Think Like A Bathtub: Climate Change Education

MIT Professor John Sterman originally framed and developed the “carbon bathtub” analog as a way to explain climate change dynamics more broadly.

Think Like A Bathtub is a short, youth-narrated climate PSA originally created for broadcast at COP26 in Glasgow. Watch it on YouTube.

In 2009, National Geographic selected the bathtub as their BIG IDEA for the year, embedding it into a NATGEO curriculum for grades 3–8.

For further reading:

John D. Sterman and Linda Booth Sweeney, "Bathtub Dynamics: Initial Results of a Systems Thinking Inventory"

John D. Sterman and Linda Booth Sweeney, "Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change: Adults' Mental Models of Climate Change Violate Conservation of Matter" Climate Change 80 (2007): 213-238.