Abstract
Have you seen the meme of the plane full of climate activists flying to protest? On the one hand, it is a base attempt to cast aspersions on those working to create change. On the other, that meme ignores the energy and natural resource intensity of the synchronous online video meeting platforms like Zoom, Meet, and Teams that are required to strategize international climate action. We are all deeply implicated and reliant on the global systems that are creating the crisis. It is an ongoing praxis to determine how to work and live, research and teach, learn and study, move through the world and mobilize others, in ecologically sustainable ways that support international climate commitments and planetary health. As project leads on Learning Collective Worldmaking, an international climate change education project with participating teachers and students from 12 participating countries including Canada, we have had to navigate the tensions produced by the need for energy intensive activities like online meet-ups, collaborative writing platforms, and international travel, in order to foster international solidarities and to make meaning of the locally specific, slow, low-carbon learning activities include getting outside, walking, talking to knowledge holders in the community, building relationships, and paying more attention to our human and more-than-human neighbours in each research site. Our study examines the decisions we made during this collaborative process as a case study in how as climate researchers and teachers, we are weighing the contradictions of twenty-first century life as we strive for planetary health and wellbeing.
Presenters
Sheena WilsonProfessor, Media, Communications & Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada Carrie Karsgaard
Assistant Professor, Education, Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia, Canada Lynette Shultz
Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research, University of Alberta, Canada Caroline Bomfim
Postdoctoral Fellow, Campus Saint-Jean, University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Human Impacts and Responsibility
KEYWORDS
Planetary Health, Low-Carbon Research, Low-Carbon Teaching Methods, Energy-Intensive Research, Energy-Intensive
