Summary

In Week 1 of this course, we have laid the foundation for understanding the climate crisis, why it matters to all of us, and what each of us can do to contribute to tackling it. 

We began by discussing what’s truly at stake – how our collective actions will shape a range of possible futures for human civilisation, from the catastrophic to the hopeful. Through visioning exercises, we started imagining the future we want to create, grounding our journey in a personal vision of a better, fairer and more sustainable world.

Next, we examined how we arrived at this pivotal moment in the climate crisis. We explored key socio-economic, political and ethical dimensions of the climate crisis, learning about the pervasive inequalities and injustices that exacerbate the issue. By understanding how power, economic interests, and historical inaction have contributed to the crisis, we equipped ourselves with the background to express our views and take a stand in personal and public conversations or on social media.

With this foundation in place, we started exploring some of the central messages of this week and of this course: 

• There is a huge variety of different actions we can take, individually and collectively, to help tackle the climate crisis. 
• All of us have agency. 
• Collectively, we have the power to affect wide-ranging changes. 

We highlighted inspiring real-world examples of change-makers and explored which ways of taking action feel the most meaningful and motivating to us personally.

In the last activity, we looked at how change happens, reminding ourselves that wide-ranging social and political change is possible and has happened throughout history. We learnt about the power of social contagion, imagination and storytelling, and how our actions, visions and stories together can contribute to change. 

Finally, bringing it all together, we developed our own stories of the climate crisis and of how it might be overcome, as a way to both express our own views and to inspire others to join us in our visions and actions for a desirable and sustainable future.