4 minute read
From the Headmaster’s Desk
I think that most people now recognise that our climate is changing, even while not everyone agrees on the causes. But the evidence of extreme temperatures, increasingly severe cycles of drought and flooding, melting icecaps and fiords is just too common to ignore. And yet governments around the world of all persuasions seem either to lack the will or are at a loss about what can be done to address it. To be fair to them, the issues are complex, and any proposed solution poses more problems. It seems clear that change is needed, but any change proposed presents further obstacles and challenges. It’s complicated. And it can feel disempowering.
The trouble is, if we wait for all the governments in the world to get their acts together and work together to address this global issue, it will be too late. Maybe in this case it requires people to lead governments. While each one of us may not be able to effect large-scale change, we can each make small changes. And if enough people make those small changes, they can have a significant impact. And if enough people demonstrate to governments that they believe that it is important to act, governments will have to listen and find ways to address the complexity of the problem.
At Camberwell Grammar School, in part prompted by our students, we have adopted a goal to reduce our carbon emissions to zero by 2030. We have engaged CERES to help us identify our benchmarks and to help us develop a plan for reaching that goal. This year we have achieved a major interim goal – all electricity at our school now comes from renewable energy: over 40% from our own solar panels and the remainder from a company, ENGIE Australia, which provides power only from renewable sources. We are currently working to reduce the amount of landfill we produce, and will also tackle water, electronics, and plastics recycling.
Climate change is now at the point where we really can’t ignore it anymore, and each one of us can make a meaningful contribution towards improving our quality of life.
But there are many other aspects of life in the modern world which need to change too – the re-establishment of the importance of truth, the unequal distribution of the world’s resources, the disempowerment and disenfranchisement of many, and the provision of social justice for all. It can be tempting to think that these problems are too large and too entrenched for any individual to be able to do anything meaningful to address them. But one of our goals in educating our students at Camberwell Grammar is to teach them that they do not need to wait for others to make changes and improvements to the world – they can begin to make those changes themselves. And every change for the good that they make adds value to the world. The ‘teal wave’ in our recent Federal elections demonstrates that ordinary, focused people with a vision can tap into a broad desire in many people to make things better – and they can be successful in shifting the very nature of the political debate. We don’t have to wait for others to make the changes we wish to see; we can begin to change the world ourselves, we can seize every opportunity to make our world a fairer, safer, kinder, more sustainable one: we can be the change.
Dr Paul Hicks
Headmaster
