From Clean Technica:

A class of elementary school students in Durham, North Carolina recently set out on a mission to make their classroom 100% solar powered. The fourth grade class started a Kickstarter campaign: Our Solar Powered Classroom for that purpose, and they greatly exceeded their goal. The class has stated that the extra funds will be used to purchase a larger system, which will then sell back electricity to the community.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Photo source: Clean Technica

Related:

• ‘Crowdfunding Clean Energy’ (NY Times)
• ‘“Crowdfunding” Gives Boost to Renewables in U.S.’ (IPS News)

From The Vancouver Sun:

Whitney Sharp always expected she would be driving when she turned 16. But five years later, she has yet to make it behind the wheel — or even to a driver licensing branch.

…

Sharp is representative of what TransLink has deemed a “noticeable drop” in the proportion of young adults aged 16-24 who are forgoing a traditional rite of passage: getting a driver’s licence.

Only 50 per cent of young people aged 16-19 and 80 per cent of those 20-29 had a driver’s licence in 2011 — down from 60 per cent and 90 per cent respectively in 1999 — according to TransLink’s latest trip diary, which surveyed almost 18,000 households on their commuting patterns, including how many trips they made in a 24-hour period.

…

There’s no specific reasons given for the decline, but the TransLink analysis suggests it could be attributed to several factors, including a combination of the graduated licensing program and TransLink’s U-Pass program — a cheap universal pass that gives students access to bus, SeaBus and SkyTrain services within Metro Vancouver — or a “generational behaviour change because of shifts in values and attitudes.”

“The notion of getting a car and the ability to drive as a rite of passage is really eroding,” said Larry Frank, professor and J. Armand Bombardier chair in Sustainable Urban Transportation Systems at the University of B.C. “It’s an indication that our degree of car dependence, at least in this region, is declining.”

It appears teens no longer view a restored Mustang as the ticket to independence, said Maria Su, senior manager of research analytics with TransLink. The high price of gas and car ownership, on one hand, and the U-Pass program and better transit opportunities on the other, she said, are likely contributing to the trend, which “is not unique to Vancouver.”

“It used to be when people got out of school, the first thing they did was get a used car because it was a sign of freedom,” Su said. “Now you can meet up with a friend without a car.”

Check out the rest of the article here. 

(Photo source: Streetsblog DC)

Related:

• Access over Ownership: Millennials and Public Transportation (NRDC)

• What Happens When We Reach Peak Car? (Time Magazine)
• 3 Big Opportunities To Transform Transportation (EMBARQ)

Speaking for the world’s 3 billion children: “Are you here to save face? Or are you here to save us?”

From TckTckTck via YouTube:

On Wednesday 20 June, 2012 17-year-old Brittany Trilford of Wellington, New Zealand addressed 130 heads of state at the opening plenary of the Rio+20 UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This is her speech.

Food with a Smile: ‘1 in 5 Teenagers Will Experiment With Farming’

(Source: Face Your Farmer via FarmFolkCityFolk)

Kids & Climate Change: The Legal Route

From iMatter via Vimeo:

In an unprecedented legal filing, seven iMatter youth who sued the US government earlier this year, filed a “Preliminary Injunction” requiring the EPA to take immediate action to protect our nation’s youth who are in imminent danger because of climate change. 
They are calling upon the Courts to to compel the U.S. government to put in place “Climate Recovery Plans” that will protect the atmosphere for their future. This video was submitted to the courts to tell the story of one of the plaintiffs, 17 year old Alec Loorz, who introduces himself and his fears about the effect climate change will have on his future.

More here and here.

Climate Change: US Carbon Emissions Down 7% in 4 Years 

From Link TV:

With US carbon emissions down 7% in four years and bigger drops coming, the United States may emerge as a global leader in cutting carbon and stabilizing climate.

Lester Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, tells Earth Focus that new forces including life style and demographic changes are reducing the use of both coal and oil in the United States. He expects that carbon emissions could decline by as much as 20% in the United States by 2020.

From The Guardian:

In Britain, the percentage of 17- to 20-year-olds with driving licences fell from 48% in the early 1990s to 35% last year. The number of miles travelled by all forms of domestic transport, per capita per year, has flatlined for years. Meanwhile, road traffic figures for cars and taxis, having risen more or less every year since 1949, have continued to fall since 2007. Motoring groups put it down to oil prices and the economy. Others offer a more fundamental explanation: the golden age of motoring is over.

“The way we run cars is changing fast,” says Tim Pollard, associate editor at CAR magazine, “Car manufacturers are worried that younger people in particular don’t aspire to own cars like we used to in the 70s, 80s, or even the 90s. Designers commonly say that teenagers today aspire to own the latest smartphone more than a car. Even car enthusiasts realise we’ve reached a tipping point.”

As hi-tech research and development budgets source to keep pace with the iPhone generation, Pollard says carmakers are also coming to terms with less possessive buyers. “Towards the end of the 20th century, manufacturers cottoned on to the fact that we were owning things for shorter periods.”

This has led to a proliferation of different ownership and rental schemes such as Streetcar, Zipcar and Whipcar.

…

The most radical change is that “in big societies, there is a huge status shift happening, where we are losing the idea that you use a car to define your status. 

…

Underpinning all these innovations and ideas is what Liske sees as a major behavioural shift among the generation of “digital natives”. “They don’t care about owning things. Possession is a burden, and a car is a big investment for most people – not just the vehicle, but the permits, the parking space.”

…

Social trends can lead to change, but our travel habits are shaped by government policy too: by road, rail and airport building, most obviously, but also by planning regulations. Greenfield development, or the construction of housing on undeveloped land, is favoured by developers because it’s cheaper to build and easier to sell. Yet this is often low-density, suburban-style housing that is poorly suited to public transport and more or less requires homeowners to drive. Brownfield building, though less profitable and less popular, often raises population density, making public transport more viable.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Guardian)

From The Australian:

Australian kids are clashing with their parents over the importance of climate change, a survey has found.

The survey, by research groups Bayer and the CSIRO, found one in three families disagree on the importance of climate change with one in five parents saying they didn’t believe in climate change.

“It is encouraging to see that children are taking what they’ve learned in the classroom and using it to educate their parents on how to reduce their carbon footprint,” Peta Ashworth, from the CSIRO’s Science into Society Group, said today.

“When it comes to young Australians and their knowledge of the environment, it is clear the work done in schools is creating some healthy debates about sustainability and being green at home.”

…

One things kids and parents agreed on was who should pay for damage to the environment with 87 per cent of both parents and kids believing big polluters should pay for the damage.

The survey found natural disasters were having a particularly big impact on kids with 50 per cent listing natural disasters as their number one worry when it came to climate change.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Climate Change Action)

From The Calgary Herald:

The cultural revolution a generation ago in the 1960s was all about sex. Now, the latest research shows, it’s all about sustainability.

Not as titillating a revolution, perhaps, but the outcome is sure important - young adults participating in the new research equate the threat of global warming with the threat their grandparents felt with the onset of the Second World War.

That’s why young adults in Montreal, Halifax and New York are ready to change their behaviour based on sustainable values, according to a new study done by researchers at Montreal’s Concordia University, the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Dalhousie University in Halifax and Fordham University in New York City.

The 8,000 young adults surveyed from 20 countries worldwide for the Global Survey for Sustainable Lifestyles, sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program, said that not only is their dream to build a more sustainable world, but that they are willing to make the necessary changes to their lifestyles to make it happen…

Check out the rest of the article here.

Kids, Climate Change and ‘Generation Hot’

The US-based 1Sky Climate Network just released a great video featuring some wise young folks talking about the “tough” year that was on the climate, energy and environment fronts. They point to epic flooding in Pakistan; record droughts in Russia and the Middle East; ongoing climate denial efforts; coal miner deaths in West Virginia; the BP Gulf oil catastrophe; the failure to US senate to pass climate legislation and the fact 2010 tied 2005 as the hottest year on record. 

While the video serves as a good year in review I think its chief strength is that kids are gaining more of a voice in our climate and sustainability conversations and it’s encouraging to see they increasingly have some prominent folks on their side.

Just to highlight a few, children’s singer Raffi of ‘Baby Beluga’ and ‘Banana Phone’ fame recently wrote an essay about their Right to a Future through his Centre for Child Honouring. Prominent NASA climate scientist James Hansen wrote Storms of My Grandchildren last year and has taken to activism to get us off fossil fuels and onto a clean energy future. Similarly, noted journalist Mark Hertsgaard has now written a well-reviewed book Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth identifying youth born after June 23,1988 as members of Generation Hot. He explains that the group comprises:

“some two billion young people, all of whom have grown up under global warming and are fated to spend the rest of their lives confronting its mounting impacts.”

In a TV interview with George Stroumboulopolous Hertsgaard recently explained that like Hansen he is now transitioning to a more active role in climate advocacy given that his daughter and her peers are inheriting an Earth that, in the words of Bill McKibben, is a ”very different place than it used to be”. Like others, Hertsgaard realizes that individual action is almost useless if the word’s big carbon emitters don’t get serious about reducing their pollution. And quickly. That means changing laws, policies and energy mixes; not just lightbulbs, recycling and how we get around. 

One other interesting and potentially promising youth focused development is a move toward legal action to compel governments to reduce carbon emissions. For example, the World Future Council is currently working to establish climate change as a crime against future generations while Hansen and others in the US are drafting a lawsuit under the Constitution as it:

“implies a fiduciary responsibility of governments to protect the rights of the young and the unborn.” 

(Photo credit: Adrian Lau Tsun Yin, 8-years-old, China, courtesy of the United Nations Environment Programme)