ABSTRACT
If meaningful climate change education must empower students to act ethically and effectively in the world, we need to address the psychosocial dimension. Learning about climate change can be emotionally disturbing, and students can get stuck in apathy or despair, which affects both learning and the motivation for action. This chapter begins with a detailed discussion on how the psychosocial action dimension may be developed in the classroom to give students a chance to develop metacognitive skills about climate grief and related emotions. In an age of unprecedented greenwashing, for students to act wisely on climate, they need to be able to distinguish false solutions from real solutions. The next section discusses traps that get in the way of conceptualizing real solutions, summarizes what a good solution should be able to do, and outlines a 5-question framework to enable students to evaluate proposed climate solutions. Three such solutions are examined through this framework, and it is noted that students are able to make a start at least, at thinking both critically and ethically. The use of speculative futurism exercises to imagine better futures is discussed at the end, with attention to both the psychological benefits of these exercises and also their role in nurturing the imagination. It is noted that more work needs to be done to develop these approaches.
