Exit Slip: Climate Change

With the current climate crisis, I find it can be hard to know exactly what to do. The way our society is set up, designed, run, and ordered, action can be difficult and inaccessible. While there are many small things that can be done, like reducing plastic use, eating local foods, and more, some of these are really difficult in our capitalistic consumer culture. Some people simply cannot afford the price-tag to life a waste free life, some people cannot afford to stop driving to work. There can be a lot of guilt tied up in how overwhelming or impossible action can feel. Voting sometimes feels ineffective as politicians continue to disregard the climate crisis and, in many places including Canada, move backwards on climate action. As a teacher, I feel like we have the unique position of effecting change through the fundamental education students receive. If we can make the climate crisis something that students understand and fight now, rather than something they have to examine later in life, we can perhaps have enough effect to make those inaccessible actions easier. But at the same time, we don't have that much time. The people making the decisions now are not the generation of the future. The students we are teaching, even if they all become activists, are not the only ones who need to be aware and be making change. Perhaps I am underestimating the power of group activism, but it can be hard to find optimism when the calls for change are routinely shot down in the name of money by politicians, corporations and the general public.