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In a recent post, I argued that climate literacy could and should be more than the domain of science education, or even related technology, engineering and mathematics. It necessarily needs to also be integrated and enriched through interdisciplinary studies including social studies, psychology, philosophy, art, and history, for starters. Understanding the basics of the science should be a basic competency that college if not high school graduates should master, in part because efforts to jump right to solutions and skip or skim over the science, which many well intended behavior or policy change efforts tend to d0, often miss the boat and ultimately won’t lead to informed decisions and solutions.
Poll after poll after poll report variations on the same theme: public concern and awareness of climate continues to drop. The recent Gallup poll highlights the finding that “48% of Americans now believe that the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated, up from 41% in 2009 and 31% in 1997, when Gallup first asked the question.” Stanford’s Jon Krosnick points out that how questions are asked… and when.. is important to factor into the polling equation. That said,, even as science continues to identify already occurring changes, such as bird migrations and rising sea levels, the way these concerns are translated from science literacy to civic literacy and policy seems to further unravel.
Peter Gleick writes in a recent op-ed:
There is no good argument against global warming. In all the brouhaha about tiny errors recently found in the massive IPCC report, the posturing by global climate deniers, including some elected officials, leaked emails, and media reports, here is one fact that seems to have been overlooked:
Those who deny that humans are causing unprecedented climate change have never, ever produced an alternative scientific argument that comes close to explaining the evidence we see around the world that the climate is changing.
Gleick blames it on ideology:
But the world of policy often doesn’t give a hoot for the world of science. That, of course, permits climate deniers to simply say “no, no, no” without having to come up with an idea that actually works better to explain what we see and know. That’s not science. It’s ideology.
Deniers don’t like the idea of climate change, they don’t believe it is possible for humans to change the climate, they don’t like the implications of climate change, they don’t like the things we might have to do to address it, or they just don’t like government or science. But they have no alternative scientific explanation that works.
Over at SLATE, Daniel Sarewitz in a piece entitled The Trouble With Climate Science comes it the issue from a different perspective:
A dangerous idea has taken hold in modern politics, and the sooner it is discredited, the better. The idea is that political disagreements can be resolved by science. Its basic logic seems sensible: As good children of the Enlightenment, we should turn to science to establish the facts about problems such as climate change before deciding what policies to implement. Yet the types of things that scientists are good at figuring out don’t have much to do with the types of things that politicians need to decide….
When people hold strongly conflicting values, interests, and beliefs, there is not much that science can do to compel action. Indeed, more research and more facts often make a conflict worse by providing support to competing sides in the debate, and by distracting decision-makers and the public from the underlying, political disagreement. In such cases each side will claim to have the scientific high ground.
Reviewing decades of environmental legislation, he concludes that “science contributes most to politics when nobody really cares that much about it.” Or if could be that people don’t really know the fundamentals and will be driven more by ideological opinions than solid data. This is not to suggest that filling up an information deficit is the way to go, either. As Mike Hulme writes in his recent book, the “deficit” model of communication is one that
places a very high premium on science for shaping of individuals and collective opinions and adopts a rational-science model for human behaviour. In relation to climate change it reasons thus: scientific research discovers the problem of climat change; science seeks to identify a range of potential solutions; scientists then inform politicians of these findings and also seek to alter public awareness, attitudes and behaviour by telling them the “facts” of climate change.
Hulme points to the “cultural circuits” model as a far more effective strategy, and, indeed, finding trusted, influential messangers makes good sense. Science teachers (and other educators) are clearly a good place to start in many communities.
Jon Miller, who has for years stressed the importance of civic scientific literacy in society, notes that 28% of US adults pass basic scientific literacy, which is up about ten points from earlier surveys; only Sweden, with 35% literacy, is above us. In the U.K. the rate is 14%. While that means there’s still nearly three our of four American adults who lack that literacy (with about a quarter of the adult population being functionally illiterate all together). In a 2007 Science Daily article, Miller, who laments that 70% of the nation can’t understand the New York Times Science section and stresses civic scientific literacy certainly doesn’t mean everyone will agree on science and technology policies, points to required science courses in U.S. colleges as a primary reason we don’t fare worse:
A professor in political science, Miller said one reason for the Americans’ slim lead is that the United States is the only major nation in the world that requires its college students to take general science courses.
“Although university science faculties have often viewed general education requirements with disdain,” he said, “analyses indicate that the courses promote civic scientific literacy among U.S. adults despite the disappointing performance of American high school students in international testing.”
Adding to the United States’ relatively good showing is Americans’ use of informal science education resources, such as science magazines, news magazines, science museums and the Internet.
Why is it important to have a population wise in the ways of science? Miller listed several reasons, including the need for a more sophisticated work force; a need for more scientifically literate consumers, especially when it comes to purchasing electronics; and, equally as important, a scientifically literate electorate who can help shape public policy.
We clearly need to have effective frames and messaging that might boil down to “it’s still real, it’s still happening… and it’s serious” and we need to do everything we can to make a major leap in our collective civic science literacy. What if we were able to improve our nation’s science literacy another ten points in the coming decade. We have a good baseline and understand many of the challenges/barriers to making headway in this crucial arena.
