EDUCATION, SUSTAINABILITY AND THE ECOLOGICAL SOCIAL IMAGINARY CONNECTIVE EDUCATION AND GLOBAL CHANGE JEFF BUCKLES Education, Sustainability and the Ecological Social Imaginary Jeff Buckles Education, Sustainability and the Ecological Social Imaginary Connective Education and Global Change Jeff Buckles York St John University York, UK ISBN 978-3-319-74441-4 ISBN 978-3-319-74442-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74442-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018940524 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Front cover image © Tom Merton / Getty Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Liz, Julia and Peter for their love and support. To Pet and Tom for the raw material, and to Mike Bottery and Julian Stern for their help and support in shaping it. Preface What do the Pope, Paris, ppm and population all have in common? Apart from the letter p? The answer is they all acknowledge global change. • In May 2015 The Pope released the encyclical letter Laudato Si, On Care for our Common Home (Pope Francis 2015), highlighting the harmful impact humankind were having upon the Earth, and what needs to be done to ameliorate that impact. • In September 2016 it was reported (Betts et al. 2016) that the annual mean atmospheric CO concentrate at Mauna Loa, Hawaii for 2015 2 was 400.9 parts per million (ppm), the first time this level had been breached in 4 million years. By February 2018 it had risen to 408ppm (Scripps 2018). It was likely to stay at or above that level, and was caused by ‘anthropogenic emissions arising from fossil fuel burning, deforestation and cement production’ (Betts et al. 2016: 806). • In November 2016 the Paris Agreement was adopted by the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the purpose being to limit to less than 2°C the effects of global warming compared to pre-industrial levels. So far 197 countries have signed the treaty and 146 ratified it (UNFCCC 2017). • According to the United Nations (UN 2017) the World’s population will have surpassed 7.6 billion people in 2018, with the United Nations vii viii Preface projecting a population of 8.5 billion on 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100. In 1960 it was 3 billion (US Census 2016). The World Bank (2015b) noted that the rural population had reduced to 46% of world population, down from 66% in 1960. All of this has resource implications on land, water, food and biodiversity. The four examples given are a mixture of hope and despair. Hope, because as the Pope and Paris suggest, there is growing understanding of the effects of human activity upon the Earth, and of a willingness to map out answers. Despair in that human activity appears to be harming the planet in a way that is threatening to all life, and there may be limited time to react to this. This book aims to build upon the hope, suggesting that by changing how humankind views its place upon the Earth, despair can be overcome. This requires two things to happen. Firstly, for humankind to recognise and act upon the foundational truth that all life upon Earth (including human beings) is dependent upon the living and non-living processes of the Earth. Secondly, that by asking a key ethical question, ‘what kind of planet do we wish to pass on to our children and all living and non-living things?’ we (that is humankind), can refocus how we live, so that the planet that we live and depend upon can flourish. York, UK Jeff Buckles References Betts RA, Jones CD, Knight JR, Keeling RF, Kennedy JJ (2016) El Niño and a Record CO Rise Nature Climate Change (6) p806–810. http://www.nature. 2 com/natureclimatechange. Accessed 1 Oct 2016 Pope Francis (2015) Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home [Encyclical]. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa- francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html. Accessed 26 May 2015 Scripps (2018) Scripps Institution of Oceanography The Keeling Curve. https:// scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/. Accessed 20 Feb 2018 UN (United Nations) (2017) Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects 2017. https://esa.un.org/ unpd/wpp/DataQuery/. Accessed 20 Feb 2018 Prefac e ix UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) (2017) The Paris Agreement. http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php. Accessed 15 May 2017 US Census (2016) International Data Base World Population: 1950–2050. https://www.census.gov/population/international/data/idb/worldpopgraph. php. Accessed 10 Mar 2017 World Bank (2015b) Rural Population (% of Total Population). http://data. worldbank.org/indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS. Accessed 25 May 2016 Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Setting the Scene: Domains, Challenges and the Social Imaginary 13 3 The Modern Social Imaginary 25 4 E ducation in the Modern Social Imaginary 51 5 The Major Challenges of the 21st Century? 77 6 The Challenges of the 21st Century and the Modern Social Imaginary 105 7 T he Ecological Social Imaginary 121 8 Education in the Ecological Social Imaginary 145 9 C onclusion 181 xi xii Contents R eferences 189 Index 207