Although Eban Goodstein has been educating people about the global-warming threat for a decade, he only recently took major action to help solve the problem. In 2006 he heard James E. Hansen, a leading climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, say that global warming could prove catastrophic sooner than anticipated and that the world needed practical solutions immediately.
Goodstein, an economics professor at Lewis and Clark College, temporarily left teaching to form the National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions. Over the past two years the Teach-In has helped coordinate 2,500 events with 1.25 million participants, most of them students, to share ideas about potential fixes.
On February 5 Goodstein collaborated with the office of House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to stage a Capitol Hill teach-in. He brought together 250,000 students and community members across 25 campuses nationwide to interact with 15 members of Congress via videoconferences. The discussions were so fruitful that Goodstein is organizing a larger session, scheduled for this autumn, to engage up to 250 policy makers.
“Young people are responsible for developing solutions to save our planet,” Goodstein says. Engaging with lawmakers gives students a real voice, he adds, allowing them to learn about actual bills circulating in Congress, to brainstorm new ideas, and to share their innovative energy and business plans for preserving the earth.
Note: This article was originally printed with the title, "Teach-In Solution."
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Add CommentI am increasingly disappointed in Scientific American's uncritical reporting on climate change. While it is becoming clear that global temperatures have not risen over the last 10 years despite CO2 continuing to rise over the same period. I'd expect a scientific magazine like SciAm to publish some articles on this growing discrepancy and what it means for the reliability of climate models.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy should SA be any different than the rest of the media? I am still trying to figure out when a consensus changed from a political term to a scientific one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBravo! This is an inspired approach and a powerful model. I'll be taking good notes and hope to apply something similar to ocean issues when my 50-state "expedition" visiting K-12 and undergrads concludes in June 2010. In recent talks to adults, I've been quoting some of the thousands of messages to the Obama Administration I've received from students around the country. Many are incredibly direct and impactful in a way only young students can make them. Perhaps there's no more potent tool for breaking through the political rhetoric and inertia that have too-often paralyzed policymaking. (See: http://oceandoctor.org/50-states-expedition/about/)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthis is Earth 3.0 , why would you read it if you don't want to hear these reports. I am not a hunter, I don't read hunting articles.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalso, it is not air temperature that we will see the fastest changes with, it is the temperature of the ocean, particularly around the arctic/antarctic, where huge chunks are falling into the ocean.
I recently attended my son's science fair. A number of students were doing projects on AGW. The political indoctrination and lack of science inherent in the presentations made me sick to my stomach.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMann's Hockey stick graph presented as gospel, 50 foot rises in sea level presented as truth, cropped and photoshopped pictures of polar bears used to depict sea ice melting, the blaming of CO2 for the birth of three eyed fish and and two tailed calves, and on an on. Hitlerjung could only wish to be as effective.
You people should go out into the schools and see what is being taught. You would get the eye-opening experience of your life.
So let's see, we have an ideology driven faculty who gets tons of research money from the US government to prove what the US government wants them to prove.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis ideology driven faculty then spews political dogma to young people.
The young people then go and advise Congress. And Congress says " Amazing, what a great group of kids! We never would have thought of that ourselves!"
And the kids, egos suitably stroked, vote Democrat.
The only thing missing is to have ACORN facilitate the information exchange to make sure it is all above board.
Yeah, sounds like good science, independent thought and an open environment. No chance for incest and corruption here.
Let's get right on this one.
Es war Hitlerjugend, nicht wahr?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut I agree. This slavish parroting of the accepted 'wisdom' is getting to be embarrassing.
It does not matter if you believe in climate change caused by humanity or not. What I believe everyone can agree on is; we need high paying jobs and we need to stop paying big bucks for energy. Now is the time to exploit space power and resources. Sunlight is available in high Earth orbit 24/7, 365 days a year. We have had the technology since the late 60’s to transmit via microwave all the energy we could ever use, to Earth, from orbit. The material for constructing the space end of the system is available on the near Earth asteroids and the Moon. We the people need the government to fund the project just as the government funded World War II. Our survival as a people with liberty was threatened by mad men with weapons during WWII. Today our survival is threatened by mad men with oil. If we as a people shrink from the task at hand we will lose our liberty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're talking about upholding journal level rigor in a children's science fair. Children. Spare us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, in case you couldn't be bothered to notice, Eban Goodstein is not enlisting high school or middle school students for this purpose. I think we can all agree that university science students would take this a lot more seriously than you're willing to give them credit for.
Go into a library. You will see tens of thosands of books about love stories, crime and suchlike. Then look for books on the Earth Sciences. Yes! we are alive and dependant on this little planet of ours. So how many environment books? Five? Ten? It is clear that the public is totally underinformed on ecology. When more people understand the issues treated by the IPCC they will ensures politicians take the right decisions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisgalaxy_man
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHitler said "Give me a child until age 10 and he's mine for life"
And spare me the university level argument. Been there, done that... regurgitate what the prof said or get a "C". Independent thought not allowed.
there is no need for independent thought in a history class.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am one of those scientists with a front row seat at the global warming show. Believe me, none of us want to believe what the data are telling us, which is increasingly worse than first thought because new sources of positive feedback (ie, environmental responses to global warming that actually make it worse) keep popping up. It is one of the reasons why we've put together a free, downloadable book on global warming and its solutions. Check it out at: www.CoolTheEarth.US
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe don't make a dime out of it -- we just want people to know what the data are showing us, if we wipe the political hype away from our eyes... among climate scientists there is an overwhelming SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS. Now we have to act. The good news is, we stand to gain economically if we pursue many of the solutions available to us. Will we be smart enough as a species to do so?