Creating ECO-TIPS for the Eco-schools service group( Awareness on climate change)

As a member of the ECO-schools service group at OSC, I was assigned the duty of creating some eco-tips that could be posted as posts on the social media platforms such as the OSC-facebook page and on the Eco-schools OSC Instagram page. This initiative was taken by the eco-schools service group in order to spread the awareness of the importance of protecting the environment and to accelerate towards our final goal of becoming the first school in Sri Lanka to become an Eco-school.

What is an Eco-school?

Eco-Schools is the largest global sustainable schools programme – it starts in the classroom and expands to the community by engaging the next generation in action-based learning. The programme’s greatest achievement is arguably the fact that it produces generation after generation of sustainably-minded, environmentally conscious people. These individuals will carry the behavioural patterns they uptake under the auspices of Eco-Schools with them through life, in turn teaching the next generation the habits to make a difference. The primary aim of the Eco-Schools programme is to educate and empower young people to make positive decisions and become change makers for an environmentally sustainable world.

Eco-schools logo. Credits: Eco-schools Facebook page

Why is it important to protect our environment? And why should we take action now and start worrying about climate change?

I know this sounds cliche, but believe me, we need to take immediate action now in order to ensure that there would be a planet for our children, and future generations to live in. I know that many of us are presently dealing with a slew of issues as we try to resume our regular lives after dealing with a pandemic and a terrible economic crisis in our host nation, Sri Lanka. However, if no action is taken now, the issue of climate change will plague us for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. You would not want your children or future generations to suffer and be miserable as a result of our careless acts or inactions, believe me.We don’t want climate change to be the cause of the extinction of the human race, do we? Long-term changes in temperature and weather patterns are referred to as climate change. These movements may be natural, but human activity have been the primary cause of climate change since the 1800s, mostly owing to the combustion of fossil fuels (such as coal, oil, and gas), which creates heat-trapping gases. It should be mentioned that the greenhouse effect is a natural mechanism in which carbon dioxide emitted by all species retains heat in our atmosphere, allowing humans to exist in comfortable mild temperatures on Earth without freezing to death.However, in recent years, human activity that emits significant amounts of carbon dioxide has expedited this process, badly impacting humanity.

Global climate change has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, ice on rivers and lakes is breaking up earlier, plant and animal ranges have shifted and trees are flowering sooner.Effects that scientists had predicted in the past would result from global climate change are now occurring: loss of sea ice, accelerated sea level rise and longer, more intense heat waves.”Taken as a whole,” the IPCC states, “the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.”

Future Effects

Temperatures Will Continue to Rise: Well, imagine going through endless summers over and over again, and not experiencing cold snowy winters. This seems like a nightmare, right? Well this could happen in the recent future

Frost-free Season (and Growing Season) will Lengthen: This means that there will be a complete change in the patterns of agricultural distribution because different countries would not have a completely different climate, thus affecting the growth of crops.

Changes in Precipitation Patterns, and More Droughts and Heat Waves: There will be more intense and fierce firestorms and forest fires across the forests in our planet primarily in the dry areas of Australia and US. This means that this would result in the destrctuoon , and probably the extinction of different kinds of endemic animals.

There will be more extreme weather: It will start to snow in places where there has never ever been seasons, there will be more intense volcanic eruptions, mega-tsunamis, and massive hurricanes that would occur more frequently. And thus the damage that would be caused to human life is unimaginable.

Can we put a stop to this and save our planet?

Of course, we can, and that is the aim of our service group: Eco-schools at OSC. If only you take some form of action to minimize the rate at which climate change occurs by following the different tips that we post on our OSC Facebook page and on the Eco-schools Instagram page, only them could we as a community help to put a full stop to climate change. Only then we would be able to create a sustainable planet for our future generations to live on.

“Change or be changed, right? And what we mean by that is that climate change, if we don’t change course, if we don’t change our political and economic system, is going to change everything about our physical world.” – Naomi Klein

Climate change isn’t something people get to choose to believe or not: it’s happening. So come on lets put a stop to it!!

Eco-tips are posted on our Facebook and Instagram pages(Follow @osc.ecoschools on Instagram today)

second post created by me.
First post created by me. (on Earth day)

Essay credits: The author. Information was obtained from the eco-schools official website and the NASA website

Learning outcomes:

  1. Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth- I believe that creating these posts has helped me realize that I can actually creatively make posters while providing the deeper message that needs to be conveyed. Thus I believe that this activity will help me to further polish my skills.
  2. Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences: This showcases that I want to engage more and more in CAS activities while learning and growing from my action in the process
  3. Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively: I believe that all the members of the ECO-schools service group play a major role in striving to make our school and ECO-school, and none of this would have been possible if not for the commitment of all the members.
  4. Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance: I believe that this issue of climate change and saving our earth for future generations is an issue of global significance. And this is a battle across many nations under the leadership of the youth like us and other climate activists and scientists.
  5. Recognize and consider the ethics and choices of actions: I believe that making these posters in order to spread awareness is really important to inscribe in the minds of the young generations that climate change is an immediate problem and that action needs to be taken starting from an individual level. I believe that this initiative will surely help more younger people in our group to care for and show more love and affection towards the environment and strive to protect it.

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