The seed of a movement

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,

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