

If there’s a silver lining to be found on the massive cloud that covered the better part of the eastern US last month, it’s this: people are talking seriously about real risks of climate change. 

From provocative headlines (“It’s Global Warming, Stupid”, Bloomberg Businessweek) to carefully selecting language and asking the right questions (“On Hurricanes…”, Dot Earth) — people are talking about climate change in ways we haven’t seen before.

For whatever reasons, Katrina, Ike, Snowpocalypse, Irene, the wildfires, the droughts, the warmest month on record — and the many other extreme weather events of recent years — failed to get people to really connect the dots between extreme weather and climate change.   

Thoughtful experts are having important conversations about whether climate change caused Sandy, or strengthened Sandy, or made Sandy more likely, or had anything to do with Sandy. But everyone seems to finally agree that we need to be prepared for more extreme events like Sandy. 

I believe the “super storm” — with its implications for presidential politics — will serve to condense the disparate events of recent years into a popular awareness that we are in a “New Normal” regarding the climate. The images of submerged New Jersey neighborhoods, exploding power plants, vehicles floating down Manhattan avenues will change our country’s collective consciousness for good.  Rising oceans will no longer be punch lines.

As we assess the damage to people in our communities, our infrastructure, and our economy, we will have the opportunity to reassess how we prepare for the impacts of climate change.  Whose responsibility is it to make sure we’re ready? Most probably think government, community groups, and maybe business should take this on.

But leadership from another sector — higher education — is also critical.

We know the importance of emergency preparedness: anticipating the risks, alerting people, and evacuating vulnerable areas. We know we need comprehensive and effective response plans. We will need to put up seawalls, restore natural barriers, and simply abandon certain parts of the coast.  This recent TED talk by Vicki Arroyo, Executive Director of the Georgetown Climate Center, provides a good overview of these and other climate adaptation strategies.

We also need to make some more fundamental shifts in how we design our communities, generate energy, produce and transport goods, and generally go about meeting our needs.

Colleges and universities have a unique responsibility in preparing society for this New Normal.  In many ways, they are already fulfilling that role, particularly when it comes to reducing climate change pollution. More than 660 colleges are actively participating in the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). They are publicly reporting progress on climate action plans; providing education, research, and community engagement on climate; and pursuing net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from campus operations. Together they represent over 6 million students, offer 10,000 sustainability-related courses, and have avoided 1.6 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (reducing emissions 25% on average) in the past five years. 

With regard to climate adaptation, much of the research that helps us understand climate change impacts, and strategies for dealing with them, comes from our country’s universities.  There are early signs that climate preparedness is making its way into the classroom, and some instances of campus-community collaboration around implementing adaptation strategies.

Last year, I facilitated a group of higher education leaders, scientists, and sustainability experts, in developing Higher Education’s Role in Adapting to a Changing Climate.  The report provides an overview of trends in the sector and some exciting examples of what’s happening individual campuses.  But the group concluded that higher education institutions “as a whole, have not focused on adaptation sufficiently to date.”

In addition to more research, colleges and universities have opportunities to experiment and role-model solutions on their campuses, and partner with local communities to implement successful strategies more broadly.  Perhaps most importantly, they have the opportunity — and responsibility ­— to ensure that all graduates, from all disciplines, understand the climate challenge and are prepared to lead society through it.

Weather they become politicians or office administrators, architects or CEOs, artists or engineers; all citizens need to understand our new climate. And they must be prepared to minimize the drivers of further climate change, while creating safer communities and more resilient economies.

Stay going. 
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Vicki Arroyo: Let's prepare for our new climate

Vicki Arroyo, Executive Director of the Georgetown Climate Center, talks about preparing for the impacts of climate change in a recent TED Talk.  Hopefully Sandy will help us get better at this.  Thanks to Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange (CAKE) for passing on this on:



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Adapt or ... Mitigate?

Adaptation or Mitigation?  These are two terrible terms used to communicate possible responses to climate disruption (and its causes).

Adaptation refers to preparing for and dealing with the impacts of climate disruption.  Adaptation efforts can range from building sea walls higher around coastal cities (to stem the damage from storm surges and rising sea levels) to developing diverse, resilient, local food systems (to reduce dependence on far-off monoculture agriculture operations that are vulnerable to single threats like drought or pests).

But adaptation is a problematic term.  To many, it represents giving up on efforts to stem the human drivers of climate change (primarily carbon dioxide emissions). It's the term of choice for Big Oil — because they can spin it so it sounds easy to adapt: 'we're an adaptable species, after all, this is nothing new.'

Nothing could be further from the truth.  The impacts of climate disruption that we're already feeling and that will intensify without dramatic action will be unlike anything humans have adapted to during the past 10,000 years of civilization — as Dianne Dumanoski calls it, the "long summer" in the climate record that has made human civilization possible.

Bob Perkowitz, founder of ecoAmerica, outlines this issue well here, and calls for the use of the term "preparedness" instead of "adaptation."

Mitigation is another clunky term.  It means stopping the activities that drive climate change — namely greenhouse gas emissions and land-use changes, like deforestation.

As action on mitigation has been woefully inadequate over the past three decades or so that we've been at it, many are now focusing more adaptation, after years of hopeful resistance.  As the impacts become more plain, we're forced to do so.  Furthermore, we must reconcile the fact that there's plenty more climate disruption locked in — even if we stopped all emissions today, time delays in the system ensure that we'll be feeling the impacts from past emissions for decades to come.

So, this new dynamic leads to some practical strategic planning dilemmas on the ground.  How do we organize and differentiate our mitigation and adaptation efforts?  Our work with colleges through the ACUPCC started with a strong focus on mitigation — part of the commitment is eliminating net greenhouse gas emissions.  Last year, we published a white paper looking at higher education's role in preparing society for the impacts of climate disruption.  This process led us to questions like: 'where does adaptation fit into the ACUPCC?' and 'do we need a parallel initiative focused on adaptation?'

This article by Mark Trexler — Why it's okay to mix up climate mitigation, adaptation — published in GreenBiz  yesterday offers a welcome solution on how to think about it.

As we emphasized in our higher ed preparedness report (and as most adaptation advocates stress), there are plenty of ways to prepare for climate impacts that also contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  For example, better building design and insulation can protect against the dangers of heat waves, while also keeping people cool with less energy-sucking AC.

Keep an eye out for the continued increase in focus on preparedness, and hopefully a focus on smart efforts that make our communities safer, while also reducing our contributions to climate disruption.

For a great in-depth discussion on some of these issues, check out this segment — "An Inconvenient Silence" — from HuffPo Live (it's worth suffering through the Google Hangout echo issue).  And this recent interview with John Kerry from Grist.

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It's happening: Being prepared for climate change

Over the past year at Second Nature I’ve been coordinating the “Higher Education Adaptation Committee” – a group of college and university administrators, climate scientists, sustainability professionals and educators exploring higher education’s role and responsibility in ensuring that society is prepared to weather the storms of climate change.

On Monday at the Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference at the University of Maryland, I co-facilitated a session on this topic with David Caruso, President of Antioch University New England (who serves on the Adaptation Committee). 

It proved to be a timely event.  On the day of the session, temperatures in New Hampshire were expected to reach the 90s (in April!). It’s been a warm spring all over the northeastern US.  And it was a warm winter.  Not really a winter at all in many places. Here, the mild weather doesn’t feel all that bad.  But if you understand the implications of climate disruption, it’s pretty horrifying. 

I won’t run through the usual list of climate impacts – but here are just a few of recent headlines:

• Drought Expands Throughout US
• Drought, Flooding And ‘Multiple, Combined Outbreaks’ Of Pests Threaten To Reduce Asian Agricultural Output 50%
• Hansen et al.: "Extreme Heat Waves... in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 Were 'Caused' by Global Warming"
• Is Climate Change Bringing the Arctic to Europe? 
• Arctic Warming Favors Extreme, Prolonged Weather Events 

The following video does a great job of explaining how increases in the global average temperatures (global warming) drives all kinds of complex climactic changes - what's become known as "global weirding":

On May 5, 2012, the global network of concerned citizens under the 350.org banner will be “connecting the dots” between these impacts of climate change and what they represent in terms of economic damage, ecological destruction and human suffering.

To minimize this damage, we need to continue to create better ways of doing things.  We need to eliminate our greenhouse gas emissions and land-use changes that are driving climate change. 

We also have a moral obligation to prepare our society the best we can for the impacts of climate change that are already happening and will continue to happen based on changes already “locked in” from past emissions.

Higher education has a particularly critical role - and responsibility - with regard to climate preparedness, which brings me back to our conference session:

I provided a quick overview of the Adaptation Committee’s work and the report we published in November – Higher Education’s Role in Adapting to a Changing Climate – which provides a high-level look at what colleges and university are and should be doing through education, research, community engagement, and campus operations to prepare society for the impacts of climate disruption.

Dr. Caruso spoke about the role of presidents and senior administrators in this process – emphasizing the need to engage governing boards in the process.  He also provided compelling examples about how Antioch is weaving climate mitigation and adaptation through cross cutting activities that encompass curriculum, research, campus operations, and community engagement.

With the average tenure of a college president around five years, it’s important to ensure continuity and long-term commitment via the trustees.  In most cases, it will likely require a few years of persistent and skillful leadership from the president to really integrate this understanding and perspective throughout the Board.  But Trustees need to understand the risks climate change poses to their campus – they have the fiduciary responsibility for the institution.  If they don’t understand these risks, they aren’t fulfilling that responsibility.

The economic damages to campuses from stemming from climate impacts can be enormous (for example, see "Learning from Disaster" (pdf) - a report by UNCF on the impacts of Hurricane Katrina).  More important than the costs, they pose serious health and safety risks to the students, faculty and staff.  These could be direct impacts from extreme weather events on campus, or indirect from disruptions to agricultural production, supply chains, or critical infrastructure.

Beyond the responsibility to their own campuses and constituents, colleges and universities have a responsibility to all of society to provide the education and research needed to prepare for climate impacts.

During our session, we engaged the group in a dialogue about what was happening on their campuses, and around ways to teach students in all disciplines not just about climate adaptation, but for adaptation – so that it’s not just climate scientists and ecologists who understand the importance of adapting to these changes, but also economists, policy-makers, city planners, journalists, teachers, and so on. 

We spoke about how low-income communities and communities of color are often more vulnerable in the face of climate impacts, and are often hit “first and worst” by them.  This dynamics brings up important social justice issues that must be front-of-mind in this work.

While many universities are conducting important research to help communities in their regions understand the expected impacts and how to respond to them, more comprehensive approaches are needed to ensure the level of response that this challenge demands. 

On the bright side, a recent poll shows that most Americans link these extreme weather events to global warming, and intuitively understand - at least to some degree - the risks.  It's on all of us to ensure that we translate that understanding into action so we are as prepared as possible to minimize the damage and hardship.

Stay going. 

Making Connections

We know the human brain isn't great at conceptualizing time.  Events can simultaneously "feel like yesterday" and "like a lifetime ago."  With our busy day-to-day extreme events can fade from memory altogether - headline news, millions of people's lives forever changed.  This video helps remind us of what we've seen in the past few years -- the expected impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from years ago, decades ago, accumulating and now resulting in more frequent and extreme record-breaking weather events.



As a result of our inaction and lack of global leadership to reduce emissions over the past 20 years, more and more people in the scientific and sustainability communities are increasing their attention on adaptation - that is, recognizing that we've locked in significant impacts, how can we change our systems - agricultural, transportation, cities, energy - to handle the unpredictable impacts of climate disruption in the least painful way possible?

ICLEI's had an adaptation program since '06 and hosts an annual Resilient Cities event. Clean Air - Cool Planet's "Climate Preparedness" program also aims to help communities survive for more climate impacts.  The National Academies of Science has more resources and reports on adaptation.  The federal government recognizing the threat to Americans this poses, and requested an interagency report last year.     The threat climate disruption poses to the global economy and rich and poor people alike is clear to the Economist.  Business managers are increasingly being called on to evaluate how climate impacts will impact their business.  On Monday Fast Company ran a story titled "The 'New Normal' Weather."

That last piece is authored by Curt Stager, whose president at Paul Smith's College, John Mills, is serving on the Higher Education Climate Adaptation Committee - a group we've convened through the ACUPCC, made up of college and university presidents, scientists, and other experts to evaluate how our institutions of higher learning should be preparing society to be more resilient in an unstable future - through their education, research, operations, and community engagement.  (Stager's also got a new book out - Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth - which I'm about to dive into.)

With dangerous heat advisories in effect in NYC and the tristate area, in early June, it's not hard to keep the need to adapt this front-of-mind.  In fact, if you're paying attention, it's impossible not to.

Stay going.

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