Some big names have signed up to the Travalyst initiative, aiming to ‘transform the future of travel for everyone’. See for example the efforts being made by Skyscanner. Good news!
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Author: Christopher Etchells
Co-Director of ECS - English Country Schools - residential English Language summer courses for children and teenagers. Coordinator of ELT Footprint UK aiming to promote environmental responsibility in UK English Language Teaching.
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IATEFL 2020 Conference
What is our role as language teachers in the context of Sustainable Development Goals (UN)? Great to see this and other questions being considered at IATEFL 2020 Annual Conference in Manchester this April. More info
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Good conversations
Excellent to see so many people at ‘Environmental Responsibility in ELT’ at English UK Young Learners annual conference at Harrow School yesterday.
Thanks to everyone who came along. Grand surroundings for some really good conversations and hopefully meaningful actions will result.
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YLEUK Conference
Very much looking forward to Environmental Responsibility in ELT at the Young Learners English UK Conference at Harrow School tomorrow (21 February 2020). The conference is free for two people from each YLEUK member school; £50 for the day for additional members and non members. Tickets here
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Innovate2020
Congratulations to Innovate2020 Conference, 15 – 16 May in Barcelona Spain, promising ‘In the wake of the #ExtinctionRebellion protests, #fridaysforfuture and Dan Barber’s iELT19 declaration that we are in a climate emergency, this year’s conference is going green.’
Look out in particular for the four-hour Workshop on 15 May, ‘Moving towards sustainable ELT.’
Information and booking here.
Listen to this excellent three-part podcast from Timothy Morton in which he rethinks our psychological relationship with the climate crisis and our place in the biosphere.
‘This is foetal-position time,’ he says, ‘but it’s on us: dolphins don’t have fingers to turn off the oil pipes.’
Feeling guilty and powerless is not the answer: ‘How come we conned ourselves into thinking that being ecological means we can’t have any fun anymore?’
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Climate Education
While the UK Department for Education appears to be sitting on its hands with regard to climate education, its great to see schools and pupils taking things into their own hands, like this Irish Kids Rap about the Climate Crisis
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If you do one thing….
..buy and read This Is Not A Drill, a collection of ‘pithy, punchy essays designed to shake us out of our collective despair-induced lethargy’. Superb. More information. Read it from £4.99. A small price to pay to be enlightened and encouraged on the issue of our lives.
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Actions not words
The UK Government today announced that a ban on petrol and diesel cars would be brought forward to 2035.
While this might sound like good news, we should greet such announcements cautiously. Is this any more than an attempt to control the narrative? Throwing a few crumbs down the road for us to run after?
Future commitments are easily made and easily broken.
We should look instead at what the government is actually doing now. It has just approved Europe’s biggest gas power station, for example, and is planning a cut in air passenger duty on domestic flights.
We need to judge the UK government by its actions, not by its words.
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