When it comes to climate change, UBC Prof. Stephen Sheppard knows that pictures speak much louder than words.
For the past five years, UBC’s Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP) has been employing a pioneering mix of computer-generated visualizations to help communities understand climate change and live more sustainably.
The 3D images, based on best available scientific data and modeling, are powerful: streets flooded by rising sea levels, houses surrounded by forest fires from rising temperatures and water reservoirs emptying as snowpacks dwindle.
Having helped to turn local residents into low-carbon converts in communities around B.C. — North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Delta, Kimberley — Sheppard now plans to engage a new community this September: UBC undergraduate students.
He has developed a new pilot course, Visualizing Climate Change (CONS 449C-101) that will explore the latest climate change research through CALP visualizations, plus other media that can enhance learning, including Hollywood movie special effects, video games, Google Earth, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), real-time surveys and scientific charts.
Aimed at second- and third-year students, the three-credit course without pre-requisites is one of five new major sustainability-themed classes and programs being offered this academic year on UBC’s Vancouver campus.
These include a Bachelor of Arts in Geography (Environment and Sustainability) that explores our complex relationship with the environment; an Arts minor in Environment and Society that explores sustainability via the humanities and social sciences; Applied Sustainability (APSC 364), a course that will use the university as a “living laboratory” for teaching and researching sustainability; and a class where interdisciplinary groups of students conduct Environmental Science Research Projects (ENVR 400), such as waste management or food security.
These new green academic options support UBC’s Sustainability Initiative, which is integrating UBC’s sustainability efforts in teaching, research and campus operations. The initiative, which includes investments in new clean energy technologies, is designed to help UBC reach its bold climate reduction targets: zero institutional carbon emissions by 2050.
Sheppard says the primary goal of Visualizing Climate Change is to advance students’ broader understanding of climate change and to develop creative responses to it. He will collaborate with scientists and experts from multiple disciplines, exposing students to cutting edge research in various aspects of climate change. The class will focus on solutions and emphasize interactive learning and exploration, he says.
Another crucial course objective is to connect current climate conditions to future consequences over the students’ lifetimes. “One of the things I hope students can get out of courses like this is a sense of urgency about getting to the solutions,” says Sheppard, who will be moving his CALP lab to the hi-tech BC Hydro Decision Theatre in UBC’s new Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), expected to be North American’s greenest building when it opens in 2011.
“We have to start moving very quickly as a society, in the next 10 years or so, to cut our carbon footprints if we want to stabilize global warming at a ‘safe’ level. Students have to grapple with a real mix of timeframes and options, that’s why the course uses different future scenarios.”
The third objective of the course — which is supported by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, Metro Vancouver and various academic units at UBC — is to prepare students for leadership roles in professions related to environment and sustainability, he says. Examples include conservation, community and environmental planning, the energy sectors, media and communications.
Making the course open to both arts and science students was important, Sheppard says. “We need an interdisciplinary approach to understand the social and environmental impacts of climate change and to create real-world solutions,” he says. “It will take not only a strong scientific and technical basis, but also big imaginations.”
Sheppard says the class will reveal the pros and cons of different types of visualization media. This will include exploring the power of pop culture’s visions of the future in Hollywood disaster films such as The Day After Tomorrow, Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, and even footage of the recent British Petroleum oil spill.
“Visualizations can motivate people, but too much doom and gloom can have a paralyzing effect,” says Sheppard. “Showing people ways to help mitigate and adapt to climate change in their own lives and communities — electric vehicles, local food production, windpower and bioenergy, home retrofits and low-carbon vacations — can really get people thinking about solutions and the choices they can take. That’s when the light bulbs turn on.”
For more information on Visualizing Climate Change, visit: www.sustain.ubc.ca/teaching-learning/featured-content/visualizing-climate-change. Learn more about CALP here: www.calp.forestry.ubc.ca.
View UBC’s carbon reduction targets: www.sustain.ubc.ca/story-package/reducing-campus-greenhouse-gas-emissions.
