A new course at a B.C. post-secondary school is looking to tackle the urgency of climate change, with a focus on how society talks about the environmental emergency.
BCIT announced on August 19 that they have launched a new 12-week, flexible learning course for their fall semester called Environmental and Climate News Analysis to address how to better engage people, organizations and policymakers on the need to urgently mitigate the effects of climate change.
Kamyar Razavi, a climate change reporter and veteran television news producer, will teach students how to construct engaging environmental news stories, as well as develop messages that engage stakeholders like politicians and organizations on environmental issues.
“For many years, the assumption by policymakers and even the scientific community has been that if the public were just to learn about the science of global warming, that concern about this issue, along with pro-environmental behaviours and actions, would follow,” said Razavi.
“But this ‘information-deficit’ view of climate science overlooks the need for how we tell stories that engage the public on environmental issues. We are only now learning ways to do that well.”
This course is directed at anyone who wants to learn more and increase their influence on climate-related issues, including students in journalism, the physical sciences, engineering and in political science.
