In his latest newsletter from Poland, David Oldroyd discusses the Drawdown Review, which details how we might limit global warming. There are two Drawdown scenarios. They align, respectively, with meeting a minimum goal of 2°C and a more ambitious goal of 1.5°C. Drawdown Scenario 1 is roughly in-line with 2 ̊C temperature rise by 2100, while…
Today’s post is by Ben Ballin and Richard Dawson and takes the form of a dialogue about the nature of a green curriculum. “It is interesting when you get quoted in someone else’s article. This happened to Ben, when he was approached by a curious journalist who was writing an article on ‘green schools’, having read a…
This is a link to a long article on the Ensia website by John Vidal, its environment editor. It’s not about COVID-19 specifically, but about the increasing risks of pathogens crossing species boundaries to humans. Here are a few extracts to give a sense of what the article covers: “Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. The 150…
A recently-published report by Natural England concludes that supporting human and environmental health, needs both contact and connection with nature. Furthermore, a new national measure of nature connectedness shows connection to nature is good for people’s psychological wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours. Natural England says that nature connectedness is a relatively new and measurable psychological construct that describes…
A new paper from the Christina Kwauk at the Brookings Institute – Roadblocks to quality education in an era of climate change – has four goals. – First, it sets out to illustrate why more attention to, and investment in, education as a means of reducing risk and increasing informed action about climate change is needed, “lest the technofixes of…
This is another update from Natural England this time in relation to Nature Connectedness. . Human-nature relationships in context. Experiential, psychological, and contextual dimensions that shape children’s desire to protect nature M Giusti – PLoS ONE, 2019 What relationship with nature shapes children’s desire to protect the environment? This study crosses conventional disciplinary boundaries to explore this question.…
Yesterday the TES website had a feature on a survey carried out by Cambridge International Assessment (an exam board), as part of Global Perspectives Week. About 11,000 students aged 13-19 responded; 800 were from the UK. The TES reported that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are seen as more trustworthy than teachers on global issues such as climate change and poverty.…
The Policy Institute at King’s College London has published a report on what the UK public knows about environmental issues. Its title is: Britons hugely underestimate how hot planet has become and how much plastic waste is in the environment which neatly captures the problem. The study was accompanied by the publication of The Perils of Perception: Why We’re…
Ahead of next week’s parliamentary reception to promote attempts by Teach the Future to increase the effectiveness of climate change education, the Department for Education is resisting. A parliamentary question [ #4444 ] was asked by Darren Jones (Labour: Bristol North West) “To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effect of…
In today’s blog, Richard Dawson and Ben Ballin explore the work they are doing on climate change education within primary schools in the Change the Story project. Over the next three years, a group of six European education organisations will be exploring effective climate change education within upper primary schools as part of a project called Change the Story. Through…