I woke up thinking given the state of our world, 3rd-8th graders should make history more than read about it.
Kids could show up at utility board meetings throughout this country, and the world!, demanding renewable energy for their TVs, computers, light to do homework by, refrigerators, and on and on.
Not the tiny percentage currently alloted to renewable energy but...
Tell these electricity leaders to take climate change seriously now.
Like the tornados, floods, and hurricanes, do. And receding shorelines, too.
Instead of business as usual with coal polluting our skies and lungs, and acid rain hurting our forests, and unreported nuclear meltdowns and leaks occuring while talk of "clean nuclear" goes on, and neighbors risk leukemia and thyroid cancer, instead of all that, I suggest kids (and teachers) take all or part of their school history hour--reserved to learn facts and figures about a world long gone--and take care of the world now instead.
Create cleaner skies and a cooler planet.
Make history.
And when the kids were done at Utility Board meetings, like LADWP in Los Angeles, they could go to bank board meetings, and talk to the folks that give money to Big Coal, and tell them to cut it out. Tell those moneymen to fund Big Solar and Big Wind, instead.
And kids could go to board meetings at Ports throughout this country, and encourage low-sulfur fuels, and encourage clean trucks and clean rails to transport goods throughout the country.
Kids can speak at California Air Resources Board and South Coast Air Quality Management District, too. And tell them to mandate and fund all-electric transportation. Tell them it's because you want to breathe clean air. You have a right to clean air.
Make history, don't just regurgitate a past.
There's too much work to do now.
If the size of the board meeting rooms allow, bring whole classrooms of kids.
That was the visual I woke up with. Bus loads of kids testifying one after another to those adults supposedly taking care of them. Those adults with important jobs.
But if we learn from history, many adults do like kids in history class, regurgitate the past. Some adults that you think are well-meaning, do harm (intentionally or not), and these people need to be taught differently. Even if it takes a kid to teach them.
Kids learn from adults, and adults learn from kids.
History tells us that concerned citizens, willing to reach out and make a difference, are the catalysts for meaningful change.
Last time I testified at an EPA hearing for stricter ozone standards, I can tell you that the kids and teenagers testifying in the room were some of the most powerful and moving speakers of them all.
So I woke seeing a bus load of kids, and the first, a young girl with long hair, a big heart, and ideas to clean the skies, steps off the bus in front of her utility company. She walks through the board's meeting doors, the first of many, prepared to help make history.
Not repeat it.
