"Today the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released the results of a study...". So began a report released by Yahoo News on January 27, 2009, that grabbed my attention. The study showed that "changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible", even if (extremely unlikely) CO2 emissions were to be stopped completely. A tipping point has been reached: global warming and sea level rise are "locked in" over the next 1000 years. This report, one of many, is chilling in its semantic transition from the hypothetical to the actual, from proselytism to reality.
The time has come to adjust our thinking from "what if?" to "now what?". But not our thinking. It is largely too late for that. It is time to adjust the thinking of the next generation, our sons and daughter. To survive, our children need to be taught a new mindset, from preserving the old ways at all costs to learning to adapt in the face of inevitable change.
The thoughts of the fathers echoed off the walls of the classroom where I taught Leadership in a traditional New England boarding school on the day of the inauguration of newly elected President Obama. "I'm a '3' today - not the worst day of my life, but close," grumbled an 8th grade boy during our "check-in". "And why is that?" I asked. "Because of the election," he replied. "Things are going to change."
Yes, things are going to change, and not just because of politics. And the comfortable lifestyle enjoyed by most of the families of my former students, indeed most of us whose existence relies upon an infrastructure dependent upon fossil fuels and a climate that reflects the relative calm of our Anthropocene epoch, are destined for change as surely as my 8th grade student and his family. We must learn how to adjust.
In the spirit of welcoming challenge and responsibility I propose that it falls first to the educators of America to grasp the necessity for change and then to act upon it by adjusting curricula to that purpose. An emphasis on lessons that teach emotional intelligence, constructive mindsets, judicial and ethical decision making, empathy and selflessness are critical to the adaptation of the next generation to a radically changing planet. In Six Degrees author Mark Lynas reports that if the world continues its current rate of hydrocarbon proliferation into our atmosphere over the (then) next seven years we will reach another tipping point, one that will set in motion an unavoidable set of circumstances that must increase the warmth of our planet by 3 degrees, bringing drought and famine and consequent massive shifts in plant-able crop ranges and populations. To accept this challenge school curricula must change. To act responsibly, teachers must prepare students for this eventuality. As Marq de Villiers writes in his book The End: "We need to get over this absurd notion that we are endangering the planet...Earth has time. But we don't." As educators it is our professional responsibility to move more expediently across the divide from "what if?" to "now what?" and to begin now to re-frame the educational aims of our schools to reflect mindsets and skills for a new, more difficult world.
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