Professional development | Climate Change Class – WSI

This lesson began with a reaction from learners to some comments I wrote on the board taken from a internet discussion thread on climate change. Comments were either for or against climate change being a result of humankind. NOTE the slips of paper containing all comments had been misplaced at the school, therefore writing two or three of them on the board that came to mind served almost as well.

I seated groups according to level, and learners discussed for a short time the views on the board with moderate interest. A good idea might have been to ask that they write onto slips of paper their own views, shuffle and redistribute them, in order to promote some early oral fluency on the topic. I then chested some pictures to the class which contained colour illustrations of various historical epochs (extinct dinosaurs, stone-age people around fires, melting icecaps), and in groups they matched the illustrations with various epoch titles, then those with the correct dates.

Prior to this, I had laid long datelines across each groups' table. However, in retrospect, putting them on the tables later would have been better because learners now started that activity too too early; a task like this should be staggered.

What I wanted to highlight, in order to encourage debate, was some of the changes coming into effect in the world in our relatively short existence.

I read aloud the true dateline for them to check against. Beginning 64 million years ago and reaching the present except for two timeline nodes.

I revealed the remaining dates, 'less than 1 lifetime ago: we used up half the world's oil supply,' and
'just 15 years ago: the development and deployment of the world-wide web.'

As we were running out of time there was a brief final discussion. Considering the large size of the class, I think we did quite well.

listening text from ABC Radio National

We need to evolve to cope with the problem. Not physically but culturally. Not biological evolution, but systems evolution. We would need to use the collective capacity of human beings, from the local community, to the regional community through to the global community. We need conviction of the problem, understanding; we need to know what people are doing in other communities and other places.

Whether man-made or not, climate change is in effect and is seen to be worsening exponentially, thus we are trying to work to find solutions. 

But the history of humanity is that things often have to get very much worse before we actively try to make them get better – why should things be any different in terms of our current crisis?

We usually think of the history of humanity as an unimaginably long period of time, but if we adjust that scale and think in terms of lifetimes, it’s not that difficult to see that, actually, we haven’t been around that long and there’s been a great deal of change,

64 mil years ago                                      dinosaurs became extinct
2 million years ago                                  climate change. the seas were rising
125, 000 years / 1, 800 lifetimes ago(laid end-to-end) our species, homo sapiens sapiens
1, 000 lifetimes ago                                            invention of language
570 lifetimes ago                                            the stone age
140 lifetimes ago                                                agriculture
70 lifetimes ago                                                       writing
3 lifetimes ago                                            industrial civilisation

< 1 lifetime                            we’ve burnt up half the world’s oil

and 1/5 of a lifetime (15 years)    the development & deployment of the WWW

in light of all this, implications are that we can affect change, and we need to consider how it is affected. And so we see, the changes are of our lifetime and that what can happen in our lifetime can be enormously significant.

One way I attempt to fathom it is by thinking about some of those smaller things we do currently and enlarging or extending those into the bigger picture: thinking of that next person in the community as someone connected rather than not – one you have cleared your rubbish at your seat in the park for, the rubbish collector you've separated your domestic waste for, one you've left reading material in the waiting room for, sent the lift down for, planted a tree for – someone who is unseen and unknown to us, yet we are smart enough to know that these small measures help. It is in this same sense, in our current situation, that we need to extend certain considerations to the next generations.

(in class the teacher could elicit many of those small things we do that make a big difference, e.g. turning of the lights, the air-conditioning, riding a bicycle, solar energy.)

It’s not that we might be sadistic, a take-as-you-need society, reckless or careless towards the environment and Earth's ecosystems, rather we just don’t know how to see it and act. 

Having said that, as awareness and understanding spreads and as warming goes on increasing, so does the culpability of larger institutions and companies who have a greater ability at quick change and prevention of damage. 

All the same, the most apparent solution in my mind, as we see the solution of having one singular world-government becoming less viable, lies in the collective will power of the individual. 

Change begins with one. Even the mightiest waterfalls

have begun with a single drop of water, and look what becomes of that.

Iguazu Falls, Argentina