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Change: it surprises. Electric cars |
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It may still be a focus on the car rather than on moving around but it is interesting to watch the progress of the electric car. Actively scorned by big motor manufacturers, and lamented by enthusiasts only a few years ago there is now a bandwagon effect in progress towards this technology.
 ESD education can take heart that there is plenty to chew over in this shift, not least in investigating how real it is: the Daily Mail manages to bundle the promotion of nuclear power and putting off the electric car revolution by 40 years all in one go! (2) (continues)
Electric Mini
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Getting It? Sustainability and its Education |
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Looking around for something fairly short and crisp as a briefing on SD basics I found this item from China. It's not the answer to 'short and crisp' but it is tasty. To our ears some phrases sound odd but I find that this helps! Take it away Du Feng-guang and Jia Hao:-
“Circular economy is a new concept which started more than ten years ago. It is the abbreviation of the closed material circular economy. Essentially, it is a kind of zoological economy and it requires people to use ecological rules but not mechanistic rules to instruct human economic activities.
Circular Flows with Energy and Recycling. (Source: GDAE, Tufts University)
Since the industrial Revolution in 1712, people have developed in such a traditional way: mass-exploiting resources __producing mass__consuming mass__producing mass waste. Its characteristics are high exploitation, low utilization and high discharge and it is a kind of oneway-flow linear economy. It uses resources carelessly and it achieves increase in quantity through changing resources into waste continuously. This economic model has lasted for about 300 years. In the late 20th century, resource shortage and environment pollution, the two major obstacles, appeared and became a great threat to human life and development.
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A Common Understanding? Not yet... |
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A Common Understanding? Not yet...
One of the country’s leading teacher training institutions is still waiting for this phone call from a school. ‘Have you any trainees skilled up for education for sustainability?’
As an anecdote it might mean very little but there is a sense that the general perception of sustainability is, yes, its something we do; especially the environment bit; especially in terms of managing the school buildings and building green awareness and responsibility. A few schools are purpose built with energy and resource saving in mind, with daylighting and the use of benign paint and furniture choices, and of course there are green shoots popping through the tarmac of the curriculum all over the place these days, There is guidance too: DCSF’s doorway themes to Sustainable Schools or WAG’s A Common Understanding and targets for school carbon emissions to contend with. Ho hum… its really not setting imaginations aflame.
Sustainability as a word has a rather dour character to it in English. Just getting by… Is your income sustainable? Or your relationship? So-so. Musn’t grumble… Other associations are less kind. To Michael Braungart, the industrial designer it is annoying.
‘We still have people talking about “sustainability”! Nothing is more boring. Are
you proud if your marriage is “sustainable”? We feel guilty, and cut our hair to use less shampoo. It’s guilt management and celebrating mediocrity.’
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