Our Partnership with Subject to Climate

The Cloud Institute Proudly Announces Our New Partnership With Subject To Climate

The mission of Subject to Climate is to make climate change teaching and learning accessible to all. By enabling educators from all subjects and grade levels to teach about climate change, we believe that the next generation will be inspired to take climate action. We agree. Subject to Climate is a rich resource database of K-12 teaching materials vetted by a team of former and current teachers, scientists, and climate activists. It is one of the best collections I have seen, and I really appreciate the seriousness with which they solicit and accept resources.

I am really really, yes really mad about most of the climate education I have seen to date. No wonder children and young people have climate anxiety. I would have it too if I were educated about all the indicators of unsustainability, (of which climate change is one) without the muscle or the mindset to do anything about it.

Climate change is a symptom of global warming; which is a symptom of too many greenhouse gasses emitted faster than the Earth can absorb them; which is a symptom of outdated mindsets and therefore flawed thinking and actions, which is a symptom of Education for and about unsustainability. Of course adaptations to climate change will have to happen, because it will take us some time to reverse global warming and in the meantime, the symptoms are in motion and we will have to adapt. Mitigation means making the consequences “less bad”. Not exactly an aspiration. We clearly have to put time and resources into solving the “upstream problem”, to reverse global warming and then to maintain the dynamic stability of greenhouse gasses over time. That is the only rational, efficient and cost effective thing to do. To reverse global warming, we need to get at the source - too many greenhouse gasses emitted faster than the Earth can absorb them. As Linda Booth Sweeney says, we need to “think like a bathtub” by decreasing the inflow of the stock of greenhouse gasses, while we increase the outflow/sequestration of the stock. Anything short of that is treating symptoms, which, if we don’t address the source, will make things worse over time and create new problems. In System Dynamics we call it the “shifting the burden archetype”.

The goal of educating about climate change has to be to address the most upstream problem within our spheres of influence and by doing so, solve more than one problem at a time, and minimize the creation of new problems. That is the sustainable solution.

We agreed to partner with Subject to Climate because they share our commitment to making sure that students and teachers understand that reversing global warming, while we mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change is the trifecta that will be the difference that makes the difference.