Six Countries Collaborate on Project Global Cooling, a K-12 “Live Earth”
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I just finished watching Al Gore’s new TED Talk - the debut of his first new presentation since An Inconvenient Truth, called “How Dare We Be Optimistic?”, and will embed it at the bottom of this post. As TED describes it, Gore “presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of ‘generational mission.’”
The talk coincides with a post I had planned for this weekend announcing the upcoming Project Global Cooling, a global campaign to implant a consciousness of climate change and an agenda for promoting sustainability in K-12 schools around the world.
The history of this project is interesting. The idea came to me after a severe bout of bad conscience I had last summer after teaching a unit on Gulliver’s Travels to my grade nine (14-year-old) students last year. The culminating project was for students to design real-world, web-based interventions about whatever social or political issue they cared about, while meanwhile I sat back and gave them grades about it - instead of also practicing what I assigned. You can read all about that in a post that landed with a thud, last June, here. Lesson learned? Summers are not a good time to post serious, ambitious calls to action.
But the funny thing was, what I developed from that hypocrite’s hangover was, without my being aware of it, a student version of Kevin Wall and Al Gore’s Live Earth concerts, held in 12 cities world-wide last summer, to promote consciousness and action about climate change.
It’s been a tough ride trying to launch this over the last eight months (I’ll post a reflection about that later), but thanks to a few educators and students around the world who took on the extra work, it’s happening in six cities on three continents, k-12, beginning this week. (You can see all the details on the PGC website, a WordPress blog using a “magazine” style theme that’s geekily interesting, though hard to drive.)
The Events: Six Countries So Far
1. Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic: Education for Well-Being’s William Farren is holding a “laptopalooza” event;
2. Melbourne, Australia: Change-agent librarian Jenny Luca and students of Toorak College, a high school outside of Melbourne, are staging their own concert this Saturday, April 19:
3. Beijing, China: IB Science high school teacher Jeff Plaman is staging a PGC concert at International School of Beijing;
4. Bangkok, Thailand: Justin Medved and James Denby have added elementary students from International School of Bangkok to the mix at an Earth Day Festival on Saturday, April 25:
5. Honolulu, Hawaii, USA: Lindsea Kemp-Wilbur, high school sophomore and writer at Students 2.0 is spear-heading the Hawaii event on April 25 with high school English teacher Christopher Watson at Punahou School. Here’s a video Lindsea made:
6. Seoul, Korea: My own students in Seoul, due to AP exams and SAT preparation, scheduled the Seoul concert for May 17. Here’s a PSA video student Jessica Yun made last week
And here’s the draft of our poster:
Education with ADD: Distracted by Tests and Facts?
I’ve got AP Exams coming up for my literature seniors in three weeks, and have been so distracted by the test prep that I’ve given this project less attention than it deserves. It’s the first year for PGC, and next year will be easier with this year’s accomplishments to point to (and let me note, the concerts are only the promotional wing - sustainability initiatives at schools and communities are the serious side).
It’s a supreme understatement that getting climate change and sustainability should not be such an addon - an extra-curricular, more accurately - to our standard k-12 curriculum. Attempts to gain traction with inter-disciplinary lessons on the topic of sustainability have so far led nowhere. We teachers are almost all too distracted by the demands of the traditional curriculum and the daily grind to address the elephant in the atmosphere.
Gore’s latest TED talk, again, gives us an update with compelling evidence that the realities of the pace of climate change are worse than we thought. In that talk, Gore states,
I’m optimistic because I believe we have the capacity, at moments of great challenge, to set aside the causes of distraction, and rise to the challenge that history is presenting to us.
Project Global Cooling is our attempt to set aside those SAT-oriented distractions and bring that thing so rare in schools, real citizenship, into being. Here’s Gore’s talk. It’s worth the time:
Stay tuned for more updates as the PGC concerts are streamed and/or embedded on the website. And join us for the second annual in ‘08-’09. Since the USA is still the world’s top contributor to carbon emissions, we hope more US schools especially will lead next year!
If you like this post, please spread it: 
- Project Global Cooling Blows in to Bangkok
- Tune in to Melbourne’s Project Global Cooling uStream Today
- Daily Diigo: Plugging the Global Cooling project on del.icio.us
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Hopefully my school will join next year - I know there are people who would be interested. That would add the east coast.
Meanwhile, congratulations to everyone for getting it done! I can’t even begin to fathom all of the work that must have gone into this. It’s fantastic.
Hannah’s last blog post..Math Class Madness
Hannah
17 Apr 08 at 7:46 am
I would discourage a certain poliical viewpoint being taught in the classrooms without the opposing viewpoint being given a chance to present their views.
In case you are wondering what the political counerpoint is:
All attempts to modify a market from whatever the natural laws of supply and demand would dictate, will cause inefficiency.
Any inefficiencies translate into more raw materials that need to be consumed in order to make and use a product.
More raw materials to accomplish the same goal (of the finished product) causes the purchaser to do more than would normally be required, thus increasing the work s/he would have to do.
This demand for more materials than would be necessary to accomplish the same goal, is causing more demand for materials.
More material used equals more pollution.
Thus, help to decrease pollution by removing artificial costs to products in the form of regulation and taxes.
tankilo
17 Apr 08 at 4:43 pm
Tankilo, while I agree with you that divergent viewpoints should always be included in any real learning - that’s what critical thinking and real learning are, to me - I hesitate to accept as “natural” any man-made system.
Wife is cooking dinner, so I’ve only got time to assure you that a) green entrepreneurship seeks smart ways to create profit by doing things more efficiently, as Bill Farren’s guest posts on this blog illustrate (the link has links to his entire four-part series, and his Education for Well-Being site has many rich posts on the subject); and b) sustainability in schools means simply taking steps, at a minimum, to eliminate thoughtless waste, which is win/win, saving money for the school and reducing its carbon footprint at the same time.
I’m not going to claim to have the answers or the expertise on the solutions; the goal, on the contrary, is to create an entry point in a largely blindered curriculum for the questions. The next generation is sitting in our classrooms, and they’re going to inherit this challenge from us - and 99% of the international scientific community can’t likely be wrong that it is a challenge caused by our present habits - so for all our sakes, we want them to be better equipped to handle the challenge by having knowledge about it before they leave us.
Thanks for the input
Clay Burell
17 Apr 08 at 8:37 pm
Well done Clay - great to see you bringing it all together in this post. I’ll show this to my students tomorrow -they’ll be thrilled. I’ll heed your advice re the ustream info - we’re going to be looking closely at it tomorrow to try and ensure we get it fight on the day. As we’ve never done it before we may not get it right but we’ll be giving it a good go! Thanks for all of your support along the way -I’ve learnt so much and have been enriched by the experience.
Jenny Luca.
Jenny Luca’s last blog post..Hitting the wall.
Jenny Luca
17 Apr 08 at 9:21 pm
We want to get it right on the day, certainly don’t want a fight on the day!!
Jenny Luca’s last blog post..Hitting the wall.
Jenny Luca
17 Apr 08 at 9:22 pm
One thing I learned when I uStreamed my wedding: go ahead and put a video tape in your camcorder and record to it too. The video and audio quality will be better on that, and you can upload it to YouTube in segments. The bandwidth at my wedding hotel was too small to stream a sharp picture, and kept buffering. If I’d simply pressed “record” on the camera, I’d have both uStreamed and video-taped at the same time. Boo. Lessons learned.
What time GMT is the show? Be sure to get write-ups of the bands!
Clay Burell
17 Apr 08 at 9:24 pm
This has bothered me about this sort initiative for a while…
If this is such an “international” collaboration, why do all the participants have names that sound like they were raised in Iowa?
Stephen Downes
18 Apr 08 at 12:05 am
Hi Clay,
Congratulations to you and all the students and educators involved in PGC. Let’s hope you set off all sorts of ripples ’round the world.
You ready for a follow-up interview about all this?
Cheers,
Suzie
P.S. I just had a chance to hear Al Gore speak in person. He was a keynoter at a conference in Oxford, England, but his call to action (or, at least, to pay attention) was aimed at Americans. So re: Stephen’s comment, maybe it’s crucial to get those native Iowans (native Oregonians, etc.) on board.
Suzie Boss’s last blog post..We Are Our Phones
Suzie Boss
18 Apr 08 at 12:15 am
@tankilo: I would agree with you here: “I would discourage a certain poliical viewpoint being taught in the classrooms without the opposing viewpoint being given a chance to present their views.”
The viewpoints that are hardly ever taught in classrooms are those of orgs like natcap.org, neweconomics.org, rprogress.org. They need to be put in front of students and given at least equal billing so that students can decide which actually make more sense. These underrepresented ways of thinking, in a nutshell, are for an economic system that works “as if people and planet mattered”. Schools are doing almost nothing to expose these viewpoints to students.
I would have to agree with clay that there is nothing natural about human-made economic systems. The idea that markets are perfect is very flawed.
“Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, is often cited as arguing for the “invisible hand” and free markets: firms, in the pursuit of profits, are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do what is best for the world. But unlike his followers, Adam Smith was aware of some of the limitations of free markets, and research since then has further clarified why free markets, by themselves, often do not lead to what is best. As I put it in my new book, Making Globalization Work, the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there.
Whenever there are “externalities”—where the actions of an individual have impacts on others for which they do not pay or for which they are not compensated—markets will not work well. Some of the important instances have been long understood—environmental externalities. Markets, by themselves, will produce too much pollution. Markets, by themselves, will also produce too little basic research. (Remember, the government was responsible for financing most of the important scientific breakthroughs, including the internet and the first telegraph line, and most of the advances in bio-tech.)
But recent research has shown that these externalities are pervasive, whenever there is imperfect information or imperfect risk markets—that is always.” Joseph Stiglitz
“Markets are extremely good at what they do, harnessing
such potent motives as greed and envy—indeed, Lewis Mumford
said, all the Seven Deadly Sins except sloth. Markets are so successful that they are often the vehicle for runaway, indiscriminate growth, including the growth that degrades natural capital.” Natural Capitalism, Ch. 13
You can read pg. 263 of above chapter to learn about “The Free Market and Other Fantasies.” (http://www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter13.pdf)
Bill Farren’s last blog post..Why Good Teachers Aren’t Thinking About the Global Economy
Bill Farren
18 Apr 08 at 12:39 am
Clay: Regarding reducing waste/trash I’m all for. A perfectly efficient system would have no waste, and how awesome would that be?
Or even better, you can sell your “waste” to someone else as a “by product” of whatever it is you are making.
Interesting thought. Where do you suppose most of the “waste” comes from in a schoolhouse? Heating/AirConditioning?
Another interesting thought. Do animals trade? It just occured to me that one of the great advancements of humans is our “ability” to negotiate and trade goods with other areas(countries), to accomplish things like getting roses in the dead of winter by having them shipped from Brazil instead of building Greenhouses. I guess the best example of “animal trading” I can think of is those birds that will peck the food out of crocodiles mouths, or the birds that stand on top of rhinos and act as an early warning system for predators.
Wow… does this mean the concept of “free trade” is natural? And that regulation/government is “man made”?
tankilo
18 Apr 08 at 12:48 am
Clay, don’t let the troll tankilo distract you.
Stephen Downes
18 Apr 08 at 2:01 am
Clay great post. I’m also so impressed and blown away by the creativity of your students in this project. I love sharing them with my staff. We’ve recently decided to perform a significant upgrade in our school next year regarding technology and our staff is pumped. Of course there are a few dinosaurs who will come along kicking and screaming…..but in the end their screams will be muffled.
All the best!
Charlie A. Roy’s last blog post..Intervention Strategies That Work
Charlie A. Roy
18 Apr 08 at 12:31 pm
@HANNA: That would be awesome. Stay in touch with me on that one?
@SUZIE: Isn’t it funny that we already have interviewed about this? Remember when I strong-armed you into letting me talk it out when we had that other interview about the WorldChanging.com article? Seems like ages ago! And of course you know I’ll talk to you. I’ll say it a million times: your early support meant much in keeping me going.
@STEPHEN: Suzie nailed the first part of my response already (and I’m sure you get that anyway); but I think the thrust of your question hits home on the linguistic walls of most “global” collaboration so far. Maybe I should call it “imperial collaboration”? I’m only half-kidding.
The Geek in me would love to have time and energy to push for cross-linguistic collaborations via translation machines and what have you. Maybe if/when I quit my job as a professional SAT and AP test-prep expert, I’ll have time to devote to it.
@TANKILO: Should I take you seriously? It’s hard to tell so far. You just have a twitter homepage. No blog? Who are you?
Clay Burell
18 Apr 08 at 1:48 pm
OOPS: @CHARLIE: Good luck on that transition. Teachers are good at kicking and screaming. You seem gifted with the opposite type of disposition. Cheerful people typically don’t suck like mean people do
Just a Friday afternoon thanks for the good cheer you so often bring these days, even when you disagree.
Clay Burell
18 Apr 08 at 1:51 pm
Hi Stephen, Clay.
Well truth be told I do like to hold onto a little bit of anonymity when posting online. If you “want” to find out who I really am, it wouldn’t take more than a few mouse clicks though (I’m using my real name in the email I post to Clay).
I have a terrible habit of catching up on blogs/twitter/etc late at night or early in the morning, and perhaps I’m not in the best of moods, so I apologize for any ruffled feathers. Usually when I discuss a topic and we disagree on something I try to not let it slip that I actually disagree with you so that you will listen to my ideas.
Since I already exposed myself, I’ll come right out with it.
I don’t believe in Global Warming. Or more to the point, I believe that Global Warming is being used as a means to have people give up their freedom.
I posted earlier on Clays blog that I found out this website when Clay made a post on twitter with the word “hack” in it. (I was tracking “hack” at the time, partly to find my other phx2600 friends and partly just to see what was up out there). When I came across Clays blog about trying to change teaching, it hit home because the whole public school system is something else I’d love to see go through radical change.
Truth be told I’ve only read that first post I commented on (the Lolita one) and this one, and when I saw that Clay was into trying to reach out to kids all around the world and tell them about Global Warming, it touched on a nerve, and I “yelled out”. Since I disagree with the whole principal, I wanted to jump up and down and say “let’s not do this”.
If there’s one thing I would want to reach out and tell all the schoolchildren of the world it’s:
“No one can solve your problems but you. If you want something, you have to work for it so that you can get it or afford it. Free trade benefits both parties because you both end up with a good that otherwise would have cost you more. Trust no one and be suspicious of anyone offering help. Don’t enter “contests” or “lotteries” and even avoid signs of “Free “. Nothing is free and there is always a catch. When people relate when something happened to them, they tend to exaggerate, not because they are bad people, but they are convinced it happened that way. The only thing you can control in your life is your reaction to other people, so the less you react the way they would expect the better. If someone insults you, smile and laugh, because they cannot hurt you with words and if they see you cringe they will only attack more. You are responsible for your freelings, and the more you think about how someone has hurt you, the more they win. Do not give money to people you don’t know, and take care of your family and friends, the best kind act is to do for others what you do best because it will have the biggest impact. Try to give other people the benefit of a doubt.”
Man I don’t want to hijack your blog, your posts aren’t about me, and I feel like I type up a small novel here. I’ll try and keep quieter. Or Clay if you ask, I’ll just not comment at all. (Feel free to do it via email)
tankilo
18 Apr 08 at 4:10 pm
Whoops, misspelled “feelings”
I made a blog a few days ago here: http://tankilo.blogspot.com/
Although half the content is about comments I made in this blog oddly
tankilo
18 Apr 08 at 4:15 pm
@Stephen Downes. I’m sorry that it bothers you so much that the participants in Project Global Cooling sound like they come from Iowa. I. in fact, hail from Melbourne, Australia, and it bothers me that your focus seems to be on our common language rather than the incredible efforts of the students involved and their desire to make a difference in their world. My students have worked tirelessly for the last six weeks and are thrilled to be contributing to a global project. Much has been made of their efforts within our school community and I think it fair to say that the entire school is embracing the need for a determined approach to the reduction of our carbon footprint as a result of our involvement in the project. Please recognise the genuine desire of the students involved to make change a reality, rather than focus on your criticisms of what you consider to be a skewed international involvement.
Jenny Luca. Toorak College, Melbourne, Australia.
Jenny Luca’s last blog post..Hitting the wall.
Jenny Luca
18 Apr 08 at 7:21 pm
@Tankilo: Beliefs are like … how does that end? Everybody has one?
Give us evidence that it’s not true.
And the freedom thing: gnarly. It’s a grand word, but it entails some responsibilities too. You’re not free to harm society in many ways. As history progresses, new types of social harm emerge. A century ago, cars came first, speed limits came later (ie, restrictions on drivers’ “freedoms”). A century later, the polar icecaps are disappearing, the food supply is threatened, etc - and the international community of scientists (who don’t “believe” in grand words, but _deduce_ from evidence and analysis, peer reviewed) overwhelmingly “believe” untrammeled and unregulated carbon emissions are a major cause of global warming. Time for some new “speed limits”? Or should we let the “new lead-foots” run over us all to defend their “freedom” at our expense?
The argument (really, the lack of one) is just too facile, isn’t it?
Clay Burell
18 Apr 08 at 8:06 pm
[...] a different note, I was reading the comments thread in Clay Burell’s post about the efforts of schools around the world to stage concerts to raise awareness about global [...]
School’s out Friday - but not this week « Lucacept - intercepting the Web
18 Apr 08 at 8:47 pm
Hi Clay,
You are not going to believe the problems I am having tonight- my computer has decided to block internet access- I know not why! I’m using my daughter’s computer which keeps freezing up on me and I haven’t been able to post to twitter to alert people to tune in to ustream tomorrow. I seem to be able to open only one page at a time -any more than that and I get total freeze!! According to my calculations we are streaming at 3.00pm Melb time which is 5.00am GMT. The link to our ustream is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/toorak-college—pgc
If you can help me out (again, I know!) can you send out a tweet alerting people to this.
I am so proud of those girls -they’ve done a remarkable job. Should be a great day tomorrow!!
Jenny.
Jenny Luca’s last blog post..School’s out Friday - but not this week
Jenny Luca
18 Apr 08 at 9:42 pm
Funny. I’m using gmail for email, and when reading the email saying “new comments arrived” the link at the top of the page said:
Global Warming Hysteria - http://www.amazon.com - Climate Change Muths Exposed by NASA Climatologist. Save 30% Online
And then linked here:
http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Confusion-Pandering-politicians-Misguided/dp/1594032106/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1202315975&sr=8-1&gclid=CMGhp4Lx5JICFQ6XggodGyRL4A
Over the weekend I’ll try to come up with a better response. It’s not going to change anyones mind of course
We are all dug in to our beliefs and theres no turning back.
tankilo
19 Apr 08 at 12:08 am
@Tankilo: From an unsupported opinion to a misspelled Google Ad-Sense ad as “evidence”? No response to my logical rebuttal to your trotting out of the “freedom” (without mentioning law or responsibility) meme? And a conclusion that logical argument and scientific evidence don’t make a difference to “us” (when, in terms of knowing, you can only speak for your own receptiveness to reason)?
With all due respect, a book by a guy in the Bush administration that goes against over 90% of the international scientific community (we’re talking thousands here) isn’t any sort of slam dunk - especially when it’s a Google Ad for Amazon, and you haven’t read the book. What’s next? A Google Ad saying Nostradamus predicted global cooling in the 22d century?
I’m sorry to say, but this is becoming a distraction. If your comments are reasoned and evidence-based, I’ll continue to accept them, and respond to them. But otherwise, I’m not sure it will be worth anybody’s time. I’m an educator. I believe in reasoned argument changing open minds. If you don’t, then I don’t get why you’re here. And as Stephen suggests, it must be just to distract.
No tme for that.
Clay Burell
19 Apr 08 at 12:57 am
Well I didn’t see the Nostradamus ad this time when checking my email
however I’ll bite on the “speed limits” argument.
I do believe in limits to freedom (the freedom to swing my fist ends in another mans nose, etc). My point is not that there shouldn’t be limits to freedom, it’s that “there is no ‘other man’s nose’”.
Speed limits is a whole other conversation, and one that I would argue to often limit our freedoms. In a conjested area they make perfect sense that you can travel so fast that a pedestrian can’t see/hear and get out of the way in enough time. But speed limits on wide open interstates are often way too restrictive for that same “danger to pedestrian” argument. What’s more, the national speed limit being set to 55 back in 1974 was mainly for conservation of gas, not for safety. (Funny how it comes back to that).
Again, not trying to say that there shouldn’t be limits to freedom when you would harm other people or infringe on their freedoms or property; but I’m trying to convey that it’s not that harmful, especially when you weigh it against what you would have to give up.
I pulled this from wikipedia on the article about Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century (table 3) and that:
Sea levels will probably rise by 18 to 59 cm (7.08 to 23.22 in) [table 3].
There is a confidence level >90% that there will be more frequent warm spells, heat waves and heavy rainfall.
There is a confidence level >66% that there will be an increase in droughts, tropical cyclones and extreme high tides.
(Just want to reiterate that I don’t believe it, but it is what the UN group put in their report)
So I would ask, is this what we are fighting over? Are we trying to make radical changes in our lives, our industry, and our world to keep the sea level from rising 2 feet?
Life will go on, life will find a way, and hunger will never be a problem for more than 30 days.
Was going to actually do more research on all of this, but the “alternative” newspaper in Phoenix just published a “Green Fatigue” series of articles and it got me all fired up again and figured I’d come post now.
Another point that I thought of: I’m still contending this is a political disagreement, not a scientific one. And I wouldn’t want it to be taught without showing the other sides to the issue. I’m still all for teaching science in school (evolution, how new life is created from a combination of dna of the parents, physics, etc)
Final thought: What would it take for you to be convinced Global Warming isn’t true?
What it would take for me to believe: I can’t. Either it’s not happeneing, if it is, it’s not worth the cost to fix, and if it was worth the cost, who’s to say that a rise in 2 feet of sea level would be such a bad thing? (All the other effects can be attributed to “that’s the weather”)
tankilo
19 Apr 08 at 1:59 pm
[...] summer by Clay Burell–an attempt to interest students in hosting world-wide concerts to, as Clay wrote, “implant a consciousness of climate change” around the [...]
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