<Trying to stay afloat in deepwaterThe Oil Drum

23 comments on Sen Clinton's speech to the CleanTech Venture Forum

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step back on October 26, 2005 - 7:10pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
What if teachers in schools started teaching kids about
PEAK WOOD
http://anthropik.com/2005/10/peak-wood/

It would be a first step in getting the voting public to come to grips with Peak Oil

(First Graders do bring their homework home !!!)

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JRS23 on October 26, 2005 - 9:33pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I think this would be a great idea. However too many parents would complain about the brainwashing and liberal propaganda taught in the public schools. First grade wouldn't be a good level to teach it either. As soon the children come home and talk about peak oil their parents will "fix" their beliefs and any benefit would be lost.

I think peak oil should be tied in with studies done on bacteria cultures in petri dishes with substrate. The bacteria with double until about the 7th generation when almost all the substrate has been consumed. The bacteria are oblivious to the pending doom and it is too late. There is a major die off; if not total extinction of the culture.

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Gloomy on October 27, 2005 - 2:46pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That would be a real precedent.

Every education system keeps deep silence or at most mentions reluctantly about the various ecological disasters caused by humans in the course of history.

On one side the child is taught that human activity (e.g. economy) is "good" and the child sees that it is good by getting to know the plenty of wonderful civilization advances. How do you effectively explain the same child that the same human activity can actually be bad? Can being fed and warm be bad?

Well there are those ecological courses at school but they look more like the rituals we played in the distant past to mercify gods - hug a tree, show some concern about the environment and then go on the way you did before.

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tom deplume on October 27, 2005 - 3:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I think teaching kids that every choice involves trade-offs from the start would teach them to ask better questions instead of accepting rote answers about life.  
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Stuart Staniford on October 28, 2005 - 1:43am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I have to defend the honor of my middle school Environmental Studies teacher (this is back in the late 70s). I can still very vividly recall the class where he went over the pond and the lilypad, and the connection to human population growth. Can't remember his name or anything else we studied in that class, but I remember that part. I think he even told us it was something we were going to have to deal with in our lifetimes. So at least some teachers have been doing their job, and I personally have no excuse of not having been warned of the potential hazards of exponential growth in a finite system.
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