4 minute read
q Eco Latest
More still needs doing
SPEAKING OUT: On the climate crisis. Sharing the eco bricks story
Advertisement
As part of their STEM project on using eco bricks for construction, two Year 10 students, Livie and Alisha, presented their findings to the Green Zone at COP26 in Glasgow. The eco brick project has already been adopted by Comberton’s partner school in Bangladesh. They started by collecting litter from around their community and used it to create the eco bricks which are being used around the school as part of a planting project.
RECYCLING: Pupils talk about their eco bricks project (top), which has been adopted in Bangladesh.
Screens go off . . .
Comberton is implementing a screens-off policy in computer rooms, the library and Art 1. The IT department has set the computers to hibernate after 30 mins. (Thank you IT!) This requires the pupils to be aware of moving the mouse to ‘wake’ the computer. Thank you everyone in helping the school move towards Zero Carbon. I’ve been campaigning for climate justice for many years, and in Year 5 I was asked to write a letter to world leaders by Aled Jones, from the Global Sustainability Institute (GSI).
The letter was to address what I thought world leaders should do about climate change, and the GSI was going to ask children all over the world, who were interested in environmental issues, to write letters like it which they would compile into a document read by world leaders at COP 26. Since I had written the first letter, a year or so later I was asked to be involved in a similar project, a film with young people talking to world leaders about climate change. The film would be shown at COP 26 as well. I recorded myself reading aloud my letter. Recently, BBC Look East was told about my letter, and decided to film me at school reading it, to show as part of a programme about climate change to mark the COP climate conference. They liked what I had to say, so asked if I could be interviewed live on the programme, at Cranfield University. It was a very exciting but terrifying experience! It was also interesting as I got to see how live TV works. Then day before the film I was in was shown at COP, they interviewed my mum and me at home — but not live this time, luckily! It was shown the next day. I feel very fortunate to have had these opportunities. I think that COP 26 went well in some ways, but a lot more that needed to be done that wasn’t. I think it is great that America and China, two of the biggest carbon emitters, agreed to work together in trying to stop the worst effects of climate change, and that many countries (if not all the ones which needed to) have signed an agreement to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2035. However, these and the other positive things to come out of COP 26 aren’t enough and the time scales for change don’t make sense if we are to actually save the planet. The ‘phasing down’ instead of phasing out of coal was a huge blow, as well as big countries’ refusal to pay for the climate damage they have caused for smaller nations. The problem is, we don’t have time for talking anymore. If we want to reduce the worst effects of climate change, we need to act right now. Freya (8N) Getting together online
During COP, as part of the Connecting Classroom programme, Comberton’s Eco Group organised an online climate conference with the six schools involved, three in the UK and three in Bangladesh. The other schools were: Coleg Meirion Dwyfor, a Sixth Form College in Wales; Sutton CofE Primary School near Ely; Sreepur Govt Pilot High School, Gazipur; Khalishak uri Govt. Primary School, Dhaka; Azim Uddin High School, Kishorega. Next we split into breakout rooms with students from each school and looked three questions: Discussion 1: How much our country is contributing to climate change and what are the main sources of greenhouse gases. What can we do as a country to reduce our climate emissions? Discussion 2: What effects/impacts might we see as a country due to the effects of climate change? What can we do as a country to adapt to climate change? Discussion 3: What can we be doing as individuals about climate change — this could include personal actions, household actions, contacting politicians, student climate strike?
Students from Comberton attended remotely the world’s largest lesson which was broadcast live from COP26. A recording is available here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HExapQfulPg&t=826s Online were students from all over the world — Peru, South Africa and Italy to name a few. The lesson consisted of a summary of climate change, the effects that it has, solutions including a look at farming and diets. This coincided with a focus on climate change in lessons at Comberton on the Friday (which had been nominated as the ‘Youth and education day’ at COP), where teachers were encouraged to look at some of the issues and solutions, including watching some documentaries on iplayer: such as — Climate change: Ade on the frontline (a documentary than can be recommended) and Shop well for the Planet (a guide to what you can do in your home to help the planet and your finances).
The largest lesson!
Tuning in to summit
