In February of 2016 I wrote a short comment on an article for the Environmental Politics class I was taking at Lane Community College. I have a couple hours before I head out to the gym with my friend, and then trivia at BeerGarden. I thought for my post today I would revise my original comment and add in some new perspectives I have concerning the role of education for making a sustainable society.

The article was titled ‘Global Warming’s Terrifying Math,’ written by Bill McKibbon, and it talks about the numbers that have become generally accepted as the limits imposed upon the use of fossilized fuels to prevent climate control failure, and why the fossil-fuel companies are allowed to get away with ignoring these numbers. Planet Earth has been scientifically assigned the official position of not being capable of temperatures rising more than two degrees Celsius without imminent catastrophe. We have already raised the average temperature of the planet just under 0.8 degrees Celsius, and that has already caused far more damage than most scientists originally expected.

Scientists estimate humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by mid-century and still have some reasonable hope of staying below the two degrees limit. The amount of carbon already contained in the proven coal and oil and gas reserves of the fossil-fuel companies is 2,795 gigatons, and it is this fuel which we, as a society, are currently planning to burn—a number fives times higher than 565.

Alone among businesses, the fossil-fuel industry is allowed to dump its main waste, carbon dioxide, for free because, until a quarter-century ago, almost no one knew that CO2 was dangerous. Our current economic system is controlled by the industries who directly profit from the special pollution break, supported by our politicians and government, which allows them the success of staying alive past the point of no return. The fight for our future survival will depend upon our collective ability as citizens to force the fossil-fuel industry to stop their destruction of our future as a species. In the economists’ parlance, we’ll make them internalize those externalities.

A strong point of the article was the explanation that big fossil-fuel companies’ willingness to fight for the prevention of regulations controlling the release of carbon-dioxide is because the reserves still technically in the ground are already economically aboveground—those reserves are the primary assets figured into share prices, the principle upon which companies are borrowing money against, and are the holdings that give the companies their value. But, given the afore-mentioned math, it becomes painfully clear that the planet has an enemy, a rogue industry, reckless like no other force on Earth, that will indeed help to usher in a rapid, transformative change, because building a movement requires a good enemy.

I believe Public Education can be used as a strategy by which to usher in our transformation as a society. By teaching our children, and ourselves in the process, how to recognize the forces influencing our private and public spheres, we can learn how to regain control over our lives, and how to live in new ways that help to mitigate the damage already done. It is a time for emphasizing collaboration over competition, resolution over conflict, community over isolation, sustainability over disposability, and tolerance over fear.

Social Movements are how things in society get changed for the better. We have a long history of such movements proving the point. Learning how to create, build support for, and sustain a social movement for change is challenging in the extreme. So much so, in fact, that many movements fail as a result of a lack of awareness for what needed to be done next in order to succeed. Many people lose faith when they perceive the movement as having failed to create the change they worked so hard for. Social change is a process governed by a more glacial pace of time then most people usually encounter in their daily lives.

I want to teach children how to critically analyze Social Movements as a way to choose the cause they are willing to fight for, and then show them the direct and nonviolent strategies and tactics that are needed to succeed, as well as helping them to recognize what success looks like, and how to maintain their momentum and motivation for the long haul. We must become comfortable with the understanding that ‘success’ will not be seen in our lifetimes. But it is for those future lifetimes that we must begin to make sacrifices today. The younger an individual can begin to learn how to fight for survival, and how to WIN those fights, is a necessary component of an education for sustainability. And I do believe that the ultimate purpose of Public Education should be the continuation of the Public.

I believe it is appropriate, and necessary, for public education to have a desirable political socializing effect upon children, whereupon they learn how to become active citizens who not only know how to live well in the world and create changes for social and ecological justice, but who will think critically in dealing with unpredictable problems, as well as competently knowing how to communicate and share their thinking processes with others in a collective atmosphere.

Whew. I’m done for today. I have more thoughts on these ideas, but this is only the beginning. Hell. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of what I believe, why I believe it, and what the hell I am doing about it (insomuch as I can). I’m going to work on tomorrow’s post until I’m finished with my bitter and then I’m headed home to catch my ride for tonight’s entertainment.

I hope all y’all have a wonderful evening as well during this year’s turkey week!