Teaching, preaching climate action - The Boston Globe

Teaching, preaching climate action

We burdened the next generations with a warming planet. We ought to educate them about it.

Re “Climate education should be taught in schools”(Opinion, Nov. 27): Incorporating climate change education throughout the curriculum is just the response we need to the smoke signals sent by our warming planet. Anita Soracco’s argument that climate change doesn’t solely reside in the realm of science is spot-on; it can be found in the economics of shifting crop yields, the history of our industrialized self-destruction, the impact on our language and literature, and the actions that find artistic expression.

Our children have inherited a complex set of climate-related challenges, and they will require extensive, coordinated education in order to meet the demands of future mitigation and adaptation. From elementary grades onward, we must offer them the most comprehensive instruction possible so that they can make informed decisions and effectively take action.

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The climate emergency requires us to use all the tools we have to respond to changes that are occurring fast and furiously. Surely, educating the next generation of citizens, whom we have burdened with a climate crisis, should be one of our top priorities. If we teach our children, they can be better stewards of this planet than we have proved to be.

Lili Flanders

Truro

National curriculum standards could reach states where activism is lacking

Mandating climate education for students beginning in kindergarten is the solution for the future of the planet.

Growing up in the South, where I found that for many people climate change is not considered a major issue, I was not introduced to the climate crisis in my education until high school. Standardizing climate education in schools would raise awareness and action in places that currently lack activism, like my hometown.

Some might claim that climate science is irrelevant to class material, but I argue that environmental issues relate to the very future of students, so their importance to education should be beyond question. Furthermore, climate education connects to sciences, humanities, history, and many other areas of study. Humans have become increasingly connected to the environment and the forces of change, so why are students not learning how to connect with and aid in the environmental crisis?

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Tiffany Manulkin

Boston

Move ahead on the Massachusetts Zero Carbon Renovation Fund

The challenges laid out in Sabrina Shankman’s coverage of our state’s first climate report card make a clear case for swift passage of the measure establishing a Massachusetts Zero Carbon Renovation Fund( “Middling grades in first climate report card: Long road remains to reach variety of benchmarks for Mass. in 2025, 2030,” Page A1, Dec. 4).

Clean Water Action is one of almost 200 housing, community, and climate organizations asking the Legislature to allocate $300 million for this new fund, which would provide the essential upfront capital needed to install heat pumps, improve building envelopes (the component that separates its exterior from the interior), and upgrade electrical systems in affordable housing, schools, and municipal buildings.

This massive investment would not only decrease the amount of clean energy Massachusetts needs to bring online in the coming years to meet our climate goals, but it would also bring the money-saving and comfort benefits of deep energy retrofits directly to underserved communities throughout the state.

Whether Massachusetts lawmakers pass the funding as a standalone bill or as part of a larger housing bond bill, we hope they will agree that the state’s mixed climate report card is an urgent call to action.

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Maureo Fernandez y Mora

Massachusetts co-director

Clean Water Action

Boston

NIMBY resistance to offshore wind is a bad look

Re “Newport, Block Island preservation groups seek relief from wind farms’ anticipated ‘adverse effects,’ ”(Business, Dec. 2): The preservation crowd that is in a dither concerning plans to construct wind turbines off the Rhode Island coast could not be more off-base. The development of both ocean- and land-based wind farms, solar arrays, enhanced geothermal wells, and other sources are all we have going at the moment to help us stave off a world that will be increasingly hostile, miserable, and expensive to live in. We must overcome our piecemeal resistance to change so that we can turn things around. If doing so requires some slight modification of our coastal viewsheds, then we need to hitch up our collective trousers and pay this small price.

It is also wrong-headed to be using the argument that tourists will stop coming to Newport and other nearby sites because of wind turbines miles out at sea. The Newport Cliff Walk is just one of many attractions in that city. People also go to Newport for the Gilded Age mansions, the Colonial homes and Revolutionary period city blocks, the music festivals, the tennis museum, the restaurants and inns, and easy access to Cape Cod and the rest of New England’s many attractions. To try to call the benefits from clean energy the “industrialization” of the seascape is to treat thinking people as simpletons.

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When San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge was being planned — something you could really see — there were probably change-resistant folks complaining that it would be the ruin of the Bay Area. The people trying to block the megawatts of clean energy obtainable off Rhode Island’s shore should try to focus more on the planet that their children and grandchildren will be inheriting than on the fragile sensibilities of the tourist crowds wanting to see everything just as it always was.

Mark Dullea

Peabody

The writer is a retired urban planner who developed the website climateplanning.city.

State takes key step in turning away from natural gas

Hooray for Massachusetts for deciding to turn away from natural gas and toward clean energy ( “State makes clear natural gas isn’t future,” Page A1, Dec. 7). Hopefully this will put a stop to proposed projects, such as the pipeline in Springfield and Enbridge’s “Project Maple” expansion through the Northeast, since building new fossil-fuel infrastructure at this point is insanity.

One quibble, though, with Sabrina Shankman’s otherwise excellent article. She describes “climate and clean energy advocates” as cheering the news. This makes it sound as though small special interest groups are the winners. But in fact, the majority of US citizens are concerned about climate change and welcome this transition. So maybe the article should have read, “All citizens concerned about climate change” cheered the news. Certainly, this citizen does.

Susan Donaldson

Northampton