Teaching Climate Change without Teaching Climate Change The

Teaching Climate Change without Teaching Climate Change: The Ultimate International Issue? Scott Lankford Professor of English Foothill College

To/Too = Tautology “I want to teach Climate Change… but it is just too _______. ”

2015: Hottest Year in History

Oceans 30% More Acidic

Great Barrier Reef 93% Dead

Climate Change across the Curriculum Project Win/Spr 2016 • English 1 A Honors College Composition • English 1 B Honors Critical Thinking, Literature, and Research • English 1 C Honors Advanced Composition

Climate Change Across the Curriculum

Political/Economic Approach:

Climate Justice Approach “If slavery were an American state…it would be the world’s third-largest producer of CO 2, after China and the United States. ” – Kevin Bales

STEM/BIO Approach

Climate Lit Approach

Climate Art Approach

Critical Thinking Approach:

Confirmation Bias

Biased Assimilation

Assimilation Bias

Socially Contructed Silence Eviatar Zerubavel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University… is an expert on the sociology of socially constructed silence, which, he says, is as much a part of our communication as speech, ‘like a substance that fills in the pauses and cracks and crannies of our discourse. ’” Marshall, George (2014 -08 -19). Don't Even Think About It (p. 82).

Meta-Silence “I ask Zerubavel how we can study a silence— how we can measure something that people do not recognize as being absent. He puts it this way: ‘We have not talked at all about zoological gardens. That is not because we are deliberately avoiding it; the subject has simply not come up in our conversation. I would call this inattention because we can easily explain why we have not talked about it. But disattention is something very different. That is when we deliberately fail to notice something and cannot even explain that silence. ” --Marshall, George (2014 -08 -19). Don't Even Think About It (p. 82).

The Elephant In the Room ‘Climate change isn’t the elephant in the room; it’s the elephant we’re all inside of. ” –Bill Blakemore, CBS News

Kushal V. Jain Foothill College “Climate Change: The New Grim Reaper” Examines the psychological correlation between how our brains deal with death and climate change.

Tommy Tjandra Foothill College “Fueling the Fire We Want to Put Out: Indonesia and Climate Change”

Foothill/NASA Earth Day 2016

Civic Engagement Foothill/De Anza: 1 st CC District to fully divest from Fossil Fuels.

Links and Contacts Email lankfordscott@foothill. edu Facebook “Climate Changers” Group https: //www. facebook. com/groups/550319298479598/ Scott Lankford’s Climate Change Across the Curriculum Blog http: //mindsurfing. typepad. com/climate/ Sustainable Research and Governance FB Page (recommended ) https: //www. facebook. com/groups/211890155491678/ Eco. Criticsm, Cli-Fi, and Climate Change FB Page (recommended) https: //www. facebook. com/groups/clifigroup/