Browsing by Author "Owen-Oliner, Leah"

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    Climate Change Education through a Social Justice Framework: A necessary first step towards solving the climate crisis
    (2021) Owen-Oliner, Leah
    Global climate change is one of – if not the most – urgent crises of the modern era. Every decade in the past forty years has been successively hotter than any decade preceding it since the 1850s, a historically unprecedented acceleration resulting in heat waves, droughts, cyclones, and other weather and climate extremes (IPCC, 2021). Barring profound and swift decreases in greenhouse gas emissions, recent models predict an increase of at least 1.5˚C greater than pre-industrial measures (IPCC, 2021), surpassing the previously established international maximum goal (UNFCCC, 2015). As should be all too clear, dramatic yet rapid changes must be made now to preclude the increasing severity, frequency, and duration of climate-related disasters accompanying every additional degree of warming (IPCC, 2021). However, despite this ostensibly bleak picture, room for hope exists: scientists posit that reaching net-zero carbon emissions by approximately 2050 would arrest and plateau global warming at around 1.5˚C, forestalling the sharp escalation in risks associated with increases exceeding that threshold (Plumer & Fountain, 2018).