Our personal journey of learning about climate change.

The importance of climate change (CC) education (CCE) has been expressed widely. Twoquotes will illustrate: "Education is an essential element of the global response to climate change. It helps young peopleunderstand and address the impact of global warming, encourages changes in their attitudes andbehaviour and helps them adapt to climate change-related trends."[1] "Parties shall cooperate in taking measures, as appropriate, to enhance climate change education,training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information, ...."[2] In this paper, first, we show that learning about CC by oneself is possible. Second, wewish to encourage people, especially young citizens, to take up CC learning outsideclassrooms. Third, we emphasize that CC should be taught at all schools around the world,and also at home. "The topic of climate change needs to become the backbone of education round theworld ... sustainability, climate change, and resilience must be included in one wayor another in every single course, at all levels, primary to university, across theworld"[3]. We had become aware of the worsening change in climate (eg, SR1.5[4]), and we realizedthat, despite the Paris Agreement[2], CCE has not been enhanced in our high school. So wedecided that we should study CC independently outside school. The more we learned, themore we realized that it is important for all younger citizens of the planet to learn about andadapt to CC. We also realized that traditional classroom chalk-and-talk study is not the only way (norprobably the best way) to learn about CC. We discovered that it is perfectly possible to learnabout CC through a myriad of other ways, often on an independent or autonomousbasis[5]. We also realized that we were able to achieve some "objectives of climateeducation includ[ing] content knowledge of climate science and options for action ...,cultivating science and communication skills ..., and initiating positive attitudes andactions."[6]. In our presentation, we will present our personal experience of learning about CC underour own steam. We will explain how we have been learning about CC through a variety ofmodes and methods. These include: mountain walking, research field trips on CC,participating in the EGU conference, MOOCs, summer schools, children’s holiday centres,films, meeting geoscientists. We will outline these methods and comment on how effectivewe found them to be. We will also provide recommendations for others who might wish tofollow in our footsteps. We found that independent CC learning is a relatively effective way of becoming familiarwith CC and CC issues, especially for young people unable to obtain such learning in theirclassrooms. ________________ 1. UNESCO. (no date). Climate Change Education. https://en.unesco.org/themes/education-sustainable-development/cce 2. Article 12, Paris Agreement. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/english%5fparis%5fagreement.pdf 3. Crookall. (2013). Climate change and simulation/gaming: Learning for survival. Simulation &Gaming, 44(2-3), 195-228. 4. SR1.5, https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]