I firmly believe that education, done well, is the greatest force for change.

[wolven7]

greygirlbeast's post about the deteriorating state of nature.

I think the sadest line is the second to last one: "The future sucks."

Recently, I was asked to put together a statement of my "philosophy on teaching," for the purposes of a note of teaching excellence, on my transcript, and I really do believe, with each passing day, that it comes down to what Lorraine said: "Education is empowerment and, therefore, the success of any educational experience is measured in how empowered the recipient believes he or she is."

If I do my job well, if i correctly apply the work I'm doing and have done, then my students will leave, at the end of the day feeling like they can make a fucking difference, in the world. In a way that's selfish, I know. I feel like I can make a difference, by making them feel the same way. By making them Know it. I want to give people the tools to excell, to make something out of themselves, and the world around them. I want people to see that there's more to do than sit, watch TV, get an MBA, and fill some low-level administrative job, for the next 50 years. I want them to realise that, even if thy do that, they can do more, too.

I want them to want to do more, to know more...

Fuck. I don't want the future to suck. I'm going to do my fucking damnedest to make sure that people realise they can do something about it. I'm not a climatologist, I'm not a politician, and I'm not a preacher. I teach people things how to think. Not what to think, but how. To take the world in front of them, and engage it in a way such as they can make it make sense. If you can do that, then, at the end of the day, I've done my job.

Maybe that's idealistic. Maybe it's hokey, or whatever the fuck, but I can't continue to simply sit and watch wave after wave of people Not Care. That much wasted potential is a fucking travesty, to me; a crime against existence...

Comments

[nausved.livejournal.com]

I am an ecology major, and concerns for the climate seem to creep into all of the courses I take. I've also attended a number of seminars about climate.

Things are NOT looking good. At all, at all. The biggest problem with our climate troubles is that once the ball is rolling, it cannot be stopped. It may already be too late.

As temperature rises, plants--especially the trees in the rainforest--enter a dormant state and stop taking in carbon dioxide. Since plants are probably the most important regulators of carbon dioxide levels, higher temperatures cause higher carbon dioxide rates, and higher carbon dioxide rates cause higher temperatures. Catch 22.

What's more, the rising temperature is already causing the permafrost in the boreal forest to melt in some places. The permafrost is basically "locking" a great percentage of the earth's carbon in the ground. The more it melts, the more carbon dioxide will be released. One of the professors here studies the boreal forest and believes it may actually have the world's largest store of carbon. If that's the case... well, let's just hope that ice holds out.

And then there's methane, which is 10X more potent that carbon dioxide. Fotunately methane is a relatively uncommon greenhouse gas, but it is increasing--slowly but surely. One of the main producers of methane is cattle--which means cows are more dangerous for the atmosphere than cars. And I'm afraid to say we have quite a few cattle; in the mid-1990s, there were about 1.3 billion of them. This is one of the reasons I'm a vegetarian. (I'm not one of those vegetarains who thinks, "Cows are cute! Let's put them on farms and let them live out their lives naturally!" No, I'm one of those vegetarians who thinks cows shouldn't exist at all.)

Another major source of methane is landfills, which are growing increasingly abundant. If we stopped raising cattle (yeah, right), we would immediately eliminate a source of methane. But even if we stopped making landfills, our former landfills would continue to pump out methane for a very, very long time.

But the good thing about this is that life will continue, no matter how much carbon we put in the air. The bad thing is we won't be around to see it.

We're driving ourselves to extinction and, at this point, I'm not so sure there is anything we can do to stop it anymore. All we can do is try to slow it down and prolong our extinction for as long as we can.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

At this point we need non-damaging, rapid cooling systems, combined with a regiment of only cloned or vat-grown meat. That, right there, cuts out the cost of cattle and their footprint.

Teach every cattle rancher and every cattle rancher's son and daughter to be a cattle scientist, and reduce the amount of methane distributed into the air.

And I still say we need to figure out a way to shoot all of our garbage into the Sun. No, I'm not kidding. Some mode of space transporation that doesn't involve mostly-controlled explosions, perhaps...

*Sigh* It's fun to dream.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grimtales_/]

Magnetic cannon. These things can be done but it takes the will. We've been shortchanged in high tech investment and space for so long it's a wonder we're even where we are.

The future should always be a time of hope, even cyberpunk dystopias have good toys.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Can we do it, without fucking up the magnetic signature of the earth?

We can hope, as long as we do something to make it come about.

[nausved.livejournal.com]

We need a good carbon sink. Sending garbage to the sun would help, but it would be expensive to develop technology for that; we spend to much on military and too little on research. Growing plants--lots and lots and lots of plants--would help, but it's not very likely because of all our buildings and parking lots. Now if we all lived in underground houses....

And, actually, the kudzu thing might serve as a carbon sink in cities. Grow kudzu (or something similar) over all the buildings, and provide the job of keeping windows, doors, and sidewalks clear to the homeless as a source of income. It's not like the kudzu would be destroying any delicate ecosystems. And, anyway, it would greatly reduce heating and cooling costs for those buildings, which in turn would reduce some of the demand on fossil fuels. And it would reduce water runoff, filter pollutants out of the air, and scale down the greenhouse "bubble" effect of cities.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's exactly what mech_angel was intending. Urban flora Kudzu.

Her only problem, thus far, is finding a way to impliment it such that it doesn't crack the buildings' foundations. Get that out of the way, and it's a wonderful system.

[nausved.livejournal.com]

You'd have to design the buildings for it. I doubt the older ones could withstand it.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, makees it harder.

[unknownbinaries.livejournal.com]

I still like my idea of engineering something based on kudzu (for climbing strength and tenacity) to grow in the cities to filter air.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

The idea is awesome, if we can get it to not destroy the city, or at least do so at a slower rate.