Ten years ago, on this day, March 17th, 2014, the wheels on the bus went round and round…
‘CARBON BUS’ NORTHERN TOUR 17-20 MARCH 2014
Eleven lucky applicants participated in the tour, which left from Townsville QLD and visited the Lansdown Research Station, ‘Trafalgar’ Station, ‘Wambiana’ Station and the Wambiana Research Site. Participants heard from leading specialists in climate science and agriculture and practising agriculturalists, including:
Professor Snow Barlow, University of Melbourne
Dr Ed Charmley, CSIRO
Dr Chris Stokes, CSIRO
Dr Steven Bray, QLD DAFF
Peter O’Reagain, QLD DAFF
Andrew Ash, QLD DAFF
Geoff Dickinson, QLD DPI
Roger Landsberg, ‘Trafalgar’ Station, Charters Towers
John Lyons and Michelle Lyons, ‘Wambiana’ Station, Charters Towers
The tour was enlightening and beneficial for all participants, but you don’t need to take our word for it, click here to hear from them direct…or watch the Virtual Tour video to see the tour highlights.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 399.9ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Prime Minister Tony Abbott had recently abolished – or was in the process of abolishing – the emissions trading scheme that Julia Gillard had shepherded through parliament in 2011. And climate activists were at a low ebb, and understood that they really had to go out and engage people who didn’t “get” to the climate issue. The trouble is that these sorts of tours from the south, to educate the benighted, ignorant, rural savages don’t work. Now, for the avoidance of any doubt. I’m sure that that’s not what the organisers of this carbon bus tour thought or felt on any level: but it’s easy for their good intentions to be painted.as such. I don’t have a solution. I suppose the climate education has to come from within these communities, from people who are trusted? Who those people are and how they might be supported, is beyond me. I guess. There’s always the internet….
What happened next? Well, the most infamous example of all this is the 2018 tour of Queensland by a whole bunch of greenies who thought that they were helping Bill Shorten get elected, and most definitely were not. This was something that was curiously absent from the Bob Brown hagiography about the tall giants or whatever it’s called. (see film review here).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
The context was that the UK “Climate Camp” had been staggering on with diminishing returns since 2007 (it began in 2006). And eventually someone put the poor beast out of its misery because they were all burned out.
What we learn is that so-called grassroots “organisations” have a real problem with sustaining themselves (Theseus’ ship and all that) because the new planks are thick as two short planks and not particularly radical; you get an influx of the careerist NGO types (as whined about in the 2008 letter at Kingsnorth, but I digress).
What happened next NVDA against power sources continued with Reclaim the Power. And then, in 2018, along came Extinction Rebellion, and we will know how that ended.
Just over 50 years ago, one of the most innovative and remarkable syllabuses in modern English education came into being. Its story, how it started, flowered, and then died have lessons for us all today.
There seems to be two points commonly made about teaching environmental/ecological concepts to school students: it’s mostly absent in syllabuses and it hasn’t been done. The former is certainly backed by evidence, but the latter is largely untrue. This story, and what we can learn about it, are the focus here. The great push comes from a determined and unlikely source, but let’s go back a bit.
English education has had an interest in “nature studies” from the earliest times of educational technology. The BBC Natural History Unit was producing radio programmes from the late 1950s onwards. However, this was mostly aimed at primary schools. We would have to wait for the 1960s to see further progress. At this time, curriculum innovation was being strongly supported which led to numerous initiatives of which one was a semi-academic/practical approach to Rural and Environmental Studies ‘O’ level run through the University of London’s Schools Examination Board (ULSEB). An early proponent of this subject, Sean McB Carson (a Hertfordshire local education officer), saw the need for a more academic, higher-level qualification. This turned into a committee which eventually produced the first A level (again to be taken up by ULSEB) called, not un-naturally, the Hertfordshire Syllabus (compare/contrast this with a current version!). From 1972 to 1992, this became, and remains, one of the most innovative syllabuses in secondary science. It’s worth noting that McB Carson went on to refine his ideas in another influential book, Environmental Education.
What was so novel about this syllabus? Looking back, I think it was the confluence of a number of factors:
Sociological – McB Carson as a driving force, ULSEB as a supporter, an innovative Ecologist as Chief Examiner (Dr PD Coker). There was also significant student interest in the senior secondary years;
Geopolitical – the general move towards environmental awareness and concern characterised (earlier) by Silent Spring and later by the Stockholm Conference in 1972;
Educational – a syllabus unlike others that demanded deep knowledge that was integrated into a systems-thinking approach with an exam system that demanded you demonstrate it!
How did it work? There were a few minor changes over the years but this gives an accurate overview:
Topics:
Natural environment and limits of the resource base: solar systems and the transport of energy; atmosphere; hydrosphere; lithosphere; biogeochemistry;
Ecosystems: climatic and soil factors; population and community ecology; population control
Man-Environment Interactions: Human requirements for life, developmental ecology, societal development, domestication of plants and animals, environmental pressures from industrial revolution onwards;
Field Study – environmental conflicts and pressures;
Pedagogy – One of the most daunting (and wonderful) aspects was that there was no set textbook! Students (and staff) really had to know about a wide range of topics from the workings of the solar system to fundamental ecology, to planning law and all topics in between! Standard books of the time include Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology, Ehrlich’s Population, Resources, Environment but there were many others often just covering a particular part (Cullingworth’s early Town and Country Planning was invaluable). The fundamental aim was to make sure that students had a sound background knowledge, both theoretical and applied, that would allow them to analyse a question from any perspective;
Assessment – Leaving aside the internal assessment, the external exam comprised 3 aspects – fieldwork to be assessed internally and sent off for adjudication, paper 1 – 3 hours on basics of the entire syllabus and paper 2 which has two essays requiring integration from all of the syllabus and a planning question. This last, innovative exam gave students an Ordnance Survey map and a planning issue to solve e.g. site a new town. It demanded a knowledge of planning law and practice. Ironically, our local authority planning department gave their planners the task and all failed!
So much for the technical side. What of the impact it had? As an educator and student, it demanded (and the exams tested) both core knowledge and its application. It was taught in the novel ideas of systems thinking and connectedness. Students were (in my college at least) fiercely proud of the subject and considered themselves environmentalists. Many went on to take degrees in ecology, environment, and related topics. Some became planners, others academics. We have some who have risen to prominence in the global conservation community, an international prize-winning photographer as well as those who went on to others field of endeavour. As a subject it rose in importance as a result of Stockholm in 1972 and was, alongside companion ‘O’ level seen as a vital subject to study. Sadly, the following years of warfare, oil price shocks (the first but not the last) and the rise of Thatcher meant that the subject was stumbling just as it started to take off (environmentalism, then as now, didn’t trump oil and commerce – or Thatcher’s dislike!). It’s interesting to speculate where it might have been were that not the case. Personally, I taught the course for almost all of its years and was a ULSEB subject panel member, question writer, examiner and part of the team developing interest in the course. I was also, sadly, the last person standing as exam board politics saw it dispatched in favour of topics with more political support.
If you’ve read this far, thanks! What message would I like you to take away from this? That it existed, that it demonstrated that you could have a meaningful and very rigorous subject and exam that could allow students to debate with knowledge and care for the planet. It opened up students’ eyes to the possibilities of doing things differently. Perhaps if this subject had developed as it should, we wouldn’t be needing school strikes today, 50 years after the subject started to debate the same thing I taught in 1975!
One hundred and five years ago, on this day, January 16th 1919, a social movement got what it wanted. Utopia did not ensue.
The United States ratified the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, authorizing Prohibition in the United States one year after ratification.
Legislation versus habit… ends badly… Baptists and bootleggers blah blah
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 303ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Temperance groups had been pushing for decades for a law banning booze. And they’d gotten their way. And of course, this meant an explosion of organised crime because people still wanted to drink. And health implications from bathtub gin, the bootleggers’ violence, you name it. So not everything that a popular – or at least powerful – social movement wants and pushes through the legislature is automatically good or democratic, who knew?
What we learn is that there is such a thing as “Baptists and bootleggers,” there can be an unholy symbiosis between religious zealots and banning things to create black markets. Yes, that is a right-wing talking point against climate legislation.
I suppose the other thing we learned is that banning stuff can feel good. And certainly with the case of fossil fuels, you really need to push the alternatives hard and stop the people trying to stop you. Am I making any sense?
What happened next. Prohibition lasted for 14 years, gave us organised crime, gun battles, gangsters, you name it. And then one of the first things that Franklin Roosevelt did, upon taking office, was to abolish it and everyone could get legally drunk again. What an extraordinary episode in human history, one that I haven’t thought about enough.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Fifty four years ago, on this day, January 7, 1970 a pre-Earth Day radical student group called “Ecology Action East” was ahead of the game, in terms of how it’s a BIG puzzle. They said that they believed:
– that the ecological crisis is fundamentally a social problem, deeply rooted in the structure of society and in the cultural values that this society generates and reinforces.
–that all social institutions of domination and exploitation, from the patriarchal family to the modem nation-state, must be dissolved.
— that… the ecology movement is also inseparable from the liberation movement of colonial peoples, black and brown people, American Indians, working people, gay people, women, youth, and children.
(Rat, January 7, 1970, p. 10)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that, from 1968 onwards, people had started to think seriously about the consequences of modernity, (good title – someone should write a book. Oh, wait they have) and the ecological impacts that might be coming down the pipe, and because of the pipe. In September ‘69, there’d been the announcement that an Earth Day would happen. But this was sponsored by a US senator, albeit a liberal one. And in the context of the Vietnam War a lot of activists were taking a serious look into the mouth of the gift horse. And groups like Ecology Action East, marrying the radical as in root cause, to critique of US imperialism as it applied to Vietnam with an ecological sensibility, and seeing that it was also connected to all these other issues. This is really intersectionality long before the word was invented.
What we can learn is that most of us have, a lot of us have known for a long, long time that the issues were linked, even hyperlinked, and that you weren’t going to “solve” any one without solving a lot else, though, you might have some short term gains.
What happened next. Groups like Ecology Action East were unable to sustain their momentum. And it all went tits up for them within a couple of years. And it was only another 20 years almost later, that ecology was really kicked off.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
Ecology Action East. 1970. The Power to Destroy – The Power to Create. Root & Branch No. 1, pp. 8-14
Thirty five years ago, on this day, December 19, 1988, celebrities get on board an Ark, for a star-studded launch…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 351ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that there was this exuberant ex-Greenpeace director (who had been a Daily Mirror hack) and had written in the early 70s about environmental depletion. He had gotten some money to put together a big manifesto. They had celebrities on board and it was going to be all-singing all-dancing. There were going to be little Arks, it was going to combine the business end, the social movement end the celebrity end – all singing all dancing all of the time.
And it did not come to pass
What I think we can learn from this
People get high on their own supply. People get drunk thinking that what needs to happen will therefore happen because it needs to happen. But that’s circular and it doesn’t reflect reality. But then reality is no fun.
What happened next
By July 1989 Ark had collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..
Fifteen years ago, on this day, December 18, 2008, American climate activist Tim DeChristopher took a bold action that landed him in prison.
In December 2008, he protested a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) oil and gas lease auction of 116 parcels of public land in Utah‘s redrock country by successfully bidding on 14 parcels of land (totaling 22,500 acres) for $1.8 million with no intent to pay for them.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was
that the state is endlessly auctioning off land for extraction; that’s the ideology of extractivism. In 2008 the climate crisis was already absolutely freaking clear – you’d had the fourth assessment report of the IPCC, you were getting all the weird weather and worse. Everybody knew.
What I think we can learn from this
When you spoof the money for you interfere with the money myths, people get particularly irate because well it’s a fetish and nobody likes to be reminded that it’s a fetish.
What happened next
Tim Christopher did some jail time, and here we are.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs..
Twenty two years ago, on this day, November 22, 2000, climate protesters stormed the stage at the COP6 negotiations in The Hague.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1036211.stm
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 369.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that three years after the Kyoto negotiations ITwas obvious that the UNFCCC process was again going nowhere. Bands of climate protesters descended upon the Hague, which had been the scene of a 1989 meeting on climate in order to say “get moving.”
The Hague process ended in disarray andwas the first and only time there was no formal end to the meeting. So they had to continue in Bonn the following June or July.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
On this day, November 20, 19330, the man who would later be known as The Fox – the first “ecotage” of the late 1960s upsurge, was born.
James F. Phillips (November 20, 1930 – October 3, 2001) was an American schoolteacher and environmental activist who became known in the Chicago area during the 1960s for his environmental direct action under the pseudonym The Fox.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in 1962 “Silent Spring” had woken everything up to the consequences of industrialisation. Through the 1960s there was more and more concern about pollution – air, water etc. By the late 1960s, people were freaking out. And taking (symbolic) action. See below –
See also the book “Ecotage 1972
What we can learn – “ecotage” has been around a long long time. And the history deserves more acknowledgement, because it might inspire us…
What happened next.
Despite the efforts of individuals and organisations, the damage has kept piling up at our feet. It’s too late now to avoid severe consequences for “our” actions. It may not be too late to avert the very worst, but I for one don’t think we will…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 408.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Extinction Rebellion was dreamed up in 2018 by Gail Bradbrook, and Roger Hallam and others. People did some stickering and fly posting. They announced a “declaration of rebellion” in Parliament Square at the end of October, and this was their next big media stunt.
And how many of those 1000s of people are now sitting in front of their televisions, blaming themselves for not having the tenacity to stay with it?
[To do – get someone who was there on the day in London, to give them memories of the day, and ideally, something that they wrote at the time.]
What I think we can learn from this
It’s not their fault. It was a toxic environment, the chaotic process, but we don’t know how to do social movement organisations. We just cut straight to the March on Washington in 1963, and people are giving “I Have a Dream” speeches, not understanding all that went for the so called star system.
What happened next
XR held two “rebellions” in 2019. The second was a damp-ish squib, and then came the pandemic. They’ve never really been able to re-heat the souffle, and at least in Manchester, the local groups tanked.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
