Sustainability as an educational agenda

The mounting evidence about human-induced environmental change, and about its expected detrimental effects on humans and their societies ( [IPCC, 2007], [Reid et?al., 2010] and [Rockstr?m et?al., 2009]), has turned out to be exceedingly difficult to turn into political action to mitigate the change and adapt to its consequences. Economic self-interest creates friction between nation-states, within regional alliances like the EU, and across the divide between the developing and developed world. A significant factor is a vocal and well-funded group of climate skeptics, who question the credibility of mainstream earth system science, overemphasize the disagreements within the scientific community, argue for more research before any action is warranted, and in general create doubt to justify inaction or delay (Oreskes and Conway, 2010). A further problem is that both the decision-makers and the public have a very superficial understanding of the issues, cannot intellectually handle complex problems and uncertainty, and do not always know what and whom to believe. This constitutes a challenge to the education establishment.