I don't think this is something that "everyone needs to do"...I mean, there will always be substantial numbers of people who believe the earth is flat, the star

I don't think this is something that "everyone needs to do"...I mean, there will always be substantial numbers of people who believe the earth is flat, the stars control our destinies, etc. Talk of reaching everyone seems like a distraction. The real issue is that if 30-60% of the population thinks climate change is bunk, there's no way to make them care with carrots and sticks because opposing them becomes politically difficult. The only people who need to understand the "public policy questions", in a world where public policy is set up as law, are the legislators (the "game designers"). This is simply an argument for better-educated legislators, not a better-educated populace. I don't think this is true at all. Legislators do not have absolute freedom to legislate, even on topics for which the public is ignorant. Such topics can be demagogued which means that they're politically toxic to legislators, even for legislators that understand the issues completely. If I'm a legislator who is convinced that climate change is a huge problem but I also know that most of my constituents don't believe that, then I'd better not vote for a carbon tax or else I'll lose the next election. Those incentives remain true no matter how much I understand the public policy. It is true that we don't need everyone to fully understand all public policy, but we do need a decent fraction of the population to understand the big issues well enough to make addressing them politically feasible.