http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/view\/2012\/07\/17-0<\/p>\n
I couldn’t agree more!!! Great to see this in print. Wish all teachers could read it. <\/em> DV<\/p>\n Published on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by Rethinking Schools Blog<\/p>\n by Bill Bigelow\t<\/p>\n Here in the Pacific Northwest, we\u2019ve been spared most of the brutal weather experienced in the rest of the country. Throughout the United States, in the month of June alone, 3,200 daytime high temperature records were broken or tied. In Washington, D.C., an 11-day stretch of temperatures above 95 degrees is the longest since records have been kept. The weird and deadly mid-Atlantic storm\u2014the \u201cland hurricane\u201d\u2014took the lives of 23 people and left 4 million without electricity. Colorado has suffered through the worst forest fires in the state\u2019s history. And the fire still burning in southeastern Oregon is the biggest one the state has seen in 150 years.Illustration: Erik Ruin<\/p>\n As climate scientists will tell you, there is no way to link any single weather event to global warming. But as Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, said recently on Democracy Now!, \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing now is the future. We\u2019re going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we\u2019re seeing from this series of heat waves, fires, and storms. . . . This is just the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n And yet, the fossil fuel industry continues to lead the climate change denial parade. On June 27, a day when almost 200 high temperature records were broken, Rex W. Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, pooh-poohing climate change, saying that the problem was activist organizations that \u201cmanufacture fear.\u201d Tillerson said that the problem was an \u201cilliterate public,\u201d which needed to be taught that all environmental risks were \u201centirely manageable.\u201d<\/p>\n And conservative pundits proudly wave the same flat-earth flag. Arguing with E. J. Dionne on ABC\u2019s This Week, George Will said, \u201cYou asked us\u2014how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. . . . We\u2019re having some hot weather. Get over it.\u201d<\/p>\n In our editorial, \u201cOur Climate Crisis Is an Education Crisis,\u201d in the spring 2011 issue of Rethinking Schools, we wrote that the climate crisis is \u201carguably the most significant threat to life on earth,\u201d and urged educators to respond with the urgency that the crisis deserves. The events of this summer have added an exclamation point to our editorial.<\/p>\n A new article by Bill McKibben in the July\/August 2012 issue of Orion Magazine, \u201cA Matter of Degrees: The Arithmetic of a Warming Climate,\u201d holds profound implications for educators. McKibben begins with the reminder that there is a global consensus that if the planet warms more than 2 degrees Celsius, we enter the \u201cguaranteed-catastrophe zone.\u201d (And McKibben acknowledges that even 2 degrees may be too generous of a climate allowance.)<\/p>\n So McKibben does the arithmetic. To remain under the 2-degree threshold, we need to emit no more than 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide over the next 40 years. As he puts it, \u201cIt\u2019s like saying if you want to keep your blood alcohol level legal for driving, you can\u2019t drink more than eight beers in the next six hours.\u201d But here is the problem. Analysts have calculated that all the claimed reserves from fossil fuel\u2014coal, oil, and natural gas\u2014companies add up to 2,795 gigatons, five times more than the maximum allowable, even in a scenario that itself is fraught with climate danger.<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s another way of saying it: We need to leave at least 80 percent of that coal and gas and oil underground,\u201d McKibben writes. \u201cThe problem is, extracting and burning that coal and oil and gas is already factored into the share prices of the companies involved\u2014the value of that carbon is already counted as part of the economy.\u201d This would be the equivalent of these companies writing off $20 trillion.<\/p>\n For those of us who take climate science seriously, I think that we\u2019re left with an inescapable conclusion: It\u2019s not enough to teach about fossil fuels, we have to teach against fossil fuels. Any curriculum discussion that fails to address the threat posed by fossil fuel consumption to humanity and the future of all life on earth is profoundly irresponsible.<\/p>\n To illustrate the criminal full-speed-ahead approach of the fossil fuel industry, here in the Northwest, coal companies are pushing plans to export between 150 and 170 million tons of coal a year from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana through six different Oregon and Washington ports to Asia.<\/p>\n Put aside for a moment the horrible toll that coal mining takes on the land and water and people in Montana and Wyoming.<\/p>\n Put aside the coal dust pollution that destroys lungs and kills people.<\/p>\n Put aside the violation of Native fishing rights along the Columbia River, where all the coal would travel by train and barge.<\/p>\n Put aside the noise pollution and disruption from as many as 60 mile-long, diesel exhaust-spewing trains a day.<\/p>\n And instead think only about the climate implications of the hundreds of millions of tons of coal that will be burned if these export routes are opened\u2014a yearly figure, by my calculations, of between 240 and 270 million tons of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere. That\u2019s the equivalent of 65 coal-fired power plants. (Of course, anti-coal export activists are busy making sure this doesn\u2019t come to pass.)<\/p>\n Educators need to do our part. We have to continue to create\u2014and teach\u2014curriculum that through role play, simulation, experiment, projects, art, story, media, and activism helps students explore the causes and consequences of climate change\u2014and imagine economic arrangements that can stop hurtling us toward the \u201ccatastrophe zone.\u201d This work is already under way.<\/p>\n See articles in our special issue on \u201cTeaching for Environmental Justice:\u201d We concluded our climate crisis editorial: \u201cThe fight for a climate-relevant education is part of the broader fight for a critical, humane, challenging, and socially responsive curriculum. It\u2019s work that belongs to us all.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also work that has never been more urgent. Bill Bigelow is curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and author or co-editor of several Rethinking Schools books: A People’s History for the Classroom, The Line Between Us: Teaching About the Border and Mexican Immigration, Rethinking Columbus, Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World, and Rethinking Our Classrooms–Volumes 1 and 2. Bigelow lives in Portland, Oregon, and has taught high school social studies since 1978.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/view\/2012\/07\/17-0 I couldn’t agree more!!! Great to see this in print. Wish all teachers could read it. DV Published on Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by Rethinking Schools Blog by Bill Bigelow Here in the Pacific Northwest, we\u2019ve been spared most of the brutal weather experienced in the rest of the country. Throughout the United States, … Continue reading Common Dreams: Hot Enough for You? Time to Teach Against Fossil Fuels<\/span>
\n \u201c\u2018Don\u2019t Take Our Voices Away\u2019: A Role Play on the Indigenous People\u2019s Summit on Climate Change\u201d
\n \u201cDirty Oil and Shovel-Ready Jobs: A Role Play on Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline\u201d
\n \u201cGot Coal? Teaching About the Most Dangerous Rock in America\u201d
\n And in the latest issue of Rethinking Schools, \u201cFracking: In the End, We\u2019re All Downstream.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u00a9 2012 Rethinking Schools
\nBill Bigelow\t<\/p>\n