"So much more connected..."
.jpg){kind=link}
“You are so much more connected to everything than you would expect to be.”
—Anastasia Mayers, VSS Unity passenger on August 10, 2023 to suborbital space
I had the good fortune to call the Big Island of Hawai’i home for a time in the late 1990s. It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in the world. I am not exaggerating. Often when I was driving to town for groceries, I would have to stop the car on the side of the road to get out and take in the clouds. The clouds were breathtaking. I lived on the west coast above the magnificent Kealakekua Bay and I could see far out to sea from the home’s lanai. Many evenings, I would sit cross legged on the floor and watch extraordinary lightning storms for hours. I never made it to Maui while I was living there in the middle of the Pacific. But I caught glimpses of it from afar on occasional trips to the north coast.
I woke this morning with images in my mind of flames engulfing the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui. I was especially struck by BBC reporting on one family of five, tourists, who retreated to the water when their car was blocked in and other cars around them were catching fire. They were in the water for four hours until they were rescued by a fireman. I was also touched by a short video clip of a young man (probably late 20s?) briefly describing his experience helping people. He was overcome with emotion while speaking.
I’m not a stranger to climate-driven fire—I live in California. I have friends who lost their home in the Butte Fire in 2015, and two other dear friends have been evacuated from their home 3 times—for the Martin Fire (2008), the Lockheed Fire (2009), and the CZU Lightning Complex fires (2020). We on a first name basis with fires here.
Along with the waking imagery of the Maui fires, I saw in my mind’s eye the face of a young woman, 18-year-old Anastasia Mayers, looking out the window of the VSS Unity space plane back at her home planet. Anastasia and her mother, health and wellness coach Keisha Schahaff, were two of the six people who traveled to suborbital space on the flight on Thursday, August 10. According to an article in The Guardian, Mayers is studying philosophy and physics at Aberdeen University in Scotland. The mother and daughter are from Antigua, an island in the Caribbean sea.
From the The Guardian post:
Mayers, who is the second-youngest person to go to space, said: “I was shocked at the things that you feel. You are so much more connected to everything than you would expect to be. You felt like a part of the team, a part of the ship, a part of the universe, a part of Earth. It was incredible and I’m still starstruck.”
Don’t miss the photo here of Anastasia Mayers. (Scroll to the last image on the page.)
And on this same day, I read this post about Florida’s approval of a state curriculum denying climate science that will impact 3 million public school children.
With all of this in mind as I sat down to write today, I opened the Edge browser to select Bing’s internet-connected version of ChatGPT in precise mode (see chart here) and entered this prompt:
Show me the best examples of science-based climate curriculum in these categories: elementary school, middle school, high school.
After investigating several possibilities presented in the response (see Stanford’s Climate Change Education curriculum for middle school and high school here—I will talk about this in a later post), I went deeper into MIT’s Climate Action Through Education program. Here is the summary from Bing:
MIT’s Climate Action Through Education program is developing an MIT-informed interdisciplinary, place-based climate change curriculum for U.S. high school teachers in core disciplines such as history/social science, English/language arts, math, and science.
The CATE page offers background on the curriculum, along with a launch date of Fall 2023. An About section mentions several MIT resources and research that will provide the “keystone” of the curriculum, including the Digital Climate Primer. Clicking to the link for the Primer brought me to this page:
The MIT Climate Primer is an incredible resource. Dr. Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT, is the primary author. The About page gives this goal for the Primer:
The goal of this site is to summarize the most important lines of evidence for human-caused climate change. It confronts the stickier questions about uncertainty in our projections, engages in a discussion of risk and risk management, and concludes by presenting different options for taking action. This site sticks to the facts and does not get into politics. We hope that the facts prepare you for more effective conversations with your community about values, trade-offs, politics, and actions.
This is followed by “A note about the scientific method” which I encourage you to read…and below that you’ll learn more about Dr. Emanuel along with full credits for the project.
Visit. Plan to engage with it. It’s a deep and really well-done website, organized in 11 interactive chapters. Share it. Then have those “more effective conversations with your community about values, trade-offs, politics, and actions.” I’m pretty certain it will deepen your capacity for skillful conversations with the young people in your life…
And when the full interdisciplinary, place-based (and open-source) climate change curriculum launches in the Fall, I will be sure to let you know. The CATE page mentions that in addition to the curriculum, they intend to offer an EdX climate course for educators launching Fall 2023 (September goal).
Elsewhere on Substack
Twilight Greenaway writes The Window where she shares news and information about the climate crisis…In her August 9 post, “Climate Anxiety and Its Antidote,” she wrote:
In March, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication’s massive survey on American beliefs and attitudes about climate crisis found that 66 percent of the respondents were at least somewhat worried about global warming (and this number has likely risen in the last five months of climate extremes). At the same time, most Americans said they rarely or never discuss global warming with family and friends. Only 5 percent said they discuss it often.
This silence has very real repercussions—especially when it comes to influencing lawmakers’ willingness to act…
I recommend that you read her full post … Let’s grow and share a practice of discussing climate science and the climate crisis with family and friends. Consider inviting a few friends or family members to go through the MIT Climate Primer together—think of it as a variation on a book club. Take a few chapters a week.
In the Wilds
Orion Magazine is one of my favorite magazines over the years. It’s a nonprofit, quarterly ad-free print magazine, on ecology, culture, and place, published since 1982. “Tune In: Listen to 3 Shifting Soundscapes” explores habitat loss in 3 locations from 1998 to 2018 through soundscape. You can see a short version on their Instagram here.
*
Barry Joseph is one of the most creative and fearless early adopter educators I know. Barry and his team at Global Kids were way ahead of their time in 2005+ in exploring immersive worlds with kids. In this post, Shall we play a game? How to teach the basics of generative AI, Barry shares 3 different approaches he’s been taking to help groups of educators and non-profit professionals engage generative AI with less fear—AI game shows, AI arcades, and AI roleplay.
*
And here’s a little AI humor from @stopmolovers on IG.
Restoration celebration
Audubon Society shared this news on their Instagram.
“Louisiana broke ground on the single-largest ecosystem restoration project in U.S. history. Co-managed by @LouisianaCPRA and @USACEHQ, the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion will reconnect the Mississippi River with its historic wetlands.
Cut off from the river by levees for a century, Louisiana's Barataria Basin has experienced some of the highest rates of land loss on the planet. This project will deliver much-needed sediment to restore the wetlands in Barataria Basin, strengthening tens of thousands of acres.
It'll also buffer nearby communities from storms. And this new land will help iconic birds in Louisiana like Roseate Spoonbills and Bald Eagles, which depend on healthy, productive freshwater ecosystems to thrive.
Thanks for reading. Be well.