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Home....?
We are, at present, systematically destroying our environment. We are not as
such destroying our planet, the Earth will recover in time from any damage
we inflict upon it. What we are doing is destroying our planet's
ability to sustain life as it is today.
We, as a species, have decimated paradise. We have, since
the industrial revolution, managed to release enough carbon to destabilize
our climate; carbon, which has been locked away by nature for millions
of years. This we do when we burn fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas.
As carbon levels increase, trees grow faster. It is
estimated that forests on planet earth have already absorbed 25% of the
carbon that we have produced. However, as deforestation continues all across
the world, we have taken away our planet's ability to keep the atmosphere in
balance.
As the polar ice retreats in the warming climate, and northern permafrost begins
to thaw, methane is being released, which is 22 times more potent as a
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
As melting polar ice reduces the salinity of the oceans,
the oceanic conveyor - that stabilizes our climate - is in danger of
grinding to a halt. The last time this happened, life on the earth was wiped
out, leaving the way clear for dinosaurs to evolve.
We have to act now to reduce our carbon footprint, but
more importantly, we need to teach our children all about their planet, how
it works, and what they must do to help to repair the damaged legacy that we
will leave them.
Of course, we can just sit back and do nothing. After all,
if life on earth does die out, the Earth will only take around a million years to
stabilize itself again. Then the long process of evolution can begin all over again. A million years
isn't that long, not for planet earth.
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If we act now, and drastically reduce our carbon
emissions, we can make a difference. Reducing household energy
consumption, planning car journeys to make them more cost and energy
efficient, taking advice on driving to reduce fuel consumption: these
simple steps will not only reduce carbon emissions, but will also save
money.
The Next Generation
 The
children in our schools today, are the scientists, politicians and
citizens of tomorrow. We need to arm them with all the information that we
were denied through either lack of scientific fact, or refusal to
acknowledge the consequences of our actions.
Sustainability Made Simple
is a project that Outdoor Classrooms has been working on since the
1992 Earth Summit in Rio-De-Janeiro. At that summit, pledges and promises
were made by almost all the participating countries to tackle the problem
of global warming. Meanwhile the populations of those countries sat and waited
for the authorities to act. Of course, little, or no action has been taken.
Although we are all now being actively encouraged to reduce
our carbon footprint, it is - in the end - down to the individual to make
the changes.
At Outdoor Classrooms, we can provide teachers with
information, structures and models to enable sustainability to be threaded
through the national curriculum, rather than taught as a separate subject
or as a week-long project.
Sustainability Made Simple is set out in four
parts.
Click HERE to see the structure of the project.
Plate Tectonics |
