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Session three of the online, self-paced Climate Ambassador learning focuses on the power of starting with an action
When supporting schools’ climate action, it is tempting to want to increase students’ and staff’s awareness and sense of urgency. After all, the ‘conventional wisdom' of behaviour change tells us that being more informed and fearful about climate change will make people act.
However, Kris' explanation about why the conventional wisdom isn’t reliable suggests it’s not the most effective way to support schools’ climate action. After all, school staff and students are extremely busy already, so even if it feels intuitively good to give them lots of information about the issue of climate change, it’s probably not the best use of their time. But if increased awareness and fear about climate change won’t do it, what will?
Activity: action realised
Before watching the next video, take a couple of minutes to think of an action that you took at first for any reason, but later you thought of as having a pro-environmental or climate-positive angle. Note down:
- what your action was,
- the original reason you were doing it,
- the environmental explanation that you found for your action later on,
- how it made you feel when you realised that this was good for the environment, and
- any follow up actions that this led to
In other words, think of an action that you were doing when you all of a sudden realised ‘this is good for the environment!’ Once you have done this, choose one word to summarise how this made you feel.
Hold that thought as you watch the video below:
