Education

I'm excited to tell you that I'm partnering with Efficiency Nova Scotia on a province-wide speaking tour to promote energy efficiency. Take Charge! Saving Money, Creating Jobs and Helping the Planet will launch in Truro tomorrow, November 26. I'll be speaking in Stellarton December 1, and in Sydney December 8, and visiting Amherst, Bridgewater, Wolfville, Yarmouth and Halifax in the first six weeks of 2012. (There's a full schedule below.)

Given that energy supplies are declining, prices are rising, and the air is full of smutch, energy efficiency is really a no-brainer. Using less energy saves money, creates jobs and business opportunities, and slows the rate at which we foul the air. You don't have to believe in human-generated climate change – though I definitely do – to understand that cleaner air is a good idea. All you have to do is try to breathe in downtown Toronto during a temperature inversion. In fact – though the numbers aren't often tracked – in cities around the world, scads of people are already dying from air pollution.

Pristine, bucolic Nova Scotia leads the world in solid-waste management – but, oddly enough, it produces a particularly high level of greenhouse-gas emissions. As I pointed out in a pair of newspaper columns in 2001, that's largely because we rely very heavily on coal-fired electricity generation. If you want to know more – and also learn what's meant by “ecological footprint” – I've just combined those two columns into one piece called “Elephant Tracks,” and posted it on the Green Pieces blog on this site.

 If you enjoyed Bunker Roy's Green Interview, you'll love his recent TED talk. See it here: http://goo.gl/iogWC

I'm a huge fan of the TED talks, 18-minute nuggets of wisdom, insight, fun and stimulation. If you don't know them, you have a treat in store at www.ted.com. So I was thrilled when I was invited to speak at a TEDx event in Halifax last June – a local, self-organized occasion licensed by TED to bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

I presented an illustrated talk about Bhutan and its pursuit of Gross National Happiness. The talk was basically a live version of our Bhutan video, and it was based on my visit to Bhutan in 2009 to observe a workshop, organized by GPI Atlantic of Halifax, on Education for GNH. It was recorded and edited by the Nova Scotia Community College, and the edited video recently became available.

You don't have to login to view this TEDx video, but we encourage you to register – it's free – and to sample other parts of our Special Presentation on Bhutan and GNH. Please sign up for our free Newsletter when you register, too. But start with the TEDx talk, which you can see by clicking here.
 

Kartikeya Sarabhai is one of the world's leading environmental educators, the founder and director of India's Centre for Environment Education. Starting as a tiny NGO in Ahmedabad, Sarabhai's home town, the Centre has grown to encompass 400 professional staff in 40 offices across the country. It reaches into every school system in India, working in every Indian language and advising every state government on greening the curriculum. CEE is also active in Australia and Sri Lanka. In 2005, CEE received the Global Award for Outstanding Service to Environmental Education from the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE).

Kartikeya Sarabhai is a wonderfully innovative social thinker who has developed a powerful understanding of the relationship between the human and the natural environments, and has achieved remarkable success enlisting local communities in environmental preservation and remediation. “Development and environment,” he says, “have to go together. You have to involve people in looking after the forests and the environment. It cannot be done through government and policy alone.”

Sarabhai is also a highly successful businessman. He is the chairman of Ambalal Sarabhai Enterprises, the pharmaceutical company which was set up by his grandfather Ambalal Sarabhai, where he has proven himself an astute and innovative corporate leader.

Our interview with this complex, cheerful trail-blazer is available on the Green Interview now.

I've never participated in a Council of All Beings. Not yet.

Councils of All Beings were designed by proponents of “deep ecology” to give people a direct emotional experience of their profound connection with the rest of the natural world. Deep ecology holds that the world was not made for human exploitation, that all its features have intrinsic value, and that our most urgent task is to re-discover our proper place among the life-forms that share this green and spinning planet.

That task requires that we transform ourselves socially, politically, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally. The toughest part is the spiritual and emotional piece – and that's what the Council of All Beings is about. It is one thing to understand intellectually that we are profoundly interconnected with the features and creatures that we are destroying. It is quite another thing to feel it on your skin and in your hair, and within your heart and spirit.

We recently posted our interview with Bunker Roy, the founder of India's Barefoot College, and an educational thinker of ruthless robustness. He won't educate people who have been spoiled by formal education, and he doesn't think highly of men as students, either. Among his greatest successes have been grandmothers from Africa, Afghanistan and the Himalayas, whom he's trained to be solar engineers and to bring electricity to their remote villages. In many ways, Bunker Roy's ideas turn our concepts of education on their heads.

I'm happy to see that my recent book is getting some attention. A Million Futures: The Remarkable Legacy of the CAnada Millennium Scholarship Foundation was published last September. Here's a nice little Q&A that Halifax writer Richard Levangie does with recently-published authors: http://seventhestatepr.com/blog/2011/01/26/459/

And here's a short but lovely review by Dale Kirby, a professor of education at Memorial University of Newfoundland:  http://post-secondary.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-book-on-canada-millennium...

The book has also been noticed in University Affairs, the house organ of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, here: http://www.universityaffairs.ca/building-a-strong-foundation.aspx

It's not exactly a natural best-seller, but it's pleased a lot of readers and it's good to see it drawing a little attention. More details about the book can be found here: www.amillionfutures.com