Welcome!
This email was my opening volley in creating an environmental movement. It was sent to 7 people, and gained 4 positive replies. Success! A blog was born.
Dear friend,
This email was my opening volley in creating an environmental movement. It was sent to 7 people, and gained 4 positive replies. Success! A blog was born.
Dear friend,
I hope you've had a good start to 2014.
I'm writing to you because I'm planning a project and wondered if you would be
interested in helping it become a success.
I spent the winter vacation reading this
book about the current state of the world's environment. It made
for somewhat depressing reading: by any measure it seems we're collectively
heading for an unprecedented ecological disaster in the short to medium term.
My new year's resolution was to try to
make the largest positive impact on the environment I can. I thought I would
start with what I know best, which is education. For the last 2 weeks I have
been incubating a plan. The idea is to create an alumni voice which will both
work with and put pressure on schools and universities to make deep and
meaningful changes towards the path to a sustainable future. Interested? Read
on!
The Problem
Graduates (i.e. future leaders) leaving
elite educational institutions are largely disengaged with their environment
and have a myopic view of the environmental problems we face; they are happy to
talk about the environment much more than actually do anything
about it. In short, they are eco-hypocrites. If (a) the role of education is to
prepare kids for the future, and (b) we need to take drastic action in order to
prevent a large-scale near-future collapse of the ecosystem, then our education
is failing our students by allowing them to graduate with this world view.
The deeper problem, as I see it
Kids are not born as eco-hypocrites,
but become so for two reasons. Firstly, institutions indoctrinate them in "environmentalism-lite"
(Take shorter showers! Recycle paper! Consider walking instead of driving!...) while
only taking superficial measures to engage the community and improve the
environment. Sure, some institutions recycle cups at events. But how can they
be considered green when they still heavily invest their massive endowments in
oil companies? When you follow the
money, you see that greening education is a public relations
exercise, NOT a change of heart. Students can see through the talk, and they become
an adult by learning to talk green and not act green.
Secondly, kids are fed a message that
undermines their potential environmental impact. The message is constantly "do
your bit for the environment [mostly on a voluntary basis, mostly when it
doesn't cost you anything], and all the little bits will add up to a huge,
meaningful change." I don't think this is true. Personal habits are a good
place to start but they will never amount to much without taking a political
stance and demanding change. (Consider other social movements as parallels to
this.) The message in schools needs to reflect this reality.
I could go on and on about this... but
I want to keep it short for now. For a good and rather entertaining overview, watch
the short film "The Story of Stuff"; I highly recommend it. storyofstuff.org
A vision
Imagine 'green education' as something
that goes much deeper than recycling on campus -- more of a change of heart
than habit.
1. Integration of the environmental
concerns across all aspects of institutional life and decision making. (This
ranking for UK unis looks like a good start.) In particular, there
should be responsible fossil-free investment (see gofossilfree.org).
2. An education that encourates
students to be politically engaged and both concerned for and truly
appreciative of the natural world. This can only happen by institutions taking
a stance politically on the environment and integrating the environment across
the curriculum.
3. An end to "greenwashing" (using
small but ultimately insufficient 'green' steps as a means to furthering a
school's reputation). The first step in the process is to admit that our
institutions and culture in their current forms are unsustainable.
OK in theory... so what's the plan?
My plan is based around one simple
idea: schools
listen to their alumni. There is currently no alumni voice
that holds its schools to account on the environment. I want to grow
one. The idea is to start an activist group as a blog.
1. Each member of the blog will look at
his/her own old school's eco policies as published publicly, dismiss the
greenwash, praise the good work, and suggest places for improvement.
2. Each person in the group is
responsible for corresponding with his or her alma mater. He or she will write
a letter/email to the person in charge of the environment and ask some deep
questions about the school's policies.
3. The correspondence (or lack thereof)
can then be published on the blog and commented on.
4. The group will pass the web address
on to their alumni network and ask their alumni friends to read it (and, if
they feel compelled, to get involved)
5. If it generates interest, the group
will naturally grow as other interested alumni groups comment on their own
schools. The model can be easily scaled up to multiple "eco-chapters"
of alumni for multiple institutions.
6. The group will not be a screechy
eco-fundamentalist group, nor a cozy networking tool -- neither of these have
leverage. The idea is to give "tough love" to the institutional
leaders. So we will present ourselves as a group of concerned alumni who want
our beloved schools to do the right thing for the next generation.
I'm thinking of starting the group with
4-5 writers, each of whom will blog once a month, thus creating a weekly blog
(this will generate more interest than an occasional blog.) It can grow from
there!
Environmental activism isn't much fun
alone. Actually, it's horribly depressing. I've already been tempted to give up
my resolution because I feel upset about the state of the world and want to
shut it out of my cozy life. But I realize that, with a small group, this could
actually be fun!
Join me
in demanding an education system that does as it says!
If you want to blog, it won't be a
massive time commitment. I'll ask that:
- You blog about once a month (at least for a
while)
- You contact your old school/uni and write a
letter of concern
- You send the blog link to your old friends
from that uni
If you're interested but would rather
support the project in another way, that would still be great! (I could imagine
in the future help being needed with... events, video making, publicity,
website help, contacts, technical expertise, wisdom...)
One final thing. You don't have to be
an eco-perfectionist to get involved. I sometimes worry that if I make a stand
about the environment, others will point to my habits as being less than green.
But if only those with perfectly green habits were allowed to demand a better
world, we wouldn't be left with much of a movement! Better to take a stand and
be imperfect than to continue business-as-usual.
Comments and suggestions on this idea
gratefully received. Thank you for reading!
Best wishes,
Will
