Oak House send letters to the COP25

#QuerdiaCOP25

This week the students in Environmental Enrichment project took part in a campaign by Families for Future and we sent letters to the leaders at the COP25 climate change summit in Madrid. As we now, it is time to ACT NOW at a global level, to combat climate change.

This shocking article from 5th November reminds us of why we should keep this issue in our minds, and in the decisions we take each day.

Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering'

🌍 What planet do your children want?

🌱 How do they want us to care for them?

🔄What would they like to change for a better future?

Under the hashtag #DearCOP25 we open a cannel for children and teenagers to send their messages to the world leaders attending the COP25 in Madrid. It is their right to participate and be heard.

Useful links for ESS this week

WATER

Dead zones and oxygen loss in oceans (published Dec 2019)

Spain spends more money on fines, than on environmental protection. (published Dec 2019)

Malawi lake levels drop (published Dec 2019)

Environmental news this week...

Coldplay pause touring until they can offer 'environmentally beneficial' concerts | Music | The Guardian

Coldplay want to tour in support of the environment and their new album is called “actively beneficial”. This British group have been waiting to start the tour, while they design it to ensure the tour is "carbon neutral".

Billie Eilish for is making her world tour “as green as possible” by:

- prohibiting plastic straws 

- asking fans has to bring reusable water bottles.

Amalia 2ºESO

Read more here

ESS Interesting articles this week

Poorly planned Amazon dam project "poses serious threat to life" (related to EIAs and Hydro power)

theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/08/death-of-a-river-the-ruinous-design-flaw-in-a-vast-amazon-rainforest-dam

Enviro news this week

Environmental EP voted this the most relevant and important news item from the articles suggested this week:

Air pollution nanoparticles linked to brain cancer for first time



Ultra-fine particles are produced by fuel
burning, particularly in diesel vehicles.
The chances of people having brain
cancer is increasing and getting to a level to
where people may die.
Nanoparticles get into your brain, which is
a problem because they carry carcinogenic
chemicals.
Lastly, a scientist says brain cancer are usually rare
and that’s why this is a very bad problem.
They have calculated that busy streets leads
an extra case of brain cancer for every
100,000 people.

By Amalia 2º ESO


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/13/air-pollution-particles-linked-to-brain-cancer-in-new-research

ESS Interesting articles this week...

Amazon Rainforest reaching tipping point

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/23/amazon-rainforest-close-to-irreversible-tipping-point

Sea level rise - the latest models showing the situation in 2050, excellent graphics

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html

Systems theory - an academic article about systems, feedback loops and paradigms (high level)

http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/

Long and comprehensive, well written article about veganism.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/oct/25/why-do-people-hate-vegans

Enviro news this week...

Could cricket and worm burgers save the planet?

We don’t need to create carbon dioxide emissions to take care of the worms and every thing they eat is converted into protein!



Read the news article here!

Enviro news this week!

This news is about how Spain is accusing Portugal of stealing the water from “their” river.

See the full report here

Environmental news this week...

This explains how Greta is influencing climate strikes and work is actually doing something, and that hopefully and eventually this will get solved.

Read more...

Earth Action Week at Oak House School

Last week 23 - 27 September was a Global Week of Action for the climate. Across the school we did activities such as watching videos, making signs for climate, and wearing green t-shirts. 

Climate and the Living World really were the topics of the week and we were pleased that so many students and teachers got involved in the conversation. 

Here are some pictures from the week, and the question we are left with is "What do we do next?" 

Videos and info during Earth Week!

Some highlights from the HUGE amount of media available:




Also
Pupils around the world talking about why they went on strike last week  :

EARTH ACTION WEEK : What can you do?

Tutors	On Monday, Wednesday and Friday can you please spend 5 - 10 minutes on Earth Action Week? You will receive short reminder emails at 8:55 each day with info for that day.
Teachers	Please help keep environmental issues in the conversation during the week, and share interesting articles with students and peers. We also need a few teachers to come to Maragall at 14:30 to help make signs, and keep reminding everyone about green t-shirts on Friday!
Students	If you want to be involved come to a make signs at 14:30 Thursday 26th Sept, we need helpers! Also please bring in coloured markers/crayons and USED CARD that can be reused to make signs. Also please remind your tutors and bring up conversations about our living world with your friends and teachers. You can send me interesting articles and videos a.gurney@oakhouseschool.com

Tutores	El lunes, miércoles y viernes puedes estar 5 - 10 minutos en Earth Action Week. Recibiras un email corto a las 8:55 cada día con la info para ese día.
Profes	Por favor, ayúdanos por hablar de temas del medioambiente durante la semana y compartir artículos interesantes con alumnos y compañeros. También hace falta profes para venir a Maragall el jueves a 14:30 para ayudar con los posters. Y acordamos a la gente para llevar camiseta verde el viernes.
Alumnos	Si quereis apoyar Earth Action Week hay una reunión el jueves 26 sept a 14:30 necesitamos colaboradores! También traer marcadores y “crayons” de colores y cartón USADO para RE-USAR. Además podéis acordar a los tutores y compartir info y videos para el blog con a.gurney@oakhouseschool.com

EARTH ACTION WEEK - info completo CAST

Información completo día por día (ESO and IB/BATX)

EARTH ACTION WEEK - full info ENG

Full information day by day! (ESO and IB/BATX)

EARTH ACTION WEEK!

We will be taking small actions each day next week to get people talking about the climate crisis and the ecological collapse and what possible solutions there are!

More info soon!

Environmental News this week...

First ICESat-2 Global Data Released




More than a trillion new measurements of Earth’s height – blanketing everything from glaciers in Greenland, to mangrove forests in Florida, to sea ice surrounding Antarctica – are now available to the public. With millions more observations added each day, data from NASA’s Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 is providing a precise global portrait of elevation and will allow scientists to track even the slightest changes in the planet’s polar regions. This satellite is all sow used to track cracking ice.

 ICESat-2 will be able to measure the shift in annual elevation across the ice sheet to within a fraction of an inch. To do this, the satellite uses a laser altimeter – an instrument that times how long it takes light to travel to Earth’s surface and back. With that time – along with the knowledge of where in space ICESat-2 is, and where on Earth the laser is pointing – computer programs create a height data point. The data is originally processed at NASA Goddard, then turned into advanced data products that researchers will be able to use to study elevations across the globe.

ICESat-2 data products are now available for free from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at https://nsidc.org/data/icesat-2.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/icesat-2-global-height-data-available-to-public

Thanks Pol for the post!!

Do people use their Boc´n Rolls and water bottles?

PLAN

Do a survey on how many people are using their boc-n-rolls and reusable bottles

With the results decide whether we need to inform people about what they are doing to

help save resources.

RESULTS

The following results are based on 31 1º and 2º ESO students asked on 6th June 2019.

Sharing our news... "Blog Wednesdays!!"

Dear friends,

We have great news for you! Next academic year, every Wednesday morning in tutor time we will be looking at the environmental blog! Every Thursday we publish new, interesting information, so there is something new and interesting to read each week. Go and check it out!

Environmental news this week.. and BOICOT PLASTIC WEEK!!

We propose that everyone joins the BOICOT PLASTIC WEEK!!  An initiative by the Zero Waste network in Barcelona to spend a whole week avoiding plastic packaging... it's a challenge!!! Are you up to it to help save our oceans?

Plastic straws, cotton buds and drink stirrers to be banned in England

Plastic straws , drink stirrers, and cotton buds with plastic stems will be illegal and to sell and use in England from next April, this has been confirmed by the government.

Big amounts of plastic straws , drink stirrers, and cotton buds, (particularly cotton buds), are flushed down toilets or throw in bins most of this end up in the sea  surveys show evidence that recently waterways across the UK have been ‘teeming with plastic’,and  putting wildlife at risk. 

READ MORE HERE 

Update from the Roof Garden

The fruit trees on the roof are growing taller!

Click to see more pictures!!

Fridays for Future in Barcelona this week...

Read the article from 6th May 2019 here 

There is a an action supporting Greta in Barcelona after school on Friday this week:

Vehicle pollution 'results in 4m child asthma cases a year'

Four million children develop asthma every year as a result of air pollution from cars and trucks, equivalent to 11,000 new cases a day, a landmark study has found.

Most of the new cases occur in places where pollution levels are already below the World Health

 Organization limit, suggesting toxic air is even more harmful than thought.

The damage to children’s health is not limited to China and India, where pollution levels are particularly high. In UK and US cities, the researchers blame traffic pollution for a quarter of all new childhood asthma cases.

Canada has the third highest rate of new traffic-related asthma cases among the 194 nations analysed, while Los Angeles and New York City are in the top 10 worst cities out of the 125 assessed. Children are especially vulnerable to toxic air and exposure is also known to leave them with stunted lungs.

The research, published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health, is the first global assessment of the impact of traffic fumes on childhood asthma based on high-resolution pollution data.

READ MORE

Early years garden here at Oak House!

Problems caused by climate change...

CORAL REEF BLEACHING

Climate change causes water temperatures to get hotter, this can result in
coral bleaching. When water is too warm corals will extract the algae called
zooxanthellae living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white.
In 2005, the U.S. lost half of its coral reefs in the Caribbean in one year. This
was because of a humongous bleaching event. The warm waters centered
around the northern Antilles near the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The
satellite data from the previous 20 years confirmed that thermal stress from
2005 it was greater than the previous 20 years combined.
In conclusion, the coral reefs are dying and we need to act now by making
sure our planet is more sustainable.

Thanks to Valentina for sending us this post!

Read more

Greta Thunberg nominated for Nobel Peace Prize!

Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who has inspired an international movement to fight climate change, has been nominated as a candidate to receive this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

She was nominated by three Norwegian MPs.

If she were to win, she would be the youngest recipient since Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai, who was 17 when she received the prize.

"We have proposed Greta Thunberg because if we do nothing to halt climate change, it will be the cause of wars, conflict and refugees," Norwegian Socialist MP Freddy Andre Ovstegard told AFP news agency.

"Greta Thunberg has launched a mass movement which I see as a major contribution to peace," he added.

READ MORE HERE

NEWS!! - Les escoles de Barcelona es coordinen pel moviment Fridays4Future

The news we were talking about in Environmental Club this week was that Greta Thunberg has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize!! and that there is possibly the biggest ever climate change demonstration this Friday 15th March to ask governments to act now stop climate breakdown around the world.

Here is a post about what's happening in Barcelona from Escoles Sostenibles!

And today we made our own posters (out of recycled card of course!) with the messages that we would like to share from our school in support of this global action!

#climatestrike

Environmental News : Endangered Species

By now we are all familiar with America’s president, Donald Trump. We all know that he does not believe in climate change and does very little or nothing to improve this problem. But now he is also  taking out protections from endangered species in America. So here are two species that are endangered due to climate change and human garbage, which we should try to protect. 

The first is the Rusty Patched Bumblebee

This bumblebee has reduced in population 90% thanks to pesticides we put on the plants and habitat loss from destroying natural areas to make more houses or roads. This bumblebee, as any other, is crucial for the reproduction of plants since they are in charge of pollinating the plants. The American administration stopped a plan to protect this crucial animal but later on letting it go on after a legal fight concerning the administration and the people who wanted to do the plan.

Secondly we have the Leatherback Turtle 

A decade ago these turtles were not in danger, actually there had been a slight increase of their population over the Atlantic but know there are “huge declines” Dr Justin Perrault says which is the director of research in the Loggerhead Marinelife Center. The turtles having to go to Florida to lay their eggs, there reduction in population is due to sea level rises that are happening there which drown the turtle’s nests on the beach. Furthermore they are also being strangled, chocked or caught in discarded fishing nets and the pollution and climate changes are not helping with this problem. The administration is now considering to downgrade these turtles protective status from endangered to threatening.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/06/five-species-under-threat-in-the-age-of-trump

Thanks to Gabriela for preparing this excellent post!

Eco meeting 28th Feb

This week we had an Eco Meeting, completely organised and run by 1ºESO students. (Carlota, Carlota, India and Cristina). They talked about the problems around the world and they created a thing that is called Eco Representatives, there will be 1 or more per class. The Eco reps will take on more projects around the school, such as recycling, and looking after the gardens.

Planting the gardens!!

After a few weeks designing the gardens, this week we had the different aromatics and vegetables we has ordered and the gardens were planted by 1º ESO EP!

Here are all the plants we bought...

Some were planted as "guilds" under the trees..

and we also planted the nursery garden, and 2 sections of the other vegetable gardens on the Batx roof. More pictures and explanations about what we are doing will be published soon!

Keep checking in the with the Change Happens... blog!!!

Why we should be talking about CLIMATE CHANGE

It isn't just Environmental Club that are talking about Climate Change, IB1 have prepared an information sheet as part of their IB CAS work. There is a growing body of young people across the world - inspired by Greta Thunberg - who are raising awareness about the seriousness of the problem.

Environmental News this week...

In the last month 55 million Americans have experienced below zero temperatures in the states of Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Minnesota. North Dakota has experienced temperatures as low has -32° Celsius and Minnesota -52° Celsius. This is extremely important since it affects the citizens of these states in extreme ways. According to the National Weather Service wind at -32° Celsius can freeze the human skin in about 15 minutes, this is dangerous for all the homeless people living in America who could die because of this.

This fall in temperatures has caused authorities to close schools and government offices temporarily, and cut all flights arriving and coming to the affected states. This also caused a problem since when this happened the Super Bowl was just days around the corner and the fans of the teams where expected to arrive during those days.

This is because of the polar vortex having a sling causing the cold temperatures to make it farther north in America than usual. Of course we all know that this is a result of Climate Change a problem caused by us, humans. We are putting ourselves in danger because we are not taking advice from what the analysis and experts are telling us about this problem. It is time to make a change.

 Frozen Lake in Michigan

Climate change report

"Things that normally happen in geologic time are happening during the span of a human lifetime," says Fagre. "It's like watching the Statue of Liberty melt."

We listened to the following 20 minute podcast in Environmental Enrichment last week. we found it incredible and think it's really important that everyone listens to it...

What can we do right now about Climate Change?

Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are dying, and wildlife is scrambling to keep pace. It's becoming clear that humans have caused most of the past century's warming by releasing heat-trapping gases as we power our modern lives. Called greenhouse gases, their levels are higher now than in the last 650,000 years.

"If we don't have it, we don't need it," pronounces Daniel Fagre as we throw on our backpacks. We're armed with crampons, ice axes, rope, GPS receivers, and bear spray to ward off grizzlies, and we're trudging toward Sperry Glacier in Glacier National Park, Montana. I fall in step with Fagre and two other research scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey Global Change Research Program. They're doing what they've been doing for more than a decade: measuring how the park's storied glaciers are melting.

So far, the results have been positively chilling. When President Taft created Glacier National Park in 1910, it was home to an estimated 150 glaciers. Since then the number has decreased to fewer than 30, and most of those remaining have shrunk in area by two-thirds. Fagre predicts that within 30 years most if not all of the park's namesake glaciers will disappear.

Planting in early years!

Last thursday we started the project that we had planned in Environmental Club. We went down to Nursery to plant some radish seeds with the little children. We sat down with them and explained them the process of planting seeds and then went and did it.

The best bit is that we planted the radish in yogurt pots which we had recycled from our lunch. The children were really interested in the plants and were waiting to find out if they would grow. This Thursday we went back.. and here are the photos of the plants!!! When they reach the target height of 5cm, the Year 1 pupils will plant them out in the garden.

Julia and Cristina 1º ESO

 

Environmental News this week...

Greta Thunberg is 16 years old and is from Sweden. This girl in August of 2018 made the decision to stop going to school on Fridays and instead use her time to raise awareness about climate change by picketing outside the Swedish parliament, this made headlines. What Thunberg wanted to do was pressure the Government to act on a legislation to reduce carbon emission with Paris. Since she did this in August she has attended the World Economic Forum and the COP24 Inited nations climate change summit.

READ MORE HERE!

Bill McKibben and 350.org

Bill McKibben

William Ernest McKibben, commonly known as Bill McKibben, was born on the 8th of December 1960 (he is now 58 years of age). He attended high school in the suburb of Lexington, Massachusetts and in 1978 (age 18) he entered Harvard University. In 1980 after the election of Ronald Reagan he decided to dedicate his work for an enviormental cause. 

In 1989 McKibben released his book titled The End of Nature that is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change and in the 2013 won of the Gandhi Prize and the Thomas Merton Prize and in 2014 won the Right Livelihood Prize. He is also the founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide climate change movement. This organism which has organized twenty thousand rallies around the world in every country except North Korea and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.

McKibben is still passionate about is work and wants to write about 12 more books and to expand his knowledge on Climate Change.

Thanks to Gabriela for sharing what she found out about Bill and his movement!!

  350.org  

Environmental news this week...

The new diet that could save the planet!

According to a study about sustainable diet, we are allowed to eat 1 meat burger a week OR 1 steak a month in order to keep our personal resource use and carbon footprint at a sustainable level. The change is to eat more legumes, vegetables and nuts to get protein in other ways... and this would be more healthy too!

The article comes from a newspaper aimed at secondary school students called The Day

READ IT HERE!