Teach for the Future: Greening the national curriculum

Do you feel like you learnt enough about climate change in school? Most likely, you didn't as only 44% in a national survey of students felt like they had. If you think that's disgraceful than I have good news for you. In the last few months the National Union of Students (NUS) launched a partner charity called Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS). SOS's first campaign is 'Teach the Future' which aims to incorporate sustainability into the wider English curriculum instead of the topic being squeezed into either Geography or Science. The campaign includes the first ever legislation to be drafted by pupils and students: The Climate Emergency Education Bill!

The Climate Emergency Education Bill has extensive demands from students across the UK for sustainability to be included in all parts of their education, as well as a guide for supporting teachers and student voices. There's even proposed money earmarked for making educational buildings net-zero carbon. Here's an excerpt from the Bill's cover that explains all of the demands in a bit more detail:

A government commissioned review into how the whole of the English formal education system is preparing students for the climate emergency and ecological crisis (in the gift of the Secretary of State);
Inclusion of the climate emergency and ecological crisis in teacher training and a new professional teaching qualification (in the gift of the Secretary of State);
An English Climate Emergency Education Act that:

obligates education providers to teach the climate emergency and ecological crisis, and to have a member of their leadership team responsible for it;
provides new funding for: the upskilling of existing teachers and lecturers; development of teaching resources; vocational centres of excellence on low carbon skills; establishing youth voice climate boards; more youth-led climate and environmental social action; support with eco-anxiety;
requires, and provides new funding, to ensure all new state-funded educational buildings are net-zero from 2022, and all existing state-funded educational buildings are net-zero by 2030.

Emma and I were lucky enough to win a competition and get spots on the exclusive guest list for the launch of the Bill at Parliament on the 26 February 2020! We met up with the 46 students aged 13-26 in Parliament Square for photos before heading into the main event at Parliament. The reception was filled with students, representatives from environmental and educational charities, and MPs. We spoke with everyone, advocating for the Bill, before stopping to watch the speeches. Speeches were given by students, Parliamentarians, and educational leaders all emphasizing the urgent need for educating pupils across the nation about the climate emergency and its effects. Interestingly, most of the speakers emphasised the need for the social and economic effects of climate change to be included in the curriculum alongside the environmental. As Emma and I are quite 'in the know' about the devastating social effects of climate change it was good to be reminded that not everyone does. We left the event feeling inspired and ready to tackle sustainability challenges in Bristol and beyond!

If you want to support the Teach for the Future campaign write to your MP and ask them to help make the Bill into law.

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This blog was written by Anya Kaufman, a Sustainability masters student at the University of Bristol.

Converting probabilities between time-intervals

This is the first in an irregular sequence of snippets about some of the slightly more technical aspects of uncertainty and risk assessment. If you have a slightly more technical question, then please email me and I will try to answer it with a snippet. Suppose that an event has a probability of 0.015 (or 1.5%) of happening at least once in the next five years. Then the probability of the event happening at least once in the next year is 0.015 / 5 = 0.003 (or 0.3%), and the probability of it happening at least once in the next 20 years is 0.015 * 4 = 0.06 (or 6%). Here is the rule for scaling probabilities to different time intervals: if both probabilities (the original one and the new one) are no larger than 0.1 (or 10%), then simply multiply the original probability by the ratio of the new time-interval to the original time-interval, to find the new probability. This rule is an approximation which breaks down if either of the probabilities is greater than 0.1. For example

1-in-200 year events

You often read or hear references to the ‘1-in-200 year event’, or ‘200-year event’, or ‘event with a return period of 200 years’. Other popular horizons are 1-in-30 years and 1-in-10,000 years. This term applies to hazards which can occur over a range of magnitudes, like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, space weather, and various hydro-meteorological hazards like floods, storms, hot or cold spells, and droughts. ‘1-in-200 years’ refers to a particular magnitude. In floods this might be represented as a contour on a map, showing an area that is inundated. If this contour is labelled as ‘1-in-200 years’ this means that the current rate of floods at least as large as this is 1/200 /yr, or 0.005 /yr. So if your house is inside the contour, there is currently a 0.005 (0.5%) chance of being flooded in the next year, and a 0.025 (2.5%) chance of being flooded in the next five years. The general definition is this: ‘1-in-200 year magnitude is x’ = ‘the current rate for eve

Coconuts and climate change

Before pursuing an MSc in Climate Change Science and Policy at the University of Bristol, I completed my undergraduate studies in Environmental Science at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. During my final year I carried out a research project that explored the impact of extreme weather events on coconut productivity across the three climatic zones of Sri Lanka. A few months ago, I managed to get a paper published and I thought it would be a good idea to share my findings on this platform. Climate change and crop productivity There has been a growing concern about the impact of extreme weather events on crop production across the globe, Sri Lanka being no exception. Coconut is becoming a rare commodity in the country, due to several reasons including the changing climate. The price hike in coconuts over the last few years is a good indication of how climate change is affecting coconut productivity across the country. Most coconut trees are no longer bearing fruits and thos

Cabot Institute for the Environment blog

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