Green Action ELT
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?’
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
..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.
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.
Independent, nonprofit newsroom and solutions forum. Highly recommended.
https://grist.org/about/
Interesting article on the need to be positive when we talk about the future
https://medium.com/@tabitha.whiting/why-we-need-to-change-the-way-we-talk-about-climate-change-9e43e9d77228
Excellent news from Spain where the Spanish association for private language schools – FECEI – has launched a hallmark to encourage environmental good practice in member schools.
See the Programme Greenpositive Language Schools – FECEI Sustainability Policy.
Should we have a similar hallmark for UK ELT?
Next live session will be Environmental Responsibility in ELT at the Young Learners English UK Conference at Harrow School on 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
Thank you if you came along to the session on environmental responsibility at English UK ELT Conference this weekend – and welcome to eltfootprint.uk! It was great to meet so many like-minded people over the two days of the conference. There was lots of goodwill, good intentions and the sharing of good practice that I am sure will help us towards our goal of making UK ELT carbon neutral as soon as possible.
