The Oil Drum

103 comments on DrumBeat: April 21, 2007

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

beggar on April 21, 2007 - 11:23am

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.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Yosemite Sam on April 21, 2007 - 2:48pm

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.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

beggar on April 21, 2007 - 10:23pm

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.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Dryki on April 21, 2007 - 10:03pm

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