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103 comments on DrumBeat: April 21, 2007

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Yosemite Sam on April 21, 2007 - 9:09am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Proposal to TOD editors and community:

Select a willing and qualified PO Education Editor to develop curricula for PO education to be used by TOD members in their various settings. This initiative would be a community effort.

What do you think?

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beggar on April 21, 2007 - 10:23am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Good thought, Yosemite Sam. The site does offer links and intro articles to click on already.

I gave a presentation to groups of 7th and 6th grade students some time ago, and will give three presentations to 3rd and 4th graders in the next couple of weeks.

These presentations include the topics of peak oil, global climate change, and resource wars. The focus is on what we can do to make things better here and now for the future: biking and walking, gardeneing, building community, building awareness in our neighborhoods. It is not "gloom and doom" at all for the kids. I will really focus on the necessity and the fun of positive change.

The physical focus of my presentations will be the pedicab, cargo trike, and trailer. We will do math about how much 5 student weigh, and how much certain cars weigh, and how much bikes and trikes weigh. We will do pro/com worksheets on use of various vehicles and transportation modes. I will give rides and we will talk about enegy and materials needed to make, operate, and scrap or recycle various vehicles.

We will touch on rail and various other things. The kids will take this back to their classroom to go in directions they and their techers want to go. We (teachers and parents)also take the 3rd and 4th graders on an annual overnight at a local campground to study nature -- ponds and such -- close up. That's a separate thing, but it keeps conversations going about the environment.

I've written one locally published editorial, and am also writing more with a focus on environment and "The Carbon Twins."

My biggest challenge is boiling info down to bite-sized nuggets, and being real while not losing my listeners or readers by overwhelming them with scary information.

Perhaps a bigger challenge is overcoming my own bitterness at the blindness and "intentional ignorance" so cultivated in our (USA) culture, at least. Wow, is that a big challenge.

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Yosemite Sam on April 21, 2007 - 1:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Hi Beggar,

Thanks for responding. A quite a few of us her at TOD have done what you have done. I have not done it for seventh graders--you are a hero! How did it go?

When I put together a couple of presentations, I had to work pretty hard and the results were not that great. My thinking is that the truly gifted could work on this area. I would like to put in my two cents worth.

The results might well be a list of FAQ's, talking points, Power Point presentations for different age and educational levels.

There certainly are some nice links here, but I think we could do better.

Regarding this:

Perhaps a bigger challenge is overcoming my own bitterness at the blindness and "intentional ignorance" so cultivated in our (USA) culture, at least. Wow, is that a big challenge.

I think that we have to get the word out. At some point, it will hit critical mass, and people will convert.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

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beggar on April 21, 2007 - 9:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

YS -- well, the 7th and 8th graders showed remarkable awareness of what a resource war is. When asked what a resource war is, the response was: "Doh! Oil! Iraq!"

They also showed little interest in military service in the Middle East or anywhere else for that matter.

The students were very interested in understanding the energy costs of agriculture, fast food, heating and cooling houses, and getting around.

Some imagined the future at first as being more of the same, only "more and cooler stuff" and "bigger and cooler malls." But after a bit of talk these students began to question their Disneyesque technomagical thinking. some students were already very concerned about the future, but many had obviously had no encouragement to think about it from home.

School science teacher was able to integrate this into his "humans and energy" and environmental curriculum. He had the students look up websites like Energybulletin and the like as part of their online research.

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Dryki on April 21, 2007 - 9:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I recently introduced the "renewable energy" segment of the science curriculum for 8th graders in a local middle school. I was talking mostly about emergy - embedded energy; with me was someone from a local green store taking a more philosophical angle and two from Portland Maine's WinterCache project, which aims to provide locally grown food through the winter discussing compost and the 1500 mile bite.

I had a bunch of soda cans and lunch food - the idea being to change the way the students looked at lunch. A few of the kids ripped right through the embedded energy concept - even including the energy required to support the marketing department. Most had not a clue. I'd want to modify that presentation to make the benefits more widespread.

Even though the written guidelines for this segment include "why our economy doesn't use this now", we were advised to stay away from that.

cfm in Gray, ME

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bart on April 21, 2007 - 2:01pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

PO Education Editor? Some thoughts:

1. I'm not sure that The Oil Drum is the right place to develop educational materials. The thrust of the site is more technical. Engineers and high tech professionals usually aren't the best people to explain a subject in simple terms. I'll bet the best materials will come from teachers and curriculum developers rather than technically oriented people.

2. Many other sites that have developed explanatory material. Rather than re-invent the wheel, it would be more efficient to search the web for existing presentations. Some of the best seem to be done by city planners. And of course, there are the published books like Heinberg and Deffeyes - good for secondary and college level.

Bryn Davidson at RAO-D Citworks has done attractive and intuitive presentations, which can be accessed from
http://dynamiccities.squarespace.com/home/
More stuff:
http://e-design.squarespace.com/peak-oil-planning/
http://e-design.squarespace.com/pop-files/

Another presentation I like was by Tim Moerman, given at the Atlantic Planners’ Institute Annual Conference
Ten Principles of Post Oil-Peak Planning (PDF)

3. With volunteer sites like The Oil Drum, there are usually 10 times as many good ideas as there are willing hands to execute the ideas. The good news is that if you want a project to happen and are willing to do some of the work, there is a place for it to happen. It might be at The Oil Drum, or it might be elsewhere.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

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Aniya on April 22, 2007 - 1:13am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Many thanks, Bart.

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bart on April 21, 2007 - 2:11pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Just remembered...

1. Counter-proposal: what about a site for teachers and educators to share their material?

2. One of the Energy Bulletin co-editors wrote The Peak Oil Primer which has been widely circulated. Might perform the same function as FAQs. There are similar peak oil summaries elsewhere on the Web.

3. On the light side, here's a link to cartoon presentations about peak oil, oil and alternative energy.

http://www.no19bus.org.uk/5_Minute_Tour.htm

The author, Stephen Hamilton-Bergin, has written no 19 bus, a science fiction novel which "begins in 2070 and gently gives the reader a hint of what the world has gone through in the past seventy years. It makes some startling short term predictions. How accurate will they be? Published in 10 volumes."

He has also published the non-fiction book The Truth about the War and Oil.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

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Yosemite Sam on April 21, 2007 - 9:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

bart, Thanks for your thoughts and links. I hadn't seen the PO primer before.

1. Counter-proposal: what about a site for teachers and educators to share their material?

I agree. Doesn't look like there is much interest though.

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Leanan on April 22, 2007 - 6:22am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Wish those cartoons were bigger. They're nearly impossible to read on my monitor.

So far, my favorite peak oil intro for newbies is Wolf At the Door.

Agree that TOD might not be the best place for setting up peak oil outreach. We are, to be blunt, geeks. A lot of us are so geeky we don't even know how geeky we are. ;-)

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Robert Rapier on April 22, 2007 - 3:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Select a willing and qualified PO Education Editor to develop curricula for PO education to be used by TOD members in their various settings. This initiative would be a community effort.

It's been done. David DuByne, an English teacher in Thailand, wrote an English as Second Language book that is a great curriculum for educating people about oil depletion, bio-crops, and sustainability. He has been working on it for a while, and just e-mailed me that it was finished. It is very well-done.

http://www.daveseslbiofuel.com/

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