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Climate Change - a teaching resource for SFCC instructors

A resource guide for SFCC faculty who wish to build climate change and climate justice content into their courses.

Eco-Anxiety - Hope vs. Doom

Instructors who teach climate change face the challenge of deciding how to balance hope (a focus on solutions) and the unavoidable "doom and gloom" of the issue. This challenge is described in an article by Krista Hiser and Matthew Lynch,

Poorly executed climate change messaging on the part of teachers, known among faculty as  “glooming and dooming,” can produce despair, being overwhelmed, numbness, hopelessness, fatigue, and cynicism.... While climate literacy is an imperative for college students, there is a degree at which immersion in climate change information can become  paralyzing: It is literally too much information, too fast, in too many dimensions. Worry and Hope: What College Students Know, Think, Feel, and Do about Climate Change.

This challenge is shared by anyone who attempts to communicate or educate on the topic of climate change. Psychologist Renee Lertzman writes:

For too long, there’s been a preoccupation with a “hope and despair” or “doom and gloom” binary. Climate change is the ultimate communications challenge: How do you motivate action in the face of what can appear to be an overwhelming situation? How do you inform without scaring people into inaction? What’s the magic formula? Some fear, with a dash of hope? Go all in on talking about solutions? Lay it all out there—the good, the bad, the ugly—and trust people can cope with it? -How Can We Talk About Global Warming

The short answer to this challenge is to include a focus on solutions in your curriculum. Instructors report that many students are well aware of the "doom and gloom" aspects of climate change, but are not aware of all the work that is already well underway to promote mitigation and adaptation, and are heartened to learn about all of these promising developments. 

Including solutions is not a panacea for the complexities of teaching climate change. See the article Climate Grief: Our Greatest Ally? by Jennifer Atkinson. See additional resources below about acknowledging ecological doom, focusing on hope and solutions, and balancing doom and hope.

A good summary of the current state of climate and global politics is this sobering article from Rolling Stone, 2020 Zero Hour: There’s No Stopping Climate Change, But How Bad It Gets Is Still Up To Us.

Acknowledge ecological doom