Applying a Critical Climate Education Lens to Generative AI

Thesis: True sustainability requires a shift in mindset. Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has created opportunities for college instructors to initiate conversations that help us practice thinking differently.

I am a doctoral student in higher education at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities studying the sector’s responses to the climate crisis. For the past two years, I have been steeped in sustainability in higher education, environmental justice, decolonial, and Indigenous literature (e.g., Ajaps, 2023; Garibay et al., 2016; Mbah et al., 2022; Vaughter et al., 2013). This reading highlights the expansiveness, pervasiveness, and urgency of the crisis. It has challenged me to think differently and reflect deeply on the root causes of the climate crisis and my complicity in it. Fundamentally, I think we (especially people in Western societies with privileged identities) need to ask, what are we willing to give up or change to be responsible citizens of Earth?

As I pursue my degree, I also work as an instructional designer at the university. In this role, I have spent the last two years thinking and talking a lot about GenAI. At first glance, these two topics may seem unrelated, but I have noticed parallels between the questions and frustrations associated with GenAI and those raised by the climate crisis, particularly within the context of higher education.

Instructors are being forced to reconsider long-established practices in light of the fact that there are now easily accessible tools that can summarize readings, write discussion board posts, create a slideshow presentation on a topic, or write an essay. Granted, all of these outputs will be of questionable quality and accuracy, but students do not seem to be deterred by this fact (Gardner, 2024). Consequently, many instructors are needing to adjust their instructional approach to incorporate direct instruction about GenAI tools, become more vigilant about academic integrity, or “AI-proof” their assignments. Such shifts have led to existential questions about the purpose of higher education in the modern world (Warner, 2024).

 

In separate discussions about the climate crisis and GenAI, I have heard these overlapping questions:

• What does it mean to know something?

• What is the role of humans in the modern world?

• What responsibilities do humans have in the world?

• What are humans uniquely good at? 

• How can educators prepare students for a world that is substantially different from the one earlier generations faced?

 

Addressing several of these questions from a climate perspective, Stein (2024) argues that in order to be relevant and prepare students for an uncertain future, university educators should embed elements of critical climate education into their practice. “Critical climate education starts with the premise that the CNE [climate and nature emergency] is embedded within a wider system of violent and unsustainable social, political, and economic relations that currently organize institutions, including schools and universities” (p. 3). It looks at the crisis holistically and challenges educators and students to consider that deep and fundamental reimagining of the current system may be required to build a future where people and the planet can thrive.

The challenges and dilemmas raised by GenAI in higher education open space for such reimagining. Instead of approaching the disruptions caused by GenAI with the goal of mitigating its impacts on teaching, learning, and student development, what if we use it as an opportunity to think about education differently? What if we reconsidered what is most important for students to learn? 

 

Elements of Critical Climate Education

As postsecondary educators work with students in a climate-impacted world and move through pedagogical shifts prompted by GenAI, a critical climate education lens can help us reframe and expand our thinking. 

Campus leaders and instructional support staff are urging instructors to have conversations about GenAI with their students (Mowreader, 2024). The following questions, based on Stein's (2024, p. 5) critical climate education framework, can guide these discussions. I invite you to look for opportunities in your practice to incorporate these types of questions as you speak with students or colleagues about the impacts of GenAI. How might approaching a new technology—or other societal issues—from this frame lead to new insights and potentially different decisions?

 

CCE Element: Humans are interdependent with and responsible to nature and each other (Stein, 2024)

Discussion Questions:

• What natural resources are needed to build and maintain GenAI tools?

• Which of these resources are finite? 

• What are the consequences of depleting them? 

• Who is extracting these resources and from where? 

• What people-powered resources are needed to build and maintain GenAI tools?

• Who is contributing labor, ideas, and leadership to these efforts?

• How are people being compensated for their contributions?

 

CCE Element: “Face the limits and harms of the current system and the complex challenges of changing it” (Stein, 2024, p. 5)

Discussion Questions:

• Who (people and planet) has already been harmed by the development of GenAI tools? What kind of reparations might they be owed?

• Who might be harmed by these tools in the future? How can that harm be prevented?

 

CCE Element: “Enact restitution and reparations for climate debts, and question promises of false solutions” (Stein, 2024, p. 5)

Discussion Questions:

• What are the primary, secondary, and tertiary effects of GenAI companies’ energy and water use?

• How do GenAI companies select the locations of their data centers and operations?

• In what ways might GenAI tools assist with addressing climate change?

• In what ways might GenAI tools impede or limit our ability to address climate change?

 

CCE Element: “Invite multiple perspectives while accounting for uneven narrative power” (Stein, 2024, p. 5)

Discussion Questions:

• What are Indigenous communities and leaders saying about GenAI?

• What are social activists or frontline communities saying about GenAI?

• What are scholars and journalists from the Global South saying about GenAI?

• How does using GenAI tools for creating media or texts affect the voices and perspectives being heard? 

 

CCE Element: “Identify multiple solutions, all partial and imperfect, and consider the impacts on different communities” (Stein, 2024, p. 5)

Discussion Questions:

• What opportunities for learning do GenAI tools make possible?

• What learning might GenAI tools prevent?

• With all of the above questions in mind, what might a responsible university GenAI policy look like?

• If you could remake the entire GenAI industry with the wellbeing of people and the planet in mind, what would it look like?

 

Framing generative AI disruptions through a critical climate education lens problematizes them in a more expansive way. Discussions around the proposed questions provide opportunities to apply a critical understanding of the climate crisis to a topic that is not strictly environmental. I am still wrestling with how to operationalize this type of mindset in my own research and work, but I am finding that posing questions and having conversations is a helpful place to start.

 

References

Ajaps, S. (2023). Deconstructing the constraints of justice-based environmental sustainability in higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 28(5), 1024–1038. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2023.2198639

Gardner, L. (2024, November 11). Is it time to regulate AI use on campus? The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-it-time-to-regulate-ai-use-on-campus

Garibay, J. C., Ong, P., & Vincent, S. (2016). Program and institutional predictors of environmental justice inclusion in U.S. post-secondary environmental and sustainability curricula. Environmental Education Research, 22(7), 919–942. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2015.1054263

Mbah, M. F., Ajaps, S., Johnson, A. T., & Yaffa, S. (2022). Envisioning the Indigenised university for sustainable development. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 23(7), 1667–1684. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSHE-09-2021-0413

Mowreader, A. (2024, September 16). Survey: When should college students use AI? They’re not sure. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/academic-life/2024/09/16/college-students-uncertain-about-ai-policies

Stein, S. (2024). Making space for critical climate education. About Campus, 29(5), 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1177/10864822241284622

Vaughter, P., Wright, T., Mckenzie, M., & Lidstone, L. (2013). Greening the ivory tower: A review of educational research on sustainability in post-secondary education. Sustainability, 5, 2252–2271. https://doi.org/10.3390/su5052252 

Warner, J. (2024, July 9). Calling B.S. on the AI education future. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/blogs/just-visiting/2024/07/09/embracing-ai-means-abandoning-learning