Narratives of Hope: Teachers' and Students' Roles in Climate Justice Activism

Introduction

Recent reports published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Bateman, 2023, “July 2023 brought”) show the staggering and devastating impact of the climate crisis on U.S. and global communities. According to Bateman’s report titled “July 2023 brought record-high temperatures, devastating floods across the U.S.,” , the U.S. experienced “15 individual weather and climate disaster events” from January to July 2023, including flooding, tornados, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes. These events, Bateman points out, have led to the “highest number of billion-dollar disasters ever recorded for the first seven months of a year since NOAA began tracking these events in 1980” (2023, “July 2023 brought”). On a global scale, Bateman (2023, “Record Shattering”) details NOAA’s findings that global ocean surface temperatures have risen by 2.02 degrees Fahrenheit, and sea ice coverage has decreased by “about 1 million square miles — roughly the size of Argentina — below the 1991–2020 average.” The focus on the economic impact of the climate crisis and the many costly climate-driven disasters (Cheng et al., 2024; Smith, 2024; Tingley, 2024; Vahlsing & Liscow, 2023) provides a stark picture of the impact that climate change has on “our economy, health, well-being, security, and quality of life” (Vahlsing & Liscow, 2023).

Most students who sign up for the graduate-level course on environmental rhetoric that I teach at a U.S. university located in the Southwest of the country, are very familiar with the dystopian regional, national, and global outlook on our abilities to slow down the climate crisis or to enact positive change. Many are curious about a course that seems to take on a topic that, based on their lived experiences or their experiences with distressing social media feeds, can only be part of a dystopian philosophy that would focus on problematic environmental practices such as greenwashing, the practices of industrial polluters in lower-income and minority neighborhoods, or the difficulty navigating environmental racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism nationally and globally (Das, 2022; Robinson, 2022; Smiley, et al., 2022; Smith et al., 2022). Students’ exposure to climate injustices, their frustrations with local, national, and global attempts to mitigate the climate crisis, the many challenges that differ widely based on specific regional needs, and their worries about their futures in a world of land degradation, forest fires, hurricanes, floods, and tsunamis have led to emotional stress that, according to Mala Rao (2022), has become “an existential threat” (p. 440) reinforced by the perceived “indifference and lack of urgency with which adults and organisations treat climate change” (p. 439).

In this chapter, I bring together many of the current discussion points on how to engage students in environmental communication efforts, and on how to shift normative narratives focusing on climate catastrophe, environmental disasters, and climate inaction to climate hope, action, and activism. To bring to the forefront the dangers of subscribing to a story of climate chaos, I pose the following questions:

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  How can we promote online learning communities where current and future teachers can engage successfully with each other and with their students on the complex issue of climate change?

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  How can we encourage current and future teachers to promote sustainable solutions to existing environmental problems?

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  What are educators’ responsibilities to inspire inquiry-based and critical self-reflection that leads to constructive climate activism in students and teachers?