Climate change: Our kids need to be empowered to take action
OPINION: The climate change programme introduced by the Ministry of Education is a new resource for year seven to 10 students, designed to support teachers in delivering science-based climate change content and guide them in developing awareness and taking action on the issue. I taught an environmental and sustainability education paper as part of a teacher education programme at the University of Waikato for 11 years. My doctorate explored policy in this area, so I took an immediate interest when I learned of this new resource. After going through it, my first thought was that it is long overdue. My second was that it does not go far enough. Climate change is happening right here, right now. The future of children today is likely to be worse than we imagine. Thisprogramme should have been in schools a long time ago. READ MORE: * Climate change education resource to be in schools in 2020 * Please miss, can you teach us about climate change? * We need to listen to young people about climate change NASA says that in the past scientists predicted we would have a loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and more heat waves . We are experiencing this now. If we continue as we are, scientists predict that global temperatures will keep rising. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes more than 1,300 scientists from the United States and other countries, have predicted a temperature rise of between 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. The IPCC also agree that this is caused by the production of human-made greenhouse gases. In my opinion, students in our schools have a right to not only become aware of climate change, but to be empowered to think critically on the issue and take action. This is their lives we are talking about. It is best that they are given access to accurate scientific content on climate change; supported in developing research competencies and guided in developing the skills needed to work together in mitigating against it. The new climate change programme is well placed to do just that. It is based on inquiry learning and is student-centered, so connects well to the New Zealand Curriculum. Yet this resource is no doubt likely to be controversial. Already the meat industrys lobby group Beef+Lamb NZ has expressed disapproval at the suggestion of cutting back on meat to fight against climate change . They say the resource has made "sweeping generalisations" and "ignored context". I disagree. The resource clearly contextualises the issue of animal agriculture and climate change in New Zealand . It explains that "New Zealand has one of the highest per-person rates of emissions for an industrialised country. Most of our emissions come from livestock and road transport. It also seems to me that the resource makes very accurate statements, not broad sweeping generalisations as Beef+Lamb NZ indicate. Eating meat is a huge contributor to climate change and reducing, or preferably eliminating, meat in our diets is a very powerful action to take. This is education. Its not business, and it should not be concerned with protecting brands or industries. If anything, the resource does not go far enough in engaging students in really challenging the current status quo. We simply cannot save the planet against climate change by reducing meat intake, taking less flights, reducing waste and driving electric cars - although these might be good starting points. Technology wont save us. Rather we need to reflect on and radically alter our perception of ourselves and our relationship with the Earth. We are not managers of the Earth, or its stewards or caretakers. We do not progress by conquering the elements. Instead, humanity is a mere blip in time - one that has had a disastrous impact on Earth and its inhabitants. If we are to have any hope of surviving the effects of climate change, we need to see ourselves as cohabiting the Earth with other species who have every bit as much right to be here as we do. We need to shift to plant-based agriculture that is sensitive to local place and works in harmony with the natural ecology. We should learn from indigenous peoples' knowledge of place. In short, we can't tinker around the edges of capitalism and try to green it. We need a complete economic and social revolution one that that challenges the core assumptions of industrial capitalist development. We need economic de-growth. The kind of education needed for such a radical revolution is unlikely to find itself a place in our schools. Schools should aim to prepare students for the future - it is one of their oft-stated aims. The assumption behind this is that we want them to be successful in the future. Yet, how often do we pause to question what kind of success? I take much inspiration from educationalist David Orr who says: The plain fact is that the planet does not need more "successful" people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it". Does success mean making money, getting a good job, having lucrative social connections? And what use are they in a world that is literally dying? Where the conditions for life are becoming rapidly uninhabitable? So, I applaud the resource on many levels. But I also hold my reservations about the ultimate good it will do in a world that needs so much more. Dr Lynley Tulloch works as a lecturer in education at the University of the South Pacific. Stuff Nation