Some young people at Kennebunk High School are currently working to raise the funds necessary to purchase a solar panel that would help supply hot water to the building where they attend classes. That panel would provide a slight saving to the school district’s energy costs, but more importantly it would lower KHS’s “carbon footprint,” which is a measure of the impact our activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases we produce. The efforts of these ninth graders and their teacher Emily Flaherty to increase public awareness on the issue of global warming (or climate change, for those who prefer less dire-sounding terms) are inspiring. Anyone can agonize over the state of the environment, but to quietly and doggedly take action designed to improve our current situation and heighten awareness deserves recognition, not to mention encouragement and active assistance.
It’s heartening to observe the increasing amount of environmental activism going on in the United States, and particularly when the people involved are young. Human beings born in the 1990’s are likely to be around a lot longer than those of us who began life when Dwight Eisenhower was president, and it follows that from this day forward their collective impact on the environment will be, for better or worse, more significant than the one their elders will have on it.
I too am employed at Kennebunk High School. My classroom has twenty desks, and every one is filled during the Contemporary Issues course I teach. One of the students is an 11th grader; the other 19 are seniors. We’ve had more than one class discussion this year about the environment, and the students without exception believe that we as citizens need to do something to reverse the increasingly harmful effects of climate change. One class member indignantly wondered why anyone would buy a Hummer (or similar gas-guzzling rolling fortress), particularly when gas prices are rising rapidly and steadily toward the four dollars per gallon level. Another launched a conversation by pondering the selfishness of those who litter. These in-class debates never fail to involve nearly every student, many of whom have eloquently raised concerns that have made their peers (not to mention their teacher) consider points of view they previously had not.
One morning not long ago one of the seniors arrived late, which was understandable; it had snowed, and road conditions were treacherous. I sympathized with her, and expressed surprise that the school bus didn’t go past her house. I assumed it didn’t, of course, because if it did, why then would she have had to put herself at risk and make such a harrowing trip just to get to school? Everyone smiled, because of course the school bus does pass her house. She hadn’t been forced to drive to school; she had chosen to do so. As the discussion escalated to related topics several of the students complained about the lack of parking spaces at the school; many advocated that only seniors be giving parking privileges.
Sensing a teachable moment, I asked if each student who had taken the bus to school that morning would indicate that he or she had done so by putting his or her arm in the air. It didn’t take long to count the hands. There weren’t any.
Even allowing that there may have been an embarrassed student or two who actually did take the bus but didn’t want his or her peers to know, that nearly all of them opted to take a private vehicle to school that day sends a most disquieting message. Actions speak louder than words. Not one of the impassioned environmentalists in my class takes the bus to school. There are legitimate reasons for eschewing taxpayer-funded mass transportation in favor of driving, but on this particular March day no class member was involved in rehearsals for the school musical, no one had to go directly from school to his or her place of employment, and there were no after school athletic practices. The rationales the students offered for driving rather than busing ranged from, “It’s a long ride,” to “I need more sleep,” to a more straightforward, “It’s inconvenient for me.”
Slowing the effects of global warming should be everyone’s concern, not everyone else’s concern. Hopefully the 9th grade activists in Mrs. Flaherty’s class will still be taking the bus to KHS three years from now, but recent history indicates that’s unlikely. Until such time as all of us, young and old, are willing to sacrifice personal convenience for the general good, all the talk about cleaning up the environment will merely result in what global warming has been producing for some time: more hot air.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
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