Transformative Skills for Addressing the Climate Crisis
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National and international reports have emphasized that now is a critical time to accelerate the development of the skills and abilities needed to address climate-related issues. Addressing climate change is now a challenge of collaboration and implementation at an unprecedented rate, scale and depth, which requires societies to develop radically better ways to collaborate, make decisions, solve problems and enact change.
Understanding the issue–its causes, impacts, and solutions–is critical in activating concern and motivating engagement with solutions. But while knowledge of earth systems and the human influences of climate change is necessary for transformation; it is not sufficient. Though knowing about the climate crisis requires scientific skills of observation and testing hypotheses, addressing the climate crisis and contributing to the social and sectoral transformations at scale (in power, transportation, buildings, industry, and lands and agriculture, among others) requires a more holistic set of skills. Some of the skills we need will be practical or technical, but perhaps more important (and often overlooked) are the foundational inner skills that underpin our ability to perceive, think, and act in the world. The bounds of climate literacy must be expanded to encompass inner skills that help translate scientific understanding into effective climate action.
This session will dive into the specifics of the Transformative Skills Guide and its connections to the Climate Literacy Guide, describe how the federal and non-federal partners are developing the guide, and how the new guide can inform efforts to build a fuller definition of climate literacy. The authors of this guide are excited to hear feedback from the community about how we can further refine this guide and how they plan to use it as well.