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Childhood Education as an Environmental Policy Alternative
Summary
This policy essay argues that childhood environmental education is an underutilized but essential tool for achieving meaningful long-term reductions in plastic pollution and carbon emissions. Early environmental literacy could generate the cultural shifts needed to drive systemic change in plastic consumption habits.
The looming threat of climate change and its devastating repercussions have thus far been met with a patchwork of international, state-led, and grassroots mitigation efforts.(Lyon 2017) (McElwee 2019) (Ng'Wanakilala 2019).Despite these attempts to lower emissions, global emissions continued to rise in 2019.(Dennis & Mooney, 2019).This indicates that collectively, humans have been unable to mobilize on the scale necessary to halt or reverse the behaviors associated with emitting carbon dioxide and methane.Although some amount of greenhouse gas production is controlled by a handful of industry and government leaders, research suggests that the general public engages frequently and directly in emission-producing behavior through fossil fuel-powered transportation.(Environmental Protection Agency, 2020).Similarly, other individual behaviors, including conscious consumerism, can have direct environmental impacts.If individuals can directly affect their environment, whether by using public transportation or by minimizing plastic waste, then why don't they?Environmental education (EE) has emerged as a potential strategy to promote individual-level changes in attitudes and behavior.(Ardoin, Bowers, Wyman Roth & Holthuis, 2018, p.9).However, there is little existing qualitative research on long-term behavior change from EE.This study aims to understand the long-term influence of EE on environmentally-impactful behavior, and attempts to isolate the influence of EE by controlling for external factors.This study uses surveys and interviews with past participants of EE programs from the Adventure Earth Centre, a recreational center in Nova Scotia, Canada, to measure environmental behaviors in several areas.Overall, findings indicate that participation in AEC programs increases long-term pro-environmental behaviors.Qualitative data revealed key elements and processes associated with successful EE.Results suggest that exposure to nature fosters empathy in participants, and provides them with the impetus to make lifestyle choices which decrease individual environmental impact.Based on these findings, governments and educators may be compelled to adopt similar programs with the intention of lowering pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and facilitating societal climate-adaptive change.
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