Values and strategies

Continuing on the report of Climate Action.

These are the values that the Alberta study found need to focus upon in engaging young people. While they were specific, they also have broader application.

• Security - learning needs to suggest that climate changes and the actions we are asked to take bear a relationship to a predictable future.

• Achievement and self direction - a desire to learn the skills to build the world they want to create.

• Place attachment - focus on the locality where students live and love.

• Continuity - young people want to see new energy initiatives create the prosperity that former ones did.

• Responsibility and agency - Young people realize that the future is theirs - and they are prepared to take responsibility for it.

The study noted that only a small number - 10% - dismissed the reality of climate change. Building on the previous studies of Alberta adults, these are the narratives that are seen as relevant to teens

• Love of locale (in this case, Alberta, but the same could apply to any province or region.

• Early adulthood - high school students are the next generation and are eager to take responsibility for their world.

• Climate - it will be challenging to talk about when parents’ employment or family history has depended upon fossil fuel industries. This must be a starting point. We do have to talk about it and recognize climate science based facts. It also helps to face the fact that we have overcome hard issues in the past by facing them realistically and honestly

• Energy - Clean energy solutions are under development. There have been energy transitions in the past and we have survived them.+

Young voices matter.

Climate Outreach is a UK based charity with a team of social scientists and communication specialists working to broaden public engagement with climate change. One of their recent projects was a study of the attitudes and perceptions of young people in Alberta. There are probably view places in Canada where there are more divergent views than this Canadian province, whose economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas extraction. The pandemic has only increased the anxiety of young people nearing the end of their secondary school education and their younger siblings also have concerns. Both groups combine high aspirations for change and are also subject to misinformation. You can find out more about Climate Action and their resources here.

Young people observe changes in the natural world. They also receive confusing narratives through social media. Their parents and teachers may have their own anxieties about what is going to happen in their province which makes conversations difficult - especially at any age when young people want to become independent in their world views - and these are already challenging times. What will their lives be like in terms of future work and life style?

After surveys and workshops with both middle school and high school students, this report has many good findings and recommendations than apply to a broader audience. I’ll note a few and continue with others over the coming days. They start with principles for educators - which can include both family members and teachers.

• Acknowledge that we are all anxious no matter whatever are age

• Build climate literacy. This needs to be the focus

• Learn about all forms of energy and how each contributes to climate change

• Make the conversations relevant to the issues in the lives of students - future education, job choice, lifestyle options.

• Know the real values of the students and relate the conversations to them

• Images matter. Find good and relevant ones to make the point

• Develop the right vocabulary and use it consistently.

• Make the science relate to practical hands on skills that students can practise.

• Respect family backgrounds and the views that they may present

• Ensure that resources are up to date since these are changing rapidly.

These are good principles for learners of any age. More on this will come soon.

Never Underestimate - Science Moms

I was originally made aware of the importance of climate scientist Kathryn Hayhoe through the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment lecture series in 2019 where they claimed this outstanding woman as one of their own. A Canadian by birth. Hayhoe began her studies here before becoming the Political Science Endowed Professor in Public Policy and Public Law in the Department of Political Science, a director of the Climate Center, and an associate in the Public Health program of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Texas Tech University.

 But never underestimate the power of a woman – and a mom – and also a scientist. She has brought the three together as the lead in a new initiative to help us guide the next generation in the important area of climate change.  After meeting a young mother frightened about the world of the future for her child, Hayhoe realized they had a common situation and concern. Her approach is creative – channel fears into action.  Talk to your family and friends about it – but even more importantly, become an advocate in the places where you have agency – local schools, local governments, churches and local agencies and other levels of government.

 Hayhoe recruited five other prominent women scientists and a funding body to begin a ten million dollar educational project designed to educate and empower mothers – grandmothers like me can also join in. It will pay for advertisements featuring the women scientists that will run nationally and follow with ads focusing on states in the US where climate change is already showing significant effect. It’s a long term project that is expected to last for five years and you can read about it here.  Its website site includes helpful resources and starts the process with outlining myths and facts.

 In a “half the sky” framework, moms matter to politicians and advertisers.  Both can tap into their existing concern for climate change.  What this project gives them is some straightforward ways to act.  Moreover, they will have confidence in the leadership of woman scientists providing them with talking points and the ability to debunk common myths. Among them:

• Climate change isn’t settled science.

• Climate change is a natural phenomenon.

• Climate change is way off in the distant future.

• It might get bad but we can handle it.

• There is still time to address it (but not too much).

 You might check your own response to these statements and see if you are clear on the facts.  Next you can view the resources – some for moms and some to share with their children as well as TED talks. There is a sign up sheet for Americans and a similar one for Canadians and other parts of the world would be useful.

The final reminder is that individual small steps are important – but significant action involves government legislation.  We have to have the right information and we have to urge those in positions of power to act on it in important and positive ways. Exploring these materials is a really worthwhile way to spend some time during our current lock down.

Gratitude

Last year on the day after Christmas, family members and I boarded a plane in Toronto. Five and a half hours later we were enjoying a late lunch at a lovely Chinese restaurant in Richmond, British Columbia. We texted relatives that we would catch the six o’clock ferry to join them on Bowen Island and anticipated the celebration of marriage of a family member and her new husband the next day.

This year some of the same family members picked me up to transport me to the one permitted household - with presents for exchange,, a floral arrangement sent from the BC relatives, home-made cookies from an exchange among Toronto friends, and my dinner contribution of an English trifle.  We settled in for a leisurely lunch, while my son did the cooking and viewed an interchange on his laptop in the kitchen and the rest of us visited with extended family members on another one in the dinning room – one from a recently purchased schoolhouse getaway in Eastern Ontario, one from a dacha outside Moscow, another from an apartment in Winnipeg, Manitoba at minus forty degrees – where Fahrenheit and Centigrade temperatures actually meet – colder than the home of one of the residents from Finland – and another stuck in Ottawa where the meeting of the Canadian Senate kept him from flying home in time. 

 On Christmas Eve we had gathered on Zoom for an even larger gathering where another family member read “A Child’s Christmas in Wales”.  Three generations of one family had lived there, either teaching at or attending one of the United World Colleges. Members were now spread out in different countries but still seeing one another on the screen.  Another presented a radio presentation, where he acted as Trinculo in Shakespeares’ The Tempest - reprising a performance that his grandfather had done decades earlier. Another accompanied himself on a guitar while singing a Psalm in both Hebrew and English. His sister played and sang a carol. His aunt played a clarinet to show us what she could do after working with one for only six months. I read my Covid parody.

And all this is seen as possible – and normal during a pandemic. And we would never have thought to connect with so many at once - until we couldn’t do so in person.

 How different it is from the pandemic of 1918. My father was 18 years old that year and my mother was 15.  I never thought to ask them what that pandemic was like for them. This morning’s paper details some similarities with the present one.  The number of patients strained the hospital and the number of deaths - 50,000 in Canada – 50 million around the world – meant the large number could not be interred quickly enough.  Businesses were shut down.  Prime Ministers caught the flu.  The Stanley Cup was postponed.  But there were differences too.  Children and young adults were the most threatened. There was little government help – either national or provincial – and local governments had to work on their own.

 Let’s hope that some of the patterns don’t recur.  There were swings between opening up and needing to shut down again.  There was initial avoidance of the severity of the pandemic. There was resistance to closings.  Public health officials were both congratulated and denigrated.  Health workers were infected and shortages were severe.  Quack cures prevailed.  Indigenous communities were hit hardest. The disease faded away in most countries but Canada continued to have sporadic outbreaks until 2020.

 The key difference is the development of vaccines. Some were developed in 1918 at Queen’s University and by Connaught Laboratories at the University of Toronto.  What scientists did not know then was that the disease was produced by a virus.  Their vaccines did reduce the severity but vaccine development with both new understanding and speed of production were decades away.  We are so fortunate to live in the new century where over time we will overcome the effects of the current one.

 The amazing opportunities afforded by technology where we can see each other from a distance and be safely together in new ways is so taken for granted that we forget the creators of so many inventions.  I searched for a timeline and found one here

 And I was fascinated by those with impact on my own life:

My Mediaeval Manuscript

The handwritten page from a psalter hanging above my electronic piano had some precursors. Anod of course they were followed by the printing press to allow books to spread through the known universe, open up learning and change the world

My great grandfather hated the telephone

When the family in Parry Sound installed on the first in the town, he hated the idea of people intruding on his privacy. Now I text my grandchildren.

This doesn’t even show how I do it now

A Google Nest responding to my oral request to play some Christmas Carols on Combo - with a number of the best ones sounding in three different rooms on three small units.

My TV watching at home started in 1950

Now I ask my TV to head toward Prime or YouTube on the big screen with hundreds of choices in spectacular colour - or switch back to one of the many cable stations - not exactly like the small screen of the past.

Communication machines

In university, the weekly newsletter in my college was printed on a ditto machine - and I still have a purple version. Then came the fax machine in the 80e where in 1985 one board member had one - and 1986 where only one member didn’t - and no parctically no one does. I’d still like it better if my all in one printer would print in colour even though only the demo does.

From turning on a desktop in 1984

To meeting the family on Zoom in 2020. It’s been an amazing journey through it all.

As I write, I am restricted to my apartment but my life is both safe and rich.  It is so easy to forget how fortunate I am compared to most of the world during a pandemic.  Mu family came up with an innovative way to enjoy company on my balcony in cold weather – electric fleece throws. The view from there of the canopy of trees is beautiful even missing their former leaves and the lake and sky still dominate the extensive built environment.

An obituary of  famous nature writer Barry Lopez reminds me to put all this technology in perspective.  We, like the wolves he spent time with and wrote about so lovingly, are also creatures of the planet.

 The New York Times quotes the British writer Robert Macfarlane as he  put it this way in The Guardian in 2005 writing about the author. “Throughout his writings, Lopez returns to the idea that natural landscapes are capable of bestowing a grace upon those who pass through them. Certain landscape forms, in his vision, possess a spiritual correspondence. The stern curve of a mountain slope, a nest of wet stones on a beach, the bent trunk of a windblown tree: These abstract shapes can call out in us a goodness we might not have known we possessed.”

 The technological and the natural are part of our lives in the Anthropocene and both bring us grace..  Many of our journeys this season involved a much smaller carbon footprint, though they depended on electricity and that is a small benefit to the planet.  The human connections in my small world were made well – while all around us there are evidence of such connections and care that are made badly. So much will depend on our choices and sense of a sacred that we must receive with grace as we move ahead.

Anti or Not?

Words matter and how we use them causes confusion.  I was struck by how this works after recently finishing the book, How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X Kendi. It made a much deeper impression than Robin Diangelo’s White Fragility. What both deal with at length is denial, something that Canadians as well as Americans must come to terms with, both in their roles as settlers who felt they had the right to steal lands inhabited for thousands of years by first nations people. While slavery is not as large a part of our history as that of our neighbors to the south, we are not innocent in systemic racism in Canada.  Kendi’s book helps us cut through our denial.

 Kendi, an author, professor, anti-racist activist, and historian of race and discriminatory policy in America, recently assumed the position of director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University. His book combines his own upbringing and development as a memoire while also making clear argument about the distinction between “not a racist” and “anti-racist”.  It’s not hard to cite the example of a former president, who after delivering unsavory remarks about some citizens of Baltimore then stated he was the least racist person in the world. Our own gut reaction is to say, “Well at least I’m not a racist”.  Kendi’ book is a history of his own journey from racist to anti-racist. He says he used to be a racist most of the time. He no longer claims to be “not racist.

 What is an anti-racist?  He starts with two basic definitions:

Racist: one who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inactions or expressing a racist idea.

Anti-racist: one who is supporting an anti-racist policy through their actions or expressing an anti-racist idea.

 Subsequent chapters take us through historical patterns. Assimilation results when one group suggests that another group is culturally inferior or behaves badly, and thus needs to be improved. Its opposite, segregation, suggests that one group will never improve and therefore should be segregated.  An anti-racist idea is that all groups are equal. He characterizes these opposites as dueling consciousnesses.

 He calls race a power construct with false historical roots, including differences in biology, In early childhood, his teacher assumed that his behaviour was bad and suggested that he should behave like an adult.  The converse is that many black adults have been treated as children unable to reach maturity. The bible starts with the notion that all are equal and then puts a curse on Ham who will forever be a slave. Ethnicity also enters the picture with notions of group characteristics.  Some bodies have been characterized as more animal-like or violent. Some group’s cultures are denigrated as not being really sophisticated. A bad individual becomes the poster child for the whole group.  Colour has created hierarchies within the groups themselves – including both blacks and whites. We ascribe divisions within class, space, gender and sexuality. Racism is always present and it is subconscious. To support his argument, Kendi relates amazing stories from his own life to illustrate it. The task for all of us is to bring it into consciousness.

 The struggle is to be fully human and also to see others as equally fully human. The focus has to be on power – not on groups of people – and on changing policy not on changing groups of people. It has to start with a recognition that we know and admit that such policies are wrong. What are policies that suggest certain groups of people are more dangerous or violent or mentally challenged than others?  How can policies that support such ideas be upended? How can pledges for diversity be replaced by policies for diversity? How can stereotypes based on one person – “black angry woman” be demolished as applied to any group?

 In a recent talk, Kendi cited the book’s chapter called “Failure” as the most important one in the book.  He says that to understand failure to remove racism is related to failed solutions and strategies – and that the cradle of these lies in failed racial ideologies.

These are not social constructs.  They are power constructs.  Current solutions offered to us when we feel bad or sad include reading a book, donating to a cause or marching a time or two.  But as soon as we do that we feel better – oscillating between feeling bad and feeling good means that generally we do nothing at all.

 It’s not a sequential march toward progress.  It’s a back and forth pattern.  It’s not saying “I’m not racist”.  It’s admitting, “I am racist and starting to act in a different way”. It’s not hearing stories and feeling sad about miserable mistreatment of others. It’s about attacking policies in any place and at any level where we have agency.  Education may help individuals but it may not affect groups.

 Resistance does work – it takes a long time, but it has to be constant and focus on ideas and policies.  There are two such policies I learned about in the morning paper that require my resistance.  An app to promote cheating is being used in a local university.  It does not recognize black faces. Whatever its merits in stopping cheating, it has to go.  A first nations community in the north is worrying that the vaccine is not on its way to them fast enough because of small population density, even though their caseload of Covid-19 is much too high.  I can send an email to a policy maker re both situations. It’s paltry as an action.  But I now know about ways to start being an anti-racist – and I can begin. Read this book.

 Postscript: I did send an email to the federal director of indigenous services, after finding him on the government website.  I was thanked for writing almost immediately and my short request to act was copied to three other persons in the department. No reply from the province on the cheating app yet.