the science of change: understanding human response to climate change

128 Sustainability MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC. • Vol. 4 No. 3 • June 2011 • DOI: 10.1089/sus.2011.9694

Introduction

The Earth’s systems are in a state of rapid change. This change can be quantified using many different metrics: the degrees Celsius of observed warming, the percentage of the extent of polar ice loss, the statistic of biodiversity reduction, and the inches of increased sea level, among others.

These changes are also awaking the real-ity that humans must change too. Human change in relation to climate mitigation is less established than the physical changes to the Earth’s systems and therefore more difficult to measure, less objective, and less agreed upon. Societal changes in response to

Abstract

Earth is experiencing an environmental crisis. This crisis has evolved from industrial pollutants, namely, carbon dioxide and methane, which act as physical warming agents in the atmosphere, destabilizing the global climate. It is imperative that we transition to a carbon neutral society in an effort to restabilize the climate system. This work needs to happen immediately and on a global scale. The many challenges involved with transitioning to a carbon neutral society have prevented the scale, scope, and speed of changes necessary to achieve climate stabilization objectives. To help understand the best way to break through barriers to a carbon neutral society, several tactics from social science and management should be employed. In this article I propose to reuse theories of established models; reframe the issue to a positive, desirable, and achievable vision; reduce the problem to a manageable, local scale; and recycle lessons gleaned from social change and conflict resolution. Evidence suggests that these four system-based approaches will significantly enhance society’s global response to its most daunting challenge—carbon neutrality—which in turn will hopefully result in a more stabilized climate.

Research and Solutions

The Science of Change Understanding Human Response to Climate Change By Christopher J. Noonan

Senior Program Advisor, Institute for Energy and Sustainability, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts

climate stabilization activities must converge with increased scientific analysis to assist in preventing additional disruptions to the global climate system.

The human species is inextricably linked to the Earth, and therefore, systemic changes to the Earth’s systems result in systemic changes to human systems. As climate warming accel-erates and concerns of nonlinear escalation mount, two pathways emerge. As a species reliant and wholly dependent on Earth and its services, we can succumb to the adverse effects of a warming world, or, we can rally our collective spirit and immediately dis-mantle the byproducts of our civilization that contribute to increasing temperatures.

The painted portrait of option one, living on a climatically altered planet, is well documented, discussed, and researched.1–4 This portrait includes increases in globally averaged temperatures by 4–7°C,2 result-ing in a complete alteration of Earth’s major systems (cryosphere, biosphere, pedosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and nutrient cycle). These alterations will generally result in negative impacts on human settlements.

An increasing number of scientists have descended on these changes through research, debate, and observation with advancing sophistication and results. Knowledge of how the Earth works and the interconnectedness of its systems, although

MARY ANN LIEBERT, INC. • Vol. 4 No. 3 • June 2011 • DOI: 10.1089/sus.2011.9694 Sustainability 129

incomplete, is accelerating at a rate unimagi-nable to previous generations. This ascent of knowledge is exactly what is required for reducing or eliminating the causes of a warming climate.

While there is evidence of accumulating knowledge of Earth systems and changes therein, less certain is the scientific knowl-edge of how to satisfactorily slow climate change. The questions of what changes are underway and what changes are expected as a result of increased emissions need to co-evolve alongside a collection of social-technical questions asking how these chang-es can be prevented.

To develop an optimal route for scientific analysis to influence climate mitigation at both the individual and group levels, there are several techniques that can enhance our collective efforts and that have been well explored by researchers from other fields. Four contextual references—model pre-cedent, positive framing, reductionist approach, and social theory—are provided here to emphasize current successes and future needs for applying scientific concepts to slow climate change.

Model precedent, the first discussion point, explains how the use of models can influ-ence and inform human responses to cli-mate change. Positive framing, the second discussion point, provides an important and necessary shift in how we view, frame, and communicate climate science, transi-tioning from a defeatist, negative lens to an achievable, positive lens. The third discus-sion point involves exploring the use and need of applying a reductionist approach for rapid expansion of climate stabilization, while the fourth discussion point focuses on borrowing lessons of social change theory to enhance the rapid transitions needed to stabilize the global climate. Each approach demonstrates an organized and systematic confluence of science and solutions.

The purpose of this article is to construct guideposts that will help in our thinking, forming, and applying the ways and means to make the seemingly infinite, extremely cumbersome, and to-date unmanageable goals of climate stabilization a task that is both negotiable and achievable. Learn-ing from past and comparable experiences, one can see the benefits of coupling these approaches for climate stabilization. Hope-fully, this will demonstrate that the great

transition to a carbon neutral society is but one, achievable step in a system that already provides the answers.

Model Precedent

Environmental science is a safe haven for models, and the range of scientists that study our natural world are constantly citing, pro-posing, challenging, and modifying those models. Several important precedents have proved useful in conceptualizing the natural world and humanity’s role in it. Transfer-ring knowledge from established models and applying it to climate science expedites the learning process and aids in shifting reflection and behavior as it relates to climate mitigation.

One helpful model precedent relevant to cli-mate stabilization was established by Robert Socolow in a paper entitled “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years Using Current Technol-ogy.”5 “Stabilization wedges” are a set of fif-teen mitigation actions (wedges) that, when scaled and used in combination with each other, can mitigate climate change. Socolow argues that “humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half cen-tury” (p. 968).5 He further argues that the debate about reducing carbon dioxide is stalled by needless confusion about cur-rent options for mitigation. He offers clear and systematic means to reduce the carbon problem to a magnitude that would be ef-fective using technologies that are currently scalable and marketable.

Included in Socolow’s set of fifteen options are: “efficient vehicles, reduced use of vehicles, efficient buildings, efficient base-load coal plants, gas baseload power for coal baseload power, capture CO2 at baseload power plant, capture CO2 at H2 plant, cap-ture CO2 at coal to synfuels plant, nuclear power for coal power, wind power for coal power, PV power for coal power, wind H2 in fuel cell car for gasoline in hybrid car, biomass fuel for fossil fuel, reduced defor-estation plus increased reforestation, affor-estation and conservation tillage” (p. 970).5

Groups and individuals everywhere looking to put solutions in place can learn from these models and use them as a launching point for implementing the necessary transition of our social-technical systems. In terms of

Socolow’s stabilization wedges, the term transition is fitting, because the wedges do not require us to radically alter our ways of living but to shift or “transition” from carbon and resource-intensive activity to carbon and resource sustainability.

Models abound, both within and beyond environmental science. Theories on con-flict resolution, urban planning, sales, ad infinitum, are now using this established knowledge and transferring it to apply to climate mitigation and the associated social-technical changes required for a more stabilized climate. The world of finance, once a major obstacle to rapid adoption of climate friendly practice, is now being applied to aid mitigation projects and increase sustainable behavior at an excep-tional pace. Micro-financing, leasing, and performance contracting are all emerging at the forefront of effective models, helping to implement large scale wind, solar and distributed sustainability practice.

Performance contracting is one of the more influential tools that has been borrowed from the financial services industry to expedite purchasing of renewable energy and energy efficiency services. This model is essentially an energy bond that can be bor-rowed against a property to finance energy efficiency and conservation work and/or renewable energy and is paid back through the savings realized through reduced ener-gy. Federally referred to as PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy), this model is anticipated to create enormous energy sav-ings throughout the country (and world), while creating jobs and spurring economic activity. It has evolved from a community level model (Berkeley, CA) to a model that is now under legislative consideration in over 16 different states within the United States.6

Socolow’s stabilization wedges and the PACE model are just two of the many exist-ing models that can be helpful in stabiliz-ing climate. A system-wide understanding and acceptance of social-technical systems speeds the successful deployment of the range of options required for reducing carbon and other atmospheric pollutants. Socolow clearly and effectively identifies technological solutions to stabilize climate change, but technological solutions can-not happen in isolation. The transition of humanity’s interrelation with the Earth’s sys-tems needs to be guided within a technical and social framework.


Understanding, using, and promoting the many accepted and adopted models from within and outside of environmental sci-ence can be helpful in removing barriers to climate mitigation activities. Increasing the effectiveness, use, and practice of models can also be enhanced when coupled with another tool, positive framing.

Positive Framing

One, often overlooked discipline that is helpful in understanding responses to climate change is psychology. Loosely defined as the study of human beliefs and behavior, this field offers great insight into what motivates change and how to achieve this change. Spence and Pidgeon point out that there is a “great deal of theoretical understanding and transferable knowledge that already exists to encourage sustain-able behavior” (p. 10).7 Spence and others7–9 argue the importance of understanding how to motivate behavior changes and apply this transferable knowledge by emphasizing that a full 30% cut in greenhouse gases against baseline could occur through lifestyle changes alone.7

It is interesting to note, perhaps due to the sheer weight of the topic, that there is cur-rently an overwhelming self-defeatist slant to reports on climate change. This is oc-curring throughout the media and scien-tific literature.3,10,11 These may be accurate portrayals of the state of the environment, but perhaps not. Dig a little deeper and one can find countless examples of rebounding species, recovering ecosystems, and the amazing resiliency of the Earth. The chal-lenge before us is to shift climate change communication from a negative to a positive frame.

This communication would include a fram-ing shift from “human behavior causes climate change” to “human behavior can reduce climate change.” From a historical perspective of overcoming generational (or multi-generational) challenges there are many lessons to be learned on the power and potency of positive framing. Consider the civil rights movement, widely cited as an example of grassroots, bottom-up social movement effecting systemic, top-down, national scale changes. The civil rights movement was very successful in contextu-alizing “the struggle” as a peaceful demand for change, a change that was clear and abso-lute—100% equality now.

From this example we can see that activ-ists, leaders, and supporters of the civil rights movement did not focus primarily on their oppression, although it was a tool, but instead shifted the primary focus of their movement to identifying a goal and a vision of a better way forward. Perhaps no better example demonstrates this point than the two primary legacy sentiments of the era—“I have a dream” and “we shall overcome”—clear evidence of the power of positive fram-ing.

One cannot deny the seriousness of the cur-rent and future cataclysmic consequences of global warming. Growing public entities are reporting that “almost all climate scientists are of one mind about the threat of global warming: it’s real, it’s dangerous, and the world needs to take action immediately. But they disagree about the best way to convey the urgency of the situation to the public and policymakers” (p. 927).12 Climbing out of fear-based messaging and emphasizing solu-tion-based, goal-oriented positive framing is one avenue that could be further explored to enhance climate stabilization efforts.

Spence and Pidgeon point out that, as evi-dent in the psychological literature, fear framing will initiate action as long as indi-viduals feel they have some degree of control to act.7 They explain that other challenges of risk communication can be overcome by focusing on essentials, choosing terms care-fully, contextualizing risk in everyday terms, avoiding mistrusted communication chan-nels, treating communication as dialogue, and, again, combining risk with action-based responses.7

The complexity and scale of climate change present many barriers that are often so pervasive that it is daunting for society to understand and believe that they can be overcome. Spence and Pidgeon point to a useful mechanism for thinking about a way forward. Essentially, they break down nine primary barriers to climate change “engagement”: lack of knowledge, uncer-tainty, mistrust, fatalism, externalization, belief in technological solutions, framed as a distant threat, reluctance to change lifestyles, low prioritization, and drop-in-the-ocean feeling.7 Compounding the dilemma, a set of five primary social barriers have been iden-tified: lack of political action, lack of action by business and industry, free-rider effect, social norms and expectations, and lack of

enabling initiatives; perhaps two additional barriers could easily be added, corrup-tion and greed. The literature suggests that two intertwining systems of upstream and downstream changes help overcome these problems. Upstream changes are external and structural, including legal constraints and physical changes to the environment that force, encourage, or gently nudge peo-ple toward different practices. Downstream changes refer to communications designed to change existing values and beliefs.7

Both systems of change are needed to combat the causes of climate change. We have seen successful upstream changes in the rapid phase-out of CFC’s or the steady improvements of American waterways after the Clean Water Act of 1972. Evidence points to downstream changes having more lasting and meaningful results; a suite of examples support this, including, for example, the belief and acceptance of the link between smoking and cancer, result-ing in globally significant reductions in smokers. Other examples, are less drastic or socially distributed, but include the prod-uct of people’s passions, whether it be art, music, dance, athletics, or other such activities. Individuals involved in some-thing they are passionate about are more inclined toward better performance, greater time investment, and increased well-being.13

Optimizing a satisfactory level of success with respect to climate stabilization, over-coming the personal and social barriers to engagement, and affecting the degree of change needed to achieve stabilization will require masses of individual, group, pub-lic, and private effort. Inspiration does not spring from the wells of discouragement, fear, or impossible-to-achieve results. Col-lectively, the media, activists, professionals, scientists, and government officials need to recognize this and begin to frame climate change in a positive, achievable, nonthreat-ening way.

We see evidence of this tactic starting to emerge in the context of many grassroots and professionalized nonprofit agencies. Al Gore provides an excellent example of promoting the belief and vision of stabiliz-ing climate and boldly states the demand of 100% renewable energy for America (www.repoweramerica.org).14 In Massachusetts, a grassroots group of students, clergy, and lay people have agitated state government



with the same message—100% renewable energy by 2020 (www.theleadershipcam-paign.org).15

The Leadership Campaign in Massachusetts and similarly Al Gore’s Repower America are showing that simple, absolute, positive framing in the context of global warming is energizing climate stabilization efforts very effectively. Building on this chain of thought about the benefits of positive framing still leave those in the stabilization camp largely at a loss for dealing with the sheer magnitude of eliminating the causes of global warm-ing. Toward that end, evidence suggests that capitalizing on a commonly used tactic from other movements and schools of thought would be useful in this context, that is, the application of a reductionist approach.

Reductionist Approach As any psychologist, professional planner, or administrator of a large project can tell you, without clearly defined boundaries and a detailed breakdown of tasks, a project is unmanageable and results in poor qual-ity performance. Responding to climate change is no different. To advance develop-ment in climate stabilization, a reductionist approach (that is, understanding a complex idea or system through its simpler parts or components) is needed to further reduce, quantify, and bound the action necessary for civilization to reach sustainable limits of Earth’s carrying capacity.

In the trajectory of globalized responses to preventing climate change, two major mile-stones propelled the issue further along than any others: the Kyoto Protocol and the pub-lication of the article “Target Atmospheric CO2” by James Hansen.4 The Kyoto Proto-col remains an important development in the history of responses to climate change because it was the largest and most devel-oped attempt at a global policy response to limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Many have stated the shortcomings of the Proto-col: the absence of the United States as a sig-natory, the absence of developing countries as signatories, and more recently the lack of countries that have met their reduction goals. One shortcoming, not always high-lighted, is the lack of agreed-upon scientific clarity for reduction targets and the lack of a clearly defined roadmap of how to reach those targets.

James Hansen, director of NASA God-dard Institute of Space Studies, has, to some

degree, narrowed the gap in the clarity and understanding of establishing an agreed upon “safe limit” of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration. His publications4,16 set 350 ppm as a limit to the atmospheric con-centration of greenhouse gas emissions that will not significantly alter the global climate (393 ppm was the April 2011 concentra-tion17). With a ceiling set at 350 ppm, climate stabilization is no longer an unbounded, abstract goal.

Although some dissent from his findings, Hansen is a pioneer in the sense that he was able to quantify a scientifically justified target for climate stabilization, which has become an essential tool for mitigators and policy writers everywhere. Thus research-ers and practitioners now have the ability to graphically reference where they are and where they need to be in terms of CO2 and resulting climate impacts.

Project management literature also high-lights the significance of successfully map-ping out plans, details, and tasks as essential to achieving desired outcomes. A reduction-ist approach can be aptly applied to the goal of climate stabilization by creating more manageable and achievable objectives. This will speed mitigation efforts because people connect more readily with identified, spe-cific, and measurable objectives.18

It is fairly consistently acknowledged that the main global warming culprit is the sharp increases in greenhouse gas concentrations. These air pollutants (CO2 and methane being the worst offenders, contributing 77% and 14% of greenhouse gas emissions1) act as tiny sealants in the atmosphere, trapping sunlight and warmth in the upper atmo-sphere, and consequently at the surface of the Earth. Carbon dioxide remains a dan-gerous atmospheric warming antagonist because it has a residence time of approxi-mately 100 years, which is compounded by the fact that each day 90 million tons of CO2 are added to the atmosphere.19 Methane is equally dangerous, being 26 times more effective as a global warming agent than carbon dioxide.

These two primary warming agents, cou-pled with a handful of additional warming agents, remain the single largest barrier to a stable climate system. There has been a lot of discussion about transitioning to a carbon-free society, but there is an open question of how to stream policy, science, culture,

and finance together to reach this objec-tive. Al Gore highlights this declaring “the most important solutions for the climate crisis require the accelerated development and deployment of low-CO2 substitutes for producing the energy needed for the global economy.” 19

Our options for this transition look promis-ing, but obstacles remain. To date, our best bet is in existing clean energy technology—wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and, for some people, nuclear. Scientists have been descending on the potential of renewables to meet global energy demand, and there is emerging evidence of the benefits of doing so from a reductionist perspective. Finding our starting point is critical in this endeavor and promising advances have been made, whereas “today the maximum power con-sumed worldwide at any given moment is about 12.5 terawatts” (p. 60).20

Jacobson and Delucchi refine and reduce the requirements for stabilization, quoting detailed studies that the globe is left with accessible wind, water and solar supplies on the scale of “40 to 85 TW for wind and 580 TW for solar, each far beyond future human demand. Yet currently we generate only 0.02 TW of wind power and 0.008 TW of solar” (p. 60).20

In the spirit of a reductionist argument with all the scientific validity and social attainability imbued, Jacobson and Deluc-chi,20 in their article “A Path to Sustainable Energy,” detail the statistics necessary for us to achieve a goal of 100% clean energy. Their team calculates that 490,000 tidal turbines at 1 MW a piece, 5,350 geothermal plants at 100 MW a piece, 900 hydroelectric plants at 1,300 MW a piece, 3.8 million wind turbines at 5 MW a piece, 720,000 wave converters at 0.75 MW a piece, 1.7 billion rooftop photo-voltaic systems at 0.003 MW a piece, 49,000 concentrated solar power plants at 300 MW a piece, and 40,000 photovoltaic power plants at 300 MW a piece have the potential to effectively reduce the risks associated with global climate change.20

And within that statistic, suddenly there is a light at the end of the tunnel. A total of 40,000 PV power plants seems like some-thing we can wrap our heads around; break this total down to a regional scale, averaged throughout the Earth, and the numbers look even more attainable. However, it is still a marathon to achieve this and time is run-


ning out. Clearly, to get from less than 1% to near 100% requires a massive, organized transition to renewable resources. Many re-cent authors have correlated this seemingly daunting task to other remarkable feats of human ingenuity—and societal scale transi-tion—such as the Apollo mission, the Man-hattan Project, the planning and production during WWII, and the Interstate Highway system.

Transitioning from a fossil fuel based energy supply system and resultant economic struc-ture is possible, but cannot happen without wide-scale public, political, and scientific leadership. The most critical climate change questions going forward will be how do we respond, how do we take the knowledge of Earth systems and the tools of model pre-cedents, positive framing, and reductionist approach and translate them into relevant, meaningful policy that is supported and driven by an impassioned, willing societal response.

Social Theory

To slow or prevent catastrophic consequenc-es of climate change, a well-coordinated, rapid, global human response is required. Responses have been filtering in incremen-tally in many different shades of policy, activism, and industry response. However, scientists are informing us that this action is neither large enough nor fast enough to stave off effects that are already causing damage and showing signs of non-linear escalation. To better understand how society can respond effectively, we can borrow from a well-documented and proven mechanism to effect change, social change theory by means of conflict transformation.

Essentially, climate change is a conflict of industry, ideas, values, and tradition. The man versus nature conflict scenario is deeply embedded in literature, art, and practice. It is not a great leap to apply theories of con-flict transformation to bail us out of the debt we have charged to our natural world. Per-haps, it begins and ends with the belief that transformation is possible. A once violent world, nation, region, city, or group of peo-ple can transform differences and hostilities into lasting, meaningful peace. We have seen evidence of such conflict resolution in places like Northern Ireland and South Africa.21 It is logical that human responses to climate change endorse and employ the methodol-ogy of transformation.

The realization and acceptance that climate change conflict can be transformed is the best entry point for principles of transfor-mation to result in the desired outcomes of climate stabilization. In Lederach’s Build-ing Peace book, he notes Elise Boulding’s emphasis on the importance of “imagining” the future and suggests a powerful tool is to “have an image, a vision of what we are try-ing to achieve in order to build toward and reach that vision” (p. 76–77).22 After all, if you don’t set your destination, you can never arrive.

Imagining a “vision” for climate stabiliza-tion is no different than strategic planning for urban centers, businesses, or conflict transformation. This visioning can be signif-icantly enhanced by the application of dedi-cated scientific analysis. Documents such as Socolow’s stabilization wedges, the PACE model, and Jacobson and Delucchi’s path to sustainable energy are essentially end goals towards which society needs to gravitate and can collectively be viewed as the “North Star” or the “moon shot” for climate stabi-lization.

Interestingly enough, conflict transforma-tion by its very nature starts from the lens of a crisis framework. This is apt for climate stabilization and brings to mind the notion of an “emergency room Earth.” Emergency responders need an immediate assessment, followed by quick and decisive action that addresses the immediate survival needs of the affected population. Arguably, the climatic changes of the Earth are well observed, it is the transition from emergency response to relief operations and to rehabili-tation, reconstruction, and development22 that we find our greatest need and largest opportunity to stabilize Earth’s climate.

The process of transformation involves changing the lens of a conflict within four fundamental spheres of influence: personal, relational, structural, and cultural. Personal and relational transformations are an essen-tial building block for structural and cultural changes. These processes involve changes within how individuals define, frame, and/or reframe the problem and their relation-ship to it. This occurs through growth of the individual and within the relationships of the individual across physical, social, emo-tional, and spiritual levels.

Structural changes occur at the root of the conflict and involve changes in issues such

as human needs, resources, and decision-making.22 This occurs through shifts in the cultural framing of conflict and changes to social structures, resulting in a new or increased capacity for responding to con-flict. Cultural transformation processes evolve slowly through various stages of resolution, and result in increased under-standing, ability, and desire to resolve con-flicts in meaningful and lasting ways. Within this sphere, individuals, groups, and cultures see the benefits of a resolution to the given conflict and display partiality toward achiev-ing that vision. It becomes ingrained into their daily norms and belief systems.

Using this rough synopsis of conflict reso-lution allows us to elicit the benefits of integrating it into an expanded network of scientific analysis for climate stabilization. Developing a human response to climate stabilization can benefit from increased scientific analysis, a reductionist approach, and models of social change and conflict resolution theory by presenting us with a precedent for navigating a social-technical transformation.

Using this four-prong approach to climate stabilization has proven effective as a policy guide for local, national, and international decision makers, evidenced by repeated citations of Hansen’s 350 ppm of CO2 as the required target during Copenhagen’s Unit-ed Nations Climate Summit and through continued literature citations. The PACE model has become the desired standard for financing energy efficiency and photovoltaic systems and continues to evolve in struc-ture and expand in application. Socolow’s stabilization wedges are a continued source approach to a systems-based response for planning and visualizing a mitigation build-out.

In turn, conflict transformation essentially tells the story and provides the framework for many of the great social movements of our time. The women’s rights movement, the civil rights movement, the campaign against smoking, the rapid social evolution of infor-mation technology all serve as precursors to society’s ability for rapid and successful transformation. In respect to climate sta-bilization, the answers exist; the platforms and models have been used extensively by preceding generations. The open space free-dom and creativity of the details remain to be plugged in. Setting the vision, adopting the models, and learning from the science



are all coalescing steadily—the missing link, the greatest challenge and the only chance, is to have the will.

Conclusion

Every generation must rise to meet the chal-lenge of its times. The climate change chal-lenge is no exception. We cannot continue to leave a legacy of wanton destruction, need-less waste, and an inhospitable, uninhabit-able planet. We can and must find the ways and resources to turn our biggest obstacle into our greatest opportunity. This would be a shining moment of human achievement, when we are able to band together, non-violently, unbiased, and impartially, to improve the lot of our civilization.

In doing so, building a society that coexists in a nonpolluting, sustainable way, creates jobs, improves security, rebuilds our cities and towns, and improves lives. The “vision-ing” that Lederach highlights as so critical to transforming a conflict in the context of cli-mate change is our greatest advantage. Who would want to deny a more stable, more just, cleaner, healthier home? This visioning will lead naturally to positive framing and will build in speed and size when coupled with modeling and reductionism.

Understanding changes related to climate stabilization response can be propelled fast-er and further by expanding the science of mitigation based activity. Reusing existing models, reframing the issue to a positive and desirable vision, reducing the problem to an identified, specific, and measurable scale, and recycling theories of change have proved helpful starting points. The challenge of eliminating causes of global warming is enormous, globally distributed, and imme-diately needed, but it is not impossible. The power to make the vision of a stabilized cli-mate—a just, clean, and sustainable world—the natural background of our existence is

both possible and within reach. Hopefully the four principles described herein will help us in our journey.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to extend his gratitude to Karen Frey, Ph.D. for her kind direction and guidance developing this article.

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Address correspondence to:Christopher J. Noonan, M.A.Senior Program AdvisorInstitute for Energy and SustainabilityClark University16 Claremont StreetWorcester, MA 01610

Email: [email protected]