{"id":159,"date":"2009-12-13T13:10:26","date_gmt":"2009-12-13T12:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=159"},"modified":"2009-12-13T13:10:26","modified_gmt":"2009-12-13T12:10:26","slug":"childrens-and-other-statements-on-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2009\/12\/13\/childrens-and-other-statements-on-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Children's (and other) Statements on Climate Change"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 26 November, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families received the\u00a0Children's Statement on Climate Change<\/span> from children at St Luke's primary school in Newham and promised to send it to UK delegates at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. \u00a0The\u00a0Statement<\/a><\/span> is available to download as a PDF and is certainly worth a read if only to glimpse some of the thoughts of some of our children (it's hard to know anything about representativeness, of course).<\/p>\n

Commendably, little attempt seems to have been made to eliminate muddled conceptual thinking:<\/p>\n

If we don\u2019t reduce global\u00a0warming we\u2019ll see more \ufb02oods,\u00a0droughts, food shortages,\u00a0and endangered animals\u00a0because the hole in the ozone\u00a0layer will get even bigger.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Concern about the extinction of polar bears continues (I hear this wherever I go and have to admire the animals' PR machine):<\/p>\n

\n

The ice caps melting\u00a0and polar bears and\u00a0penguins becoming\u00a0extinct from it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, Thomas says:<\/p>\n

\n

I am most worried about the severe\u00a0effects of climate change, like the\u00a0increase in \ufb02ooding in the UK and\u00a0the very hot summers which we would\u00a0get; this would cause crops to fail. \u00a0The animals would not be able to adapt\u00a0quickly enough to the rapid change ...\u00a0so they would die.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

I wonder whether Thomas would be just as worried were the summers to be cold and the winters dry. \u00a0I suppose he would be as he'd likely be told that this, also, was evidence of climate change \u2013 as it may well be (or not) \u2013 how can he know?<\/p>\n

\n

\n

I read the children's piece at the same time as the article in this week's THE: Beyond Debate<\/a>? \u00a0by Martin Cohen. \u00a0I think that this is something which the children's teachers might usefully read \u2013 as well as some of the comment that goes alongside it on the THE's website \u2013 if only to help them see that this debate is not settled, and therefore help them to be as open and honest as possible with the young people whom they teach.<\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 26 November, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families received the\u00a0Children's Statement on Climate Change from children at St Luke's primary school in Newham and promised to send it to UK delegates at the UN Climate Change...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-publications"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}