Green Earth Voices Show

Posts Tagged ‘uncertain future’

Kathleen Edwards: A Breakup Song's Bigger Picture
CORNISH: You can hear "Pink Champagne" and the other songs from "Voyageur" at NPRMusic.org. EDWARDS: (Singing) Champagne tastes the same. I don't want to feel this. I don't want to feel this. I don't want to feel this way. Transcript provided by NPR, …
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Dan Layus on Augustana's Uncertain Future
With the recent news break that Augustana is breaking up, the lead singer and chief song writer of the band has dealt with some interesting challenges. Red Bull broke the story a couple of months ago that Augustana was over and everybody was going …
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Children today are burdened with the prospect of a world facing an uncertain future. As such, educative initiatives designed to help children and young people better understand the risks posed by climate change and what they can do to prevent it have never been so important.

Through climate change and ecological duress, humans have played a dangerous game of brinkmanship with the plant, weighing their insatiable need for industrial growth against the finite resources available on Earth. In doing so, we have brought the environment dangerously close to collapse in a number of ways; melting polar ice caps and the resultant probable increase in sea levels is one such example.

Many believe that it is too late, that we have gone too far to unstitch what destruction has already been sewn. As such, the need for future generations to understand the full impetus of climate change and what needs to be done to protect the planet is vital.

Increasingly, topics such as climate change are being introduced into the class room to nurture and develop the concept in children through the curriculum. As the future custodians of the planet, this seems to be a vital movement.

In order for children to better understand climate change, the key messages associated with turning around the potential ecological demise of our planet must be delivered in an appropriate way. Making learning fun for children is a tried and tested method for communicating on serious issues in an approachable way.

Many education initiatives for children are focussed on encouraging them to participate around the home to small, manageable degrees. You could encourage your child to turn light switches off when there’s no one in the room; to turn stand by buttons off safely at the TV or computer when there’s no one watching or when they go to bed. Encourage children not to waste water, and to turn off a dripping tap; teach them not to put anything warm in the fridge or freezer, and that by keeping your windows clean, sunlight can enter your home, providing abundant natural warmth, helping to conserve on central heating bills.

Children may enjoy learning about why they play such an important role in the future of the planet through games or art workshops, while climate destructive elements can be communicated through making children into climate cops and identifying climate crimes.

By using such education initiatives and activities, there’s plenty opportunity to reward your children, all the while, reinforcing their understanding of climate change and why their participation is so important.

If you want to go green in your home, and save a little money at the same time, it’s never been easier. As the planet faces an uncertain future of global warming, which is believed to be the result of us all burning fossil fuels indiscriminately, we all have a duty to do the best we can to redress the balance. Here are some vital tips to help you get started…

Your home is where you spend a lot of your income, so it makes sense to be spending it as efficiently as possible. You can start to go green in your home by insulating the house. Loft insulation, wall cavity insulation, double or even triple glazing – it will all make a tremendous difference. Yes, there is an investment to consider, but you will save in the long term, and save a lot too.

We all use too much water. Go green in the home by cutting back as much as you can. We could all, collectively, save one billion gallons of water a year by changing our old flush toilet cisterns. The old ones use three and a half gallons per flush and the new high-efficiency ones use just over one and a quarter gallon. It makes a big difference! If you did only this to go green in the home you would save 20,000 gallons of water every year, and pay a lot less in water bills.

The standard light bulbs that most homes have are very inefficient. Compact fluorescent light bulbs burn around 5% of the old bulbs and they last 10 times longer. They may cost slightly more to buy initially, but this is an obvious way to go green in the home and save a bundle in the long run. But you can do even better, The new LED lights are almost twice as efficient as even the compact fluorescent light bulbs, and they will last even longer too.

Heat leaks out of a house in winter and into the house in summer. Better insulation all round is a great way to go green in the home. Look at your loft, your wall cavities, your windows and your doors. Sort out all of these and you can go green in the home and really save too.

Home utilities are a drain on energy. Did you know that modern washing powders are so good that they don’t really need hot water? your washing machine uses most of its energy heating the water, so wash your clothes cold. They will clean great while you go green in the home. You may think your dishwasher is also an energy drain, Strangely, it isn’t. If you use it fully filled it uses less resources than if you wash by hand. Once you know these little tips and tricks, it’s easy to go green in the home!