#398: Free e-book on the Climate crisis

Konnie Huq launches free climate crisis ebook for UK primary schools https://t.co/eNXrjBEwEc

— Guardian Environment (@guardianeco) November 4, 2024

A free ebook about the climate crisis for every UK primary school has been created.

The ebook, Children for Change, is edited by Huq and features contributions from more than 80 writers, illustrators, environmentalists and young people including Tom Gates author Liz Pichon, The Gruffalo illustrator Axel Scheffler and TV presenter Chris Packham. Not all of them are climate experts to be fair.

The book contains stories, poems, illustrations and features about a variety of topics related to the environment including fast fashion, rewilding and measuring our carbon footprint.

The introduction advises children to “start anywhere” in the book. “It’s a chocolate box, essentially”, said Huq.

Edited by broadcaster and author, Konnie Huq, Children For Change is packed with 300 pages of imaginative stories, poems, non-fiction, illustrations, infographics and creative resources - all to inspire children to take climate action. Contributors include Rob Biddulph, Adam Kay, Liz Pichon, A.M. Dassu, Joseph Coelho, Hannah Gold, Axel Scheffler, Emily Gravett, Chris Packham, Mary Portas and Jamie Oliver.

Packed with actions and eco-tips, this ground-breaking ebook helps you to educate children about what they can do to help protect the planet, without generating eco-anxiety. It's a perfect resource for KS2 English, PSHE, science or geography lessons, or primary assemblies, covering a range of topics including sustainability, endangered species and fast fashion. It's also free for you to distribute home - all you need to do is send the link to parents and carers, and they'll be able to download Children For Change too!
 

Given that not every child (or school) can afford to buy books, this is a welcome development.

#368: Overhaul for Natural History Museum

A recent report in The Guardian gave some information on the latest developments at the Natural History Museum, which has spent a lot of time and money overhauling its outside spaces recently.

Now it's moving to the inside and exploring how its work is presented.

It has announced plans to overhaul four galleries - including the iconic dinosaur exhibit - as they add a permanent display on “climate messaging”.

The Museum will raise £150 million to revamp their programming and join “a global mission to create 100 million advocates for the planet”.

The new exhibition, Fixing Our Broken Planet, will have the express aim of “nudging” visitors to change their behaviour.

The piece quotes the Director Doug Gurr:

Until recently, Gurr told the Guardian, the museum had seen itself as a “passive observer … our job was to collect, to conserve, to research, to display”.

“[Then] we stepped back a bit and said: ‘Well, hang on, if your subject matter is planet Earth and it’s under that much threat, you’ve got to do something about it. If you want the sporting analogy: how do you get off the sidelines and get on the pitch?”

In 2020 the museum declared a planetary emergency, and Gurr said the redevelopment was part of its continuing response. “The best contribution we can make is to create what we call ‘advocates for the planet’. And what that really means is: how do you inspire people at scale to care about nature and to care enough to want to do something about it?

“Of course, we still want people to have a brilliant, fun family day out. But if you can come out of that being a little bit more interested in nature and a little bit more aware of some of the challenges, you’re a bit more likely to want to do something about it.”

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared on Flickr under CC license

#356: Natural History Reading List #19: Fen, Bog and Swamp

One of my favourite books - I have a very nice compact edition with sailing ropes on the spine and cover - is 'The Shipping News' by Annie Proulx.

A more recent book is 'Fen, Bog and Swamp', subtitled as 'A short history of peatland destruction and its role in the climate crisis'.

It covers a great deal of ground, and starts with some useful definitions of the distinction between the three terms, which some people might feel can be conflated. 

There are differences between these three landscape (and habitat) types, and the use that people make of them. The index also provides a wealth of links to useful websites.

This Guardian review clearly explains why this should be on the shelf of any GCSE Natural History reading list / departmental library.

"Proulx conjures up the lost landscape, teeming as it was with eels and sturgeon, beavers and water voles, ospreys and cranes and populated by an unmourned fen people who “poled through curtains of rain, gazed at the layered horizon, at curling waves that pummelled the land edge in storms”. But for all her sadness at the destruction of our wetlands and what she calls “the awfulness of the present”, perhaps what’s most interesting about the book is her refusal to engage in the usual left versus rightpolitical debate."

We are all complicit in this destruction of the natural world.

My copy was borrowed from the Norfolk Library Service, but I shall be purchasing a copy 

Hardback, 196pp - paperback version now available.

ISBN: 978-0-00-853439-4