At the recent North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) meeting in Buffalo, a number of speakers talked about how important it was to go beyond the climate science embodied in the Climate Literacy Principles and Concepts and to consider individual and social values, decision-making and actions (i.e., the affective and behavioral domains) in our teaching. How can we do that responsibly in our classrooms? In what class does it belong?

The Climate Literacy work is really just a "body of knowledge" and the developers (including me!) realized that a companion document looking into the behavioral and emotional issues of addressing climate change would be needed. We're working on that, but meanwhile, here's an article about that looks into the deep psychological aspects of climate that I found extremely interesting: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/28/shrinking-the-climate-problem/

In terms of classroom teaching and learning, I always stress that being familiar with and knowledgeable about scientific issues, such as climate change, is just important for "science folks", but rather it is part of being a responsible, contributing citizen.