February Events at New Climate Guides

The Environmental Trust Fund project, Climate Conversations, is a series of 20 podcasts about climate issues with students in our region. This project is now complete and “in the can”. It is available at voices.care.

The series has been commented about before but some more generalizations can be made. 

• There is a widespread gap between opinions and knowledge. Most students equate climate change with the popularity of recycling. In truth, recycling has nothing with mitigating climate change. Recycling requires a great deal of energy that currently comes from fossil fuels. Climate change requires the end of burning fossil fuels. The disconnect comes from the huge public relations efforts of the manufacturing industries to deflect blame from packaging manufacturers and users of manufacturing toward consumers. Post-consumer recycling does not work. The emphasis needs to be on avoiding plastic, cardboard, and other robust single-use packaging. 
• Other comments include falsehoods against EVs and vegetarian diets. Students’ comments may have their source in parent’s comments or widespread common on social media. The ETF should promote teacher education of the basic topics within the Environmental Science curriculum. To this end, VOICES has begun a Teachers’ Resources section within the voices.care  website.
• An expert agronomist served as a source of information for young farmers getting started in the business. This was to a Grade 12 class of Agriculture at Cambridge-Narrows; this is the first ag class for High School I have heard of. The 60-minute podcast is a wealth of information on how to select crops, how to obtain suitable land, and how to get started. This is the last podcast in the set. We will perhaps look into finding other sources of funding for more podcasts. 

We have had more experience this month with Primary and Middle School students. This might be another worthwhile field for us to explore. Climate anxiety is a real thing, and it seems to be directly correlated with the student’s proximity to nature. We are researching this now so we will report in April. 

Marian and I have participated in a book study of Teaching at Twilight by Ahmed Afzaal. The book examines the technical and moral difficulties involved in university teaching during the period of climate collapse. The zoom group is available through the Quillwood Academy at Univ of Vermont. They host a number of Climate Crisis discussion groups. Teaching at Twilight is a tough read as the author convinces you that the world is already at collapse in Bangladesh, Sudan and other states. Compare our climate in NB and our abundance of fresh water to conditions in Texas where cattle are dying in the tens of thousands again this winter. As soon as US farmers and ranchers realize that things will not be better next year (“welcome to the coolest year in the rest of your life.”), they will flock to the Maritimes. What will we do with them? And we thought Ontarians were bad!