Changing the Course of Climate Change

With the debut of Climate Action, a tireless advocate for reducing carbon emissions offers students ‘an alternative to a feeling of immobility’

Climate change is often measured in scientific data that underscore the dire consequences of unchecked carbon emissions: rising temperatures, intenstifying high tides and storms, droughts, wildfires, warming oceans, and polar ice caps. But what if climate change was also measured by the choices we can make, collectively and individually, that reduce our reliance on fossil fuels?

A new course, Climate Action, this past fall brought that perspective to the classroom. Offered in the interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Program, it melded carbon emissions knowledge with pragmatic skills that prepare students for the “collaborative work that can demonstrate how specific life choices can mitigate climate change,” said Parke Wilde, an agricultural economist and professor at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. 

He developed the curriculum with Dana Grossman Leeman at the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching. “We didn’t want to say, don’t worry,” said Wilde, who is also a member of the university’s Sustainability Council. “We wanted to say, let’s think hard about specific shifts that can directly respond to climate change now. We wanted to offer an alternative to a feeling of immobility.”

The class covered core issues, such as quantitative analysis of carbon budgets and how greenhouse gas emissions play out in food systems, renewable energy, climate diplomacy, materials engineering, sustainability planning, and transportation. Guest speakers from across the university also communicated positive climate action by sharing their perspectives on topics ranging from reneweable engineering and environmental justice to international diplomacy.

Communicating Urgency

One core course objective was to give students opportunities to become poised communicators by practicing the skills needed to persuade audiences with diverse viewpoints of scientific facts about climate change. 

In the first exercise, students gave two-minute speeches focused on crystallizing a compelling climate-conscious stance, while role-playing activities upped the ante as students engaged in a debate about whether or not climate change was a hoax.

“They were learning to listen to difficult questions a climate skeptic might ask, diagnose what fears or misinformation might lie behind the questions, and respond in a way that is both factually accurate and emotionally persuasive,” said Wilde.

Students also were assigned team projects to come up with ways to promote greater climate change awareness and, most importantly, reveal to the average person how everyday choices are inherently tied to climate change. 

One team took cues from a suggested mock “lifestyles” or “travel” show, pitching an idea for four TikTok videos spotlighting Blue Bikes, low-impact hikes, thrifting in Davis Square (instead of supporting the large carbon-footprint of the fashion indutry), and choosing a more plant-based diet, such as making their next lunch the vegan burger at Dewick McPhie.

Student Project for Climate Action

One team project pitched an idea for four TikTok videos spotlighting how easy and fun it is to be sustainably minded, like enjoying low-impact hikes, getting around with Blue Bikes, thrift shopping, and choosing to eat a more plant-based diet.

TikTok, said Sydney Taylor, A26, was a tool the team agreed was well suited to their peers, and likely to have the most impact. 

“Social media really is the future, and it’s also our present, especially for people who are Gen Z, so it seems a good fit for us,” said Taylor, an avid hiker who reminded fellow students that in New England, getting outdoors can come with stunning, panoramic views.

With about a fourth of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions attributed to food systems, another team set out to encourage more educated and thoughtful food choices. They came up with a  web application dubbed EcoBites, which is a kind of “meat calculator.” 

By entering an amount of a protein—be it beef, pork, chicken, beans or tofu—EcoBites will translate the  environmental impact of that food choice by calculating the kilograms of carbon equivalent emitted per pound of each food based on land use, farm impacts, animal feed, food processing, transport, and packaging. (Eating four pounds of beef a week, for instance, translates into a carbon dioxide equivalent of 185.1 kilograms, while tofu came in at just 6.5.)

The Power of the Truth

Wilde is characteristically hopeful the course will be back next year. For now, its debut has gained positive reviews. Jack Burton, E25, said he came away “enlightened by the amazing progress we are already making across the world” on climate change.

“Professor Wilde’s incredible optimism also inspired me to not be overwhelmed and then paralyzed with taking action to fight climate change,” he said. “Even the small things, like switching up to a plant-based diet, can make a difference across the world.”

Jon ​​Aretxabaleta, E25, shared a similar perspective as he looked back on the full sweep of the semester. “Climate change issues are huge,” he said. “It might seem like there is nothing we can do, but there is so much you can do. How you travel, what you eat, what you consume—they all affect greenhouse gas emissions and the progress of climate change.”

And perhaps the most powerful positive impression came from Wilde—how he leads the way forward by example, said Stanley Ko, E25. 

He’s literally always smiling throughout the entire class,” said Ko, who gave Wilde an unsolicited “A plus plus” for his teaching. “His positivity in the class and the passion that he brings to the life he leads set an inspiring example for us.”

As for Wilde’s takeaway from his first time teaching the class, he points to how students responded to the last essay question of the final. Students were asked to reflect on how two of the main authors studied in the course addressed hope for the future.

Some students, he said, liked the approach of Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World, which finds hope in recent good news such as the plummeting cost of solar energy and batteries. Others preferred the approach of Greta Thunberg’s The Climate Book, that draws hope instead from a spirit of vigorous collective climate action. 

Both authors, one student had written, agree on the need for “truthful communication.”

That resonated with Wilde. “Truthful communication is my highest aspiration” for the course, he said. “We are racing against time. That means we are looking at a future that is less about hope and more about motivation for action. I look forward to continuing this conversation with Tufts students in the middle years of the 2020s, a decade that history may recognize as an important turning point in the global response to the climate crisis.”

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