Is the greenhouse effect a natural phenomenon or caused by human activities? How is Oslo working to limit its emissions? Did you know that in 2050, Paris could have the same climate as Istanbul, and London, that of Barcelona? Didn’t you know that the oceans have risen 20cm since 1900? Can we act to limit the sixth mass extinction, when the population of vertebrates has dropped by 70% in fifty years? The climate b.a.-ba, available online for free for a week, answers these questions and many more.
In five modules of approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes, the Cned’s interactive platform, in partnership with high-level scientists and Radio France, provides you with the keys necessary for understanding the causes and consequences of global warming. To do this, simply embark on the training, starting with the first chapter, entitled “Climate Change”.
By scrolling through a dark green page, which alternates short explanatory texts, videos from major media, fill-in-the-blank texts, quizzes and infographics, you progress step by step and learn more about the climate.
Fun and accessible, including to the visually impaired, the modules allow a high school level reader to progress without getting bored, being able to stop and resume at any time. Each end of the chapter ends with a MCQ, rewarded by obtaining a climate badge issued by the Cned.
Sacrificing neither substance nor form, the training takes its reader by the hand and allows them to see more clearly in the spill of information on the climate. “It’s really about training, and not just awareness, explains Jean-Baptiste Sallée, oceano-climatologist member of the IPCC, who participated in the development of these online courses. The goal is to enable everyone to understand the changes we are experiencing in our daily lives, to understand the consequences and to present the levers of action to deal with current changes and limit future changes. Global warming concerns everyone, and it therefore seemed essential that everyone have equitable access to training, that information be accessible and available. »
Against “good excuses for doing nothing”, the platform adopts a proactive approach, presenting the problems, but also the solutions within our reach to achieve carbon neutrality, i.e. limiting our gas emissions to greenhouse effect to the amount the planet can absorb.
“Our ambition is to address everyone,” continues Jean-Noël Tronc, director of Cned. 83% of French people find it difficult to know which actor to trust for reliable information. A third even declare themselves climate skeptics: by dint of being bombarded every day with mind-boggling news, it is possible to be dizzy, especially with the power of fake news on the climate. We try to bring our stone to the building in the face of this challenge, on the basis of the principle that knowledge is a lever to make people want to act on the environment, beyond injunction and guilt. »
The last two chapters, dealing with the biodiversity crisis, less covered by the media than global warming, and the solutions within our reach, are particularly interesting. Dizzying in the urgent changes they announce, four podcasts produced by ADEME immerse us in the different models of carbon-neutral society, which we must adopt by 2050 in order to limit global warming to 2.1°C by 2100 (compared to over 4°C if we don’t do enough).
Realistic, utopian and dystopian all at the same time, they directly address the question of our way of life, while each French person emits around nine tonnes of CO₂ per year, almost five times what our planet can absorb properly. You can also calculate your climate footprint here.
Between scenario number 1 of great sobriety, which imagines a forest on Place Bellecour in Lyon with vegetarian French people living in shared accommodation, and number 4 which tells of hyperconnected – and a little terrifying – holidays in Alps covered with wind turbines and accessible in virtual reality, it’s up to everyone to make their choice.
However, this must imperatively be coherent and collective, supported by political will, massive investments and individual action. But these possible futures make the future ahead of us more exciting than anxiety-provoking, and that’s a great achievement.
“The action remains possible”, hammer the two sponsors of the project, Jean Jouzel and Valérie Masson-Delmotte in the introductory videos. For once, that seems true, provided, hopefully, that knowledge is, indeed, a prerequisite for change.