DfE has a Vision – In a speech last week to the Annual Conference of the Confederation of School Trusts, Gavin Williamson said that he wanted “to share an ambitious vision for our country’s schools”. You can read it here. To save you too much by way of anticipatory excitement and associated palpitations, we can reveal that it said nothing about helping young people learn about environmental issues or what society might do about them. Rather, the DfE vision is for 100% of students in taxpayer-funded education to study in academies because “… strong multi academy trusts are the best structure to enable schools and teachers to deliver consistently good outcomes for all their pupils”.
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Pyropedagogy – Alan Reid, editor of Environmental Education Research, has written a chapter on declaring a climate emergency in a new open-access e-book: Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy. This is the abstract: ““The world is on fire!” Greta Thunberg’s wake-up call on climate inaction has resonated with many young people around the world. Participating in climate strikes and Fridays for Future is one route for response. But what else can a school and its community do to help address climate breakdown? This chapter outlines why and how a school might go about declaring a climate emergency policy. Resources draw on a range of local to international initiatives, research, and best practice, to help decision making on whether and when to declare a climate emergency in a school and to understand what’s involved in preparing, declaring, and following through.”
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COP26 – Here’s a message from Josh (19), Lavinia (14), and Jamie (15), all campaigners at the UK Student Climate Network: When the COP26 conference would have been running last year, over 330 youth delegates representing over 140 countries gathered online at Mock COP26. It was a powerful statement showing the ambition and dreams of young people worldwide fighting for a fair, equal and green world. The conference culminated with a global declaration to world leaders with 18 ambitious yet realistic policies covering six important themes; climate education, climate justice, climate-resilient livelihoods, physical and mental health, nationally determined contributions and biodiversity. We are now mobilising a movement of young people globally to campaign for their leaders to show this ambition and implement parts of our treaty ahead of COP26. You can read more about Mock COP26 here, in The Guardian here, and on Channel 4 here.
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Gee Seven – A song, written by Sir Tim Rice and Peter Hobbs, has been recorded by choristers at Truro cathedral and is part of a project called Sing2G7 which is “an apolitical international engagement programme with a vision to enable children to raise their voices in song and be heard by world leaders”. The song is addressed to those meeting at the G7 meeting in Cornwall. It’s hoped that it will be performed at the summit via a satellite link with at least 50,000 young singers taking part. More than 100 schools and cathedral choirs have already signed up in the UK. The song will be released as a single, and royalties will go to Unicef’s “Give the World a shot” vaccine programme.
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Copernicus and Carbon – Teal is an interactive visual tool that allows us to explore climate variables and carbon emissions from 1980 onwards. A global map shows climate data by country and region. You can find out more here and watch the explanatory video here. It comes c/o the EU’s Copernicus initiative.
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Data Data Everywhere – Poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality are the issues that Our World in Data focuses on. It is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Oxford, who are the scientific editors of the website content, and Global Change Data Lab, which publishes and maintains the website and the data tools. A full description of how it is funded in the Annual Report. Currently the website is focusing on plastics in oceans, biodiversity and wildlife, the decline of mammals, and carbon and food. It is recommended by Tim Harford as a source of reliable and valid information in our confusing world. Investigating this proposition sounds like a useful task for older students in schools.
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Positive Stories – Future Crunch is a group of scientists, artists, researchers and designers who believe that science and technology are the most powerful drivers of human progress. Its newsletter celebrates good stories about progress for people and the planet. Each week, it sends its subscribers good news stories from around the world, in an effort to counteract the non-stop, 24 hour bombardment of death and destruction from traditional and social media. For example, The Gambia has become the third African country to eliminate trachoma as a result of three decades of hard work by community volunteers who played a crucial role in raising awareness and promoting behaviour change. You can read their stories here.
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Soil Hopes – World agriculture accounts for some 26% of all greenhouse gas emissions. For example, tractors running on diesel release carbon dioxide from their exhausts, fertilisers spread on fields produce nitrous oxide, and cattle generate methane from microbes in their guts. As an article in The Conversation notes, even tilling the soil exposes carbon buried in the soil to oxygen in the air, allowing microbes to convert it to CO₂. The article suggests that, according to recent research, farming without disturbing the soil could cut agriculture’s climate impact by 30%. More detail here.
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Every Flower Counts – Plantlife has launched No Mow May – its rallying cry to put mowers away for the month and let the flowers grow ahead of the Every Flower Counts survey at the end of May (22nd to 31st). A project for every schools. The results for 2020 are here.
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A Responsible Future – SOS-UK has revamped its long-standing programmes such as Green Impact, Responsible Futures, and student halls of residence engagement, as well as bringing in new programmes for the coming year. These include the launch of a new staff & student carbon reduction engagement programme in partnership with the carbon reduction tool Giki, a new ESD change makers programme, wellbeing sprints for universities and colleges, and Carbon Literacy training.
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Clearly Thinking Critically – Every week, the Economist Educational Foundation publish free schools resources which promote the skill of thinking critically. It argues that young people need critical skills more than ever, in a world of multiple perspectives and fake news. You can explore them here.
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Weightless Electricity – Gravitricity and Energy Vault are two examples of gravity energy storage companies attempting to add to quickly-available energy sources which are useful when electricity demand is high. Instead of using water stored at altitude in a reservoir to generate hydroelectricity (with water re-pumped upwards when electricity is cheap), gravity storage uses heavy masses which are dropped down a shaft (and then re-raised when electricity is cheap). Electricity would be generated very quickly through the rotation of the drum holding the cables.
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Talking about Climate Action – We’re invited to join Picture Zero Productions for a screening of The People Vs. Climate Change which is followed by a discussion with the filmmakers and Nigel Topping, UK High Level Champion for Climate Action. See attached invitation for more details and to register to attend this exclusive event, or click the link below. This takes place on Wednesday 12th May at 1700. This follows the process when 108 ordinary people were called up by Parliament to help tackle climate change through the Climate Assembly. The link for the event is here.
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People, Nature and Climate – This year, the annual Communicate conference will take place across three events in June, September and January. The theme is: People Nature Climate.