People have been going on about ‘taking care of
the planet’ since long before we’d heard of ‘global warming’: before climate change became something we paid attention to.
It has to do with circles and straight lines. In the Lion King they talk about the ‘circle of life’. For hundreds of thousands of years we lived our lives a little more ‘in tune’ with nature. When we built a fire there was enough woodland to ensure that there were always more trees by the time we needed more wood. There were plenty of trees and plants to be able to absorb the gases we produced when
we burnt them. When we caught fish to eat, we left enough ‘tiddlers’ to make sure there were plenty to eat next time. And when we threw stuff away, the eco-system, all the bugs and bacteria, and the plants, knew how to break it down so it became part of the earth again...
And then we got smart.
We found ways to do things smarter and quicker. We built machines to do our work for us, and engines to take us long distances quickly. And when we found there weren’t enough
trees, we dug deeper and used trees that had already been taken back into the earth – fossilised into oil and coal – hundreds of years ago.
But, because this ‘circle of life’ was so natural to the way we did things, we hadn’t really noticed we were doing it, and we didn’t realise how important it was to keep that circle going. To ‘put back’ and give the planet the chance to renew again.
The trouble was, these ‘fossil fuels’ took several life times to be renewed, and we had cut down most
of the trees that absorbed the gases that came out when we burnt them. And the things we make now have man-made chemicals that don’t break down so easily when we throw them away, and some are even poisonous to other life.
And so over the past few hundred years we have started to live our lives in straight lines. We take from the earth, we use it and we throw it away, and it doesn’t go back into the earth; it just stays where we put it. And the gases have built up in the atmosphere and stayed there. And now? Now we realise that we have to go back to a way of life that will ensure that we won’t use up the only planet we have.
Why not have a debate in school to find out what people think, or have a discussion?
– Linear or cyclical?
– ‘shop til you drop’ or
‘enough is enough’?
Other questions you could discuss:
• Can technology save us?
• Does one person’s action change anything?
• Is there anything wrong with buying cheap clothes
that can be replaced as fashion changes?
• Is this all too much for young people to solve – shouldn’t we leave it to governments and big business?
*Article for VoiceBox Issue 16 (School Councils UK magazine)
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