Earth Week Reflections

Earlier this week, we were challenged by our Upper School guest speaker, Dr. Jonathan Foley from Project Drawdown, to shift from a ‘game over’ narrative to a ‘game on’ mindset when helping to address the climate crisis. Wider research points to the impact older adults living in a state of denial has on the capacity for young people to build and believe in solutions. One of these denials has, and continues to be, linked to the climate crisis and our unwillingness to accept the full picture, the urgency of the crisis, and the responsibility we have to address challenges quickly and comprehensively (Prof. Andreotti).

As Dr. Foley mentioned, both Canada and Australia lag far behind other similarly wealthy nations in effective climate action outcomes as we remain overly dependent economically on fossil fuel industries. We must do better. Six of the nine planetary boundaries have already been crossed but, ironically, it is an honest and unvarnished engagement with this truth that can produce authentic and actionable ‘hope’. This strategic and disciplined engagement with hope is very different to the denial-based ‘hopeium’ that seeks to sidestep or defer the problem, much like the ever-receding promise to reach ‘net zero’ by an imagined future date that avoids accountability now.

Interestingly, Dr. Foley highlighted the deliberately strategic misinformation agendas of fossil fuel companies in exaggerating the negative impacts of EV battery issues and seducing governments with unrealistic carbon capture technology, both of which ensure trillion dollar profits continue year by year as long as we keep postponing our complete divestment from fossil fuel economies. In the meantime, nine million people a year are dying as a result of poor air quality tied to the actions of this economic model and most of these individuals reside in countries where mitigation solutions provided by air filtering, air conditioning, and HVAC systems are non-existent. 

We also toured through some concrete and actionable solutions that are working and the need for humans to move across interdisciplinary fields such as politics, science, economics, communications, and storytelling to continue the positive traction that is in place. Imagining and activating a future that replaces extraction economics with green regenerative business offers the best hope we have to help restore Canada’s former reputation as a country known for its positive environmental culture. There is much work to do and every school has a role to play both in terms of centralising climate action in all areas of the curriculum whilst ensuring we do everything we can to minimize our own carbon footprint and food waste whilst also maximizing energy efficiency and climate action literacy amongst all of our community groups.

Dr. Foley repeatedly stated how impressed he was with the quality of questions from our students and parents in both his general and break out sessions. The final image he left with me in response to a question about activism suggested that “putting on your jeans to help your grandma insulate her basement” might be more effective than trying to mobilise an international revolution. A third of the solution impact will come from family practices and municipal policy changes, not federal or United Nations initiatives. We should not let our politicians or policies off the hook but we certainly shouldn’t wait for them to make the changes now.

At Mulgrave, the climate action we have taken this year includes (but not limited to): 

1. Approval of changes to the HVAC system that will reduce our direct greenhouse gas emissions by 75%
2. Changes to our printer paper to be more sustainable
3. Carbon off-setting of all staff flights
4. Bringing back reusable plates & cutlery to our cafeteria to decrease unnecessary waste
5. More than 15 student-driven and student-led initiatives across divisions, including:
   1. The addition of self-watering garden beds for Junior School students to grow vegetables and learn about food systems
   2. National Sweater Day to educate students on the impacts of heating our building 
   3. World Vegetarian Day to educate on the importance of diet contributing to climate change
   4. The creation of an app to report on rooms with lights & screens left on to educate teachers on the importance of energy conservation
6. Collaboration with the District of West Vancouver to plant trees both on campus and off campus at Douglas Woodward Park to educate on the importance of trees for CO2 removal.