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Discuss how different students may view climate change. Each student ‘wears their own pair of green sunglasses’ when looking at this issue. Help students see the value in multiple perspectives.
I am sure that it is no secret that we do not all shares the same perspective when it comes to climate change. We have all formed our opinions based on the knowledge we have accumulated through school and media, costs to ourselves, and finally our experiences dealing with climate change.
Two of the above factors apply to me specifically. Through school, I have learned about the unfortunate human effect on the environment, and because I live in Canada, I have experienced climate change first hand as I am sure you have as well. Due to the aforementioned factors, I believe climate change to be a very real problem that needs solving.
Although everyone who is participating in this conference more or less shares my opinion, they're still a few other perspective on climate change I have heard. Two of them are:
- “Climate change is a problem, but it has been overly exaggerated. We have far more pressing social problems to deal with like wars between nations and poverty”.
- “Sure global warming is a thing, but it’s part of earth’s natural process. It has warming up and cooling down over the years. It is not because of humans”.
The importance of understanding the different perspectives is that we can not fight this issue alone. We need everyone to understand the consequences of climate change. It is crucial that we understand why people do/or do not believe in it and hopefully with that, we can give them the resources required to show them that climate change is a problem that is not going away.
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2 Comment(s)
Dear Pamela,
I agree with on the way we look at and experience climate change and how every activity of human ( war included) impact climate. However, at his platform, we are open to chose our areas of perception. There are small to big international issues with varied causes. I am sure that the world leaders will address war and destruction as one of the Major issue of discussion at COP21. Let us keep moving and I appreciate that you highlighted this issue in our discussion forum by sharing it in the Blog.
Hi Pamela,
Lovely piece of writing! I like the two perspectives you addressed: the "it's not a priority" perspective, and the "climate skeptic". Although, someone may have learned about climate change in school, it may be difficult to fully understand the science behind it. The evidence provided by climate skeptics may seem compelling to a non-scientist, but as a society, we must trust in the voice of what >90% of scientists are saying. They are the experts in the field who study these phenomena objectively and have provided overwhelming evidence of climate change.
I completely agree, but unfortunately some of my peers choose to focus on the 10% that strongly disagrees on its importance. Do you have any tips as to what I can do or say to stress how important this issue is?
Jatinder Kumar Saini
Sep 27, 2015