Season 2, Episode 4: Polluting Canadian Education

with Dr. Anne Keary, Claire Kraatz, and Tylene Appel of For Our Kids

In Episode 4, Season 2 of The Gravity Well you hear discussion about the pervasive issue of misinformation in classrooms, particularly concerning climate change and the fossil fuel industry. Guests Anne Keary, Claire Kraatz, and Tylene Appel of For Our Kids share their insights and experiences, highlighting the extensive involvement of oil and gas companies in educational materials and curriculum development. They emphasize the need for accurate climate education and the detrimental effects of industry-sponsored content on students’ understanding and mental health. The episode also explores actions that parents, teachers, and communities can take to combat this misinformation and advocate for better climate education.

The Gravity Well Podcast, hosted by Jenny Yeremiy, delves into complex issues to foster understanding and improve the world.

Introductions to Anne Keary, Claire Kraatz, and Tylene Appel of For Our Kids

Jenny (0:00):

Welcome to The Gravity Well Podcast with Jenny Yeremiy. Here you break down heavy ideas with me to understand their complexities and connections. Our mission is to work through your dilemmas with you in conversation and process making our world a better place for all.

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Alex:

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Jenny:

Welcome, I’m thrilled to have Anne Keary, Tylene Appel and Claire Kraatz in the studio Today we are talking about a really important issue that Claire and I have been talking about for a very long time and very nice to meet Anne Curie who has just drafted a report for us to walk through today. That’s what’s the heart of this is about misinformation in our classrooms. We had a conversation on the show last fall with a group on misinformation in the media. This is a really important issue to me. The reason why I think it is, is because if the public believes that we’ve got this and then it’s fed through our school systems, through our media, then the government will follow what the people want. If we’re fed information that isn’t accurate, then it’s very easy for the government to keep cycling. This false narrative, if you will, freeing us from this misinformation is going to help us move forward in a big way. I’m really glad to be talking about this again. I’m going to stop there and let everybody do a little bit of introductions please. Anne, if you wouldn’t mind going first. Thank you.

Anne:

Sure. Thanks so much, Jenny, for having me on the show. I’m really happy to be here to talk about this report and this really important issue. My name is Anne Keary, her pronouns and I am based here in Toronto. I’m an independent researcher, actually I have a PhD in history. I’m a mother of two kids and I am very involved and very concerned about climate change and involved in climate action here in Toronto. I’m a member of For Our Kids, which is the nationwide group of parents, caregivers, people advocating on the climate crisis. And I’m involved here in Toronto with a number of different climate groups. I came to this report concerned about what was being said about the fossil fuel industry or what was not being said and joined Jen Chestnut, my co-author, and got into this and it has been quite the eyeopener. Thanks again for having me. Looking forward to the discussion.

Jenny:

Thank you so much for being here, Anne. I am looking forward to getting into this. Claire, please introduce yourself again. I just want to make sure everybody remembers Claire was on the show last year. We talked about this report being underway. Anyway, go ahead please.

Claire:

Thanks Jenny, and thanks for this opportunity. I’m Claire Kraatz and I am one of two co-founders of For Our Kids Alberta, and I am a former teacher. A number of years ago I started looking at some of the organizations in Alberta that were delivering environmental and climate education. Many of them also deliver energy education. And at first when I was looking through things I thought, well, this looks great. And then I just started to look a little bit deeper. I started to look at who was sponsoring some of these workshops and conferences that teachers and students are attending and being invited to. And I also just noticed that many of the sessions were not necessarily addressing things like renewable energy or climate justice, indigenous rights. That started me on a pathway of digging deeper and trying to understand what was going on. Then I became quite concerned and I was really glad to know that this was getting looked at in depth by Anne and Jennifer and I was sort of in the background emailing and tweeting them and have you seen this and have you seen that? That’s my role in the report. I can offer some reflections later on being a former teacher and of course being a parent in Alberta.

Jenny:

Excellent. Thank you so much. Tylene, please introduce yourself.

Tylene:

Hi, I’m Tylene Appel. I actually grew up in Saskatchewan, almost Manitoba, and I’m old enough now that I have seen drastic changes in our weather, especially with regards to fire smoke in our summers. And then also I’ve been a teacher for over 30 years. I moved here to Alberta after getting my teaching degree in Saskatoon. I’ve lived here since then, since the early nineties. I was a high school science teacher, biology and chemistry, really involved in the sciences and had my children here. Yeah, I have four children and a stepdaughter, lots of kids that I’m concerned about their future. After I retired, I’ve always been involved in climate and environmental things and social issues, but after retiring I really delved in, especially with the smoke and the fires and the summer really kind of got me thinking more. I became involved in For Our Kids Alberta.

I’m also involved in seniors for Climate Action now, and we formed the first chapter outside of Ontario in Edmonton. We’re only a year old. All of us are older than a year old, but our organization is only a year old. It was really amazing to get involved in climate action and find some people and work together and unify together in this fight. As a high school teacher, I felt, yeah, I was really alarmed and concerned over the years. I started off as a green teacher trying to scramble to make plans and I know I used some materials that later as time passed I could just tell with my background that there’s something off with the materials. They’re very manipulative. It’s not really a direct correlation. You can really see the shaping and the molding and throughout the years how the message even has become more sophisticated and really just is moving kids down the line to perpetuate this dependence on something that is not good for their health and it’s not good for their security or their future. I was really excited to get involved with this report, not with any of the work. I just jumped in at the end here. But to give a practical, “Yes, I witnessed this, I’ve seen this over the years, I know how much it’s infiltrated and influenced our education system.” And I can firsthand say that I have seen how the Alberta Government is captured by and under the powerful influence of this multi [billion] dollar fossil fuel industry.

Jenny:

Thank you so much. Yeah, you’re reminding me that I just want to reiterate, I had a friend, I put out this report online and I had a friend say, yeah, who doesn’t know this? And I said, you’d be surprised actually working in the industry. Anne, you haven’t had an opportunity to get to know me, but I worked in the oil and gas industry for over 22 years and misinformation is all around us. And as you said, Tylene, it’s grown over the years. It used to be more honest if you will. And it seems like with things like I love Alberta oil and gas or I love Canada, oil and gas and all of these movements really helped. I’ll use a specific example in my office, there was a sticker on the outside that said, I love Canadian oil and gas and I wanted to take it down.

I knew what it was, but I knew I couldn’t. If I did, somebody would think twice of me. This is the way that this misinformation influences us to make us think that this is something that we have to stand up for. Now that being said, I was all for responsible development and I want to reiterate that, but that’s not what’s happening and that’s the reality of the situation. That’s where I feel like I was misled in my career. I was told, for example, we had 60 billion worth of liability when we have 260 billion worth of liability. These are the ways that it’s undersold to us and we’re taught that the regulator doesn’t really work for us. They’re working against us, things like this. These are the ways that I’ve seen it in my work and I appreciate you talking to, Tylene, about that lived experience. It’s important to feel acknowledged in that lived experience. Okay, that’s enough for me. Anne, would you mind please giving us an overview of [the report]? And I’ve [reviewed] it too, I’m excited to ask some questions too.

The Polluting Education Report Overview from Anne

Anne (09:35):

Sure. I mean, just hearing you talk about misinformation and how prevalent it is. I mean part of doing this report was actually because I’m an historian, but also really situating this in its historical context. One part of the report was putting it in that context, which is going back into the sixties, seventies, eighties when the fossil fuel industry was employing or commissioning its own scientific teams to look at climate science. And as we’ve since learned in many ways their predictions for what would happen, the trajectories that they chartered have been more accurate than those scientists employed by government or academic institutions. They knew, and for me, I would on a personal level, doing that research over the summer while Jasper is burning, while horrific floods are happening in Europe, while we’re seeing droughts and heat waves in Africa and people are suffering and then reading these reports that were sent to Shell, if you continue along this way and continue emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, it will threaten global habitability.

It’s very, in some ways we all know Exxon knew, but it was kind of chilling to read those documents yet again. And as we know now, there are multiple lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry precisely because they did know and it’s very well documented. But then what the industry did of course was move very quickly rather than taking that climate science and saying, okay, we have to address this problem. They pushed denial and they from the very beginning were very interested in getting into education and promoting uncertainty about climate science in schools, certainly in the US and this followed also in Canada. Then more recently it’s been the shift to delay tactics is what we’re seeing. The report lays all this out and gets into it. The key findings from the report, just how extensive this is. I think that was shocking even to me.

We found that there are 39 oil and gas companies involved in some way in schools and the education system and many of them involved in climate and environmental education as well as 12 industry related companies and organizations. One, it’s really extensive and they’re not there because they really care about education or they really care about good climate change education, quite the opposite. I would say two, they’re involved in several different ways. There is both direct involvement where they’re providing educational materials in the schools. And that was what actually instigated this report. CAPE, the Canadian Association of Physicians of the Environment, one of their members, Laurie Adamson in BC saw in her kid’s backpack this homework sheet with Fortis BC on it, and she was wondering why is a gas company providing educational materials to my kid? That led to a campaign in BC and they got Fortis out of their education system there.

And it prompted Cape to want, how extensive is this? They’re involved directly. They’re also sponsoring organized activities and initiatives in schools. And I’m sure Tylene and Claire can speak to this and what they have seen, they are working with governments. We know this in Saskatchewan and Alberta to develop curriculum. That’s a big concern. And then one of the primary ways in which they’re involved is funding third party providers of educational materials. And I think it’s important to recognize that there is a range here. We outlined three different categories. One are organizations that were founded and funded by industry inside education, seeds connection. They are, in all honesty in many respects, industry front groups because of the kinds of materials that they are producing. Then there are organizations that were not founded necessarily by industry, but then received industry money and have industry representatives on their boards.

And those representatives can exercise oversight and influence on the kinds of resources that those organizations produce. And then the third category is organizations that receive funding from the industry, often alongside other corporate funders as well. And within those organizations there is also a range of materials. Some of the materials they produce are really good. I don’t want to malign educators working for those organizations. They care about their kids, they care about education. But we do see the ways in which fossil fuel funding nevertheless can exert its influence and it exerts its influence, I would say in a few different ways. One is what is being said and one is what’s not being said, particularly when it comes to climate change. What’s not being said when it comes to climate change is the role of the fossil fuel industry itself in driving this crisis. That is usually out of the picture.

Most of you very rarely see extensive discussion of the impact of climate change. I mean that varies from organization to organization. Rarely do you see references to climate justice, how those most impacted are already being affected by other inequities. And you certainly don’t see, with one exception, reference to the urgency of addressing the climate crisis and the urgency of transitioning away from fossil fuels. That is not said. It’s like in a sense it’s like climate solutions denialism. It’s not climate denialism, it’s climate solutions denialism. And then on the other hand, what you do see are these messaging strategies that Emily Eaton and Nick Day are labelled as pedagogy. Their definition of pedagogy, I wrote it down just to remind myself, are approaches that primarily center individual actions and really critically dissuade young people from questioning or understanding the role of corporate power in the climate crisis and particularly insulate the fossil fuel industry from criticism, Petro pedagogy focus on individual actions.

It’s the responsibility of the individual’s tried and true strategy. The tobacco industry uses this. It’s your responsibility as the consumer. You just have to consume less or stop consuming, which ignores the role of the industry in keeping us all dependent on fossil fuels. And it kind of works as a bit of a partial truth. Like it is true that if I turn off my lights, that will reduce emissions. Sure. But it doesn’t address where the energy is coming from, which is the big part of the picture. It just gives you a partial picture. Greenwashing, we saw quite a bit of greenwashing. Greenwashing the industry itself presenting for instance, gas as a clean burning fuel, but ignoring methane and the devastating impacts of fracking. And then a lot of greenwashing by association. Imperial Oil is planting trees, for sure Imperial Oil must really care about the environment when of course the continued burning of fossil fuels is driving forevermore, ferocious forest fires.

That kind of greenwashing is quite common. And we also saw so-called red-washing, which is a term coined by indigenous thought leaders and scholars where you get a representation of the industry as its relations with indigenous people are presented as entirely positive. Any Indigenous critiques of the industry or resistance to the industry is again, out of the picture not addressed at all. Techno optimism. A focus on, “Hey kids, carbon capture and storage is the solution here”, but we know that it’s incredibly expensive. It’s really not capturing emissions and it’s certainly not capturing the emissions produced through the consumption and burning of fossil fuels. And then one other approach that we did see was a so-called bias-balanced approach where any discussion of a project saying the oil sands is presented as biased if it doesn’t include an industry perspective. Including the industry perspective that’s presented as it’s biased-balanced, this is the way to go. But always what we saw was that when you include the industry perspective, you exclude any discussion of the accelerating climate crisis. That’s the story. And this is so important because it’s our kids’ futures and we really are in a climate emergency. Kids want and need good quality climate change education. We have the solutions we need to be teaching those solutions and teaching a climate change education, which is all about the transition away from fossil fuels. So long as the industry is involved, kids are not going to be getting that education.

Questions and Discussion around the Polluting Education Report

Jenny (20:06):

Wow, that was phenomenal. Anne, thank you so much. Yeah, I’m going to try and just reflect some things you said in there that I think are really important for people to remember. You pointed out that there’s 39 oil and gas companies at work in our education system. And I want to add that this is across Canada. You just said you’re in Ontario. This is something that Claire alluded to this we’re focused on the industry, not focused on the social justice issues, but also this is being perpetuated, and I can say that because you’re probably not aware of this, but I was a lobbyist for industry, didn’t really appreciate that that’s what I was doing, but I was lobbying the federal government and recommending policy, that effort. And then in my case, I was recommending indigenous led closure work. I’m proud of that. But regardless that lobbying is happening and the amount of lobbying that’s happening is not just in our schools as we’re discussing, but it’s in government and it’s in businesses and it’s in nonprofits and it’s in, even the watershed council groups are also beholden to industry.

It’s an overlapping and widespread issue, this industry driven solution space, if you will. And you spoke about that there’s other sort of third party entities, 12 of them. You mentioned that it excludes the corporate lens in this, that there is this corporate driven initiative behind this. I read, and I would like you to elaborate when I’m done, a bit about the timeline. This went back to the 1920s from your original timeline, and you can say the specifics of that in a second, but it’s an imperial oil again, and I think this is something that’s really important to point out too, is that people talk about big oil. We had a discussion in the energy circle that Markham Hislop runs about, oh, we’re not big oil in Canada. Well, the imperial oil is driving Exxon’s climate misinformation campaign. I don’t think that that’s the way that we should be talking about big and small oil when I look at it from that perspective. Anyway, it’s sponsorship, it’s resource materials, it’s learning programs, it’s presentations, it’s government partnerships knowing the importance of the global significance of Alberta oil, let’s say, and then these third party organizations as well at work. That’s enough for me on my takeaways. And do you mind just reflecting a couple things I said there and then I’ll pass it on to Claire.

Anne:

I think raising, I mean there’s the long history and then there’s the short history. And to be honest, I think that there is certainly room for more research here. When I think back to that, I think it was 1998 in the US when the American Petroleum Institute and they all got together this group of fossil fuel folk to develop their climate denial campaign. And it was very directed against the Kyoto Protocol. They were opposing climate policy that would reign them in. I think it is worth thinking about, and I myself would be interested to do further research on what happened after the Paris Agreement. That I think alarmed the fossil fuel industry and they were further alarmed by the IPCC report that came out in 2018, which certainly alarmed me, where it was very clear that we have to reduce emissions effectively halve them by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050 if we are to have any chance of limiting warming to 1.5.

And we know now that our chances of limiting warming to 1.5 are minuscule, barely there. I think we have seen, I mean, and then there was covid of course, but I think one of the responses of the industry to the IPCC report and then to the youth climate strikes, which galvanized young people across Canada and around the world and did bring about government policy changes. I mean, there were declarations of climate emergency, there were actions at the municipal level, things were happening. And I think one of the ways in which the industry responded was a massive wave of greenwashing to really allay those climate concerns. Don’t worry, we’re going to get to net zero, the Pathways Alliance and their misinformation campaigns. And I think that that is moving into these educational resources as well. It’s climate delay. They are delaying because it is very profitable for them to delay action on this critical crisis. And as you said, Jenny, I mean they’re lobbying the government that’s one arm here. And they’re also continuing to be very interested in shaping public understanding of climate change and climate solutions. And one of the ways is of course, through our education system.

Jenny:

Yeah, thank you. Claire. Please offer some thoughts. Thanks.

Claire:

Oh, many thoughts. I was just online yesterday and I noticed, and now I’m not going to remember the name of the grant, but there were three schools that were just recently awarded a grant for a garden, one was for a garden and one was for another green initiative. And these are probably a thousand dollars grants and all three schools were thanking the Pathways Alliance for these grants. And it’s just really difficult to see that because it really does show me how these companies are probably seen by a huge majority of people as great corporate citizens. But if you point out to them that those same companies who’ve given the thousand dollar grants to this school are lobbying the government for weaker climate policy, that’s just not known in the public. To me, it’s “the great deception”, the kids that are suffering. I just want the truth to be out there, to be honest. Anne, maybe you could just talk a little bit about, because I do know in the report there is government involvement and maybe you could just talk to what you found out about the Government of Alberta, seeing as we are mostly talking to an Alberta audience here.

Anne:

Right. Thanks Claire. We know that the government of Alberta revised its curriculum and it was very messages about Alberta’s wonderful natural resources and the benefits of the oil and gas industry. And there was a report in the Tyee, I wish I could remember all the details right now off the top of my head about how the Safety in Schools Foundation, which is a fossil fuel funded organization, were involved in lobbying for industry friendly curriculum. And this is in fact what we are seeing. I’m sure you, Claire, have got your eyes exactly on what’s happening in Alberta, but the involvement of the industry very directly in shaping curriculum is a concern. I would add actually, I mean this is also happening in Saskatchewan where they have an oil and gas studies new unit. And then in Ontario there was a report that just came out in the Hamilton Spectator from a geography teacher who noted that the grade nine geography curriculum had been changed and there was a new curriculum.

And what had gone were references to climate change references to the Greenbelt, which is this area around Toronto, which is the source of, it’s our farming and it’s the watersheds and it’s this wonderful area which we absolutely need to protect for food security and flood security and all these good things and references to Grassy Narrows, indigenous nations who’ve been just, their water supply has been poisoned by Mercury from a paper mill company. All of these references were removed. There are concerns about industry interests in shaping education here too, but I know that you, both Claire and Tylene, really have your eyes on what’s happening in Alberta where it seems quite overt. I would say.

Claire:

I just found it here, the Safety in Schools Foundation here in Alberta, this was Investigative Journalism Foundation. They found that Safety in Schools Foundation, a nonprofit funded by TC Energy and Canadian Natural Resources Limited, had been lobbying to include oil and gas studies in the curriculum. And just, this is an anecdote, but it makes me really think about last spring I wrote a policy integrating climate and biodiversity education into the K to 12 curriculum. It was a policy that I wrote that was brought forward at the Alberta School Councils Association last April, the last weekend in April. But this policy had been circulated for a little while, and it wasn’t until about a month later that I realized that the government of Alberta, I believe on April 26th, the weekend right before my policy was voted on, put out a directive, a ministerial directive. And that ministerial directive indicated that students would learn that Alberta’s oil and gas industry was the most ethical in the world. And I just can’t help but think about that timing. I don’t know if I’m being a conspiracy theorist, but it just really, really, the timing was just, it’s all right there. April 26th, they believe they passed that directive, and then the policy I proposed was brought forward on April 28th, and it passed barely, but it passed. And that has gone nowhere,

Jenny:

Right? Yeah. Well, and I want to say to your comment around ministerial orders, there is a big habit in this government to use ministerial orders and overwrite laws that are written. They shouldn’t have the same merit as laws, but they are being passed very quickly. And after we vote, I’ll be specific on coal policy, for example, a ministerial order to reinstate the coal exploration in the Eastern slopes. This is a longstanding policy that we had. We don’t have a policy now. We have a ministerial order in place until they draft a new policy. This is not real governance, meaningful consultation, any of those wonderful things. You know what, I’m going to let Tylene go. Please go ahead and offer some examples and also ask some questions if you have to. Thanks.

Tylene:

Wow. Yeah, it’s hard to know where to start. I definitely would say yes, it’s really concerning to have materials that are readily available, especially when teachers are doing more with less all the time. I saw that throughout my career. You’ve got large class sizes in the cities or you’ve got really diverse needs. You’re teaching split classes in small towns. If you can grab some shiny, beautiful looking resources that really appear to be covering the climate content really well, and especially if you are someone that’s a little worried too about, well, if I’m in a small town that has a lot of oil and gas reliance or identity, it like that balance that Anne was talking about, it makes you feel safe in teaching that too. But I find that a couple of things for me, a teacher’s concern is always about a child’s wellbeing.

I saw a lot of these materials create climate anxiety, whether the students realize or not, or parents realize or not, there’s the outright anxiety where there’s kids that are actually concerned about climate change, and this just takes the wind out of their sails because they’re like, yeah, this doesn’t look so bad. I feel like this is bad, but I don’t understand. This is confusing. And then there’s kids that are already really enmeshed in this identity of oil and gas being, they’re through generations, they’ve relied on it and it makes them feel guilty already. But then it just further, they feel this sense of needing to even defend more. It pits kids against kids in the classroom. It evokes emotion and based so much of it on appearances and misdirection. I just see that as being really the biggest thing is the health of the kids.

And then also, not only do kids have this mental strain and emotional strain, but they’re literally sitting in hot classrooms trying to learn this material because these classrooms weren’t built for these hot springs and falls. I definitely have seen that change and the air quality. They can’t go outside at lunch because you can’t even see the sun. It’s so smoky. I just feel that it just pulls kids apart because they don’t know what to think. They don’t know what’s what. They know something’s wrong and they can’t even figure out what to do about it, and it’s their future. It’s terrifying both in the sense of trying to think, no, it’s okay. It’s okay, and we’re just going to keep denying this. Or no, this isn’t okay, but these materials don’t make sense to me. And then to even change the curriculum to change the very, as a teacher, you actually must teach that it’s not even a material you can choose to use.

You have to teach it even if you know it’s not correct because you’re being a professional. And the idea of critical thinking always really bothered me because it brings up these materials and even this idea of ethics, it’s like considering all the perspectives. It’s an illusion because you feel like, oh, we’re considering, like Anna said, the industrial perspective and always jobs, jobs, jobs, economy, economy has pushed so much. And then it’ll be like, let’s balance this out too, because these are problems with the fossil fuel company. But these are also problems with renewable energy, and they look like they’re just totally balanced out that it doesn’t matter which one you use because windmills are going to kill birds. But it never talks about how tailing ponds kill birds, right? I don’t know. It really is this illusion of critical thinking. There isn’t anything about the economic loss from forest fires and hail damage.

That’s actually the biggest cause of insurance rate increases in Alberta is a huge hailstorm in Calgary actually. How much it costs to rebuild the loss of time from jobs and everything else because of this area is flooded or there’s drought, how it impacts healthcare costs. Because I think for every dollar cape has this, for every dollar you put into renewable energy or transition, you get $2 back. In healthcare savings, there’s no talking about balanced economic critical thinking, let alone how it just impacts kids’ health. Here in the denser population, I think we don’t realize the impacts of the air, and not just smoke, but the volatile chemicals that are emitted and the organic compounds that are in the air because we can’t see them. You feel like it’s well regulated here and it isn’t. There aren’t even studies done that extensively, right?

The whole healthcare area, and I think really when I see these posters and all this learning materials, they had tons of technology covering the whole thing, lots of solar panels all over, even though when you analyzed it, they were just as bad as everything else. Little about connection to the land, indigenous ideas of reciprocity that you can’t just take, you have to also give, you have to look at how this is impacting the least protected in our society and how indigenous communities are telling us that they can literally light, they can take water and light a flame above it because there is so much leakage, all this leakage of tailing ponds for example, and not enough to about the cost, the full cost spectrum, all these subsidies coming from the government when Alberta students are the least funded in the country right now for their education.

How is this a prosperous industry if we can’t even fund our social programs properly? Just that misconception of critical thinking, I think, and how that just kids are confused and worried about their future. And if I can add one more that wasn’t mentioned here, I also was concerned when I would see presentations of the oil industry right into a classroom, and it was like a game show. It was like this big slideshow about how amazing it was to work in the oil and gas industry, how little education you needed to work in it. And again, I have by all means, if you want to go straight into work, that’s great. But leaving our kids in a boom and bust industry where if they lose their job 10 years from now, well, I don’t have any kind of training to back me up, I have to stay. I need to keep defending this industry, throwing out frisbees and merchandise. And did any other groups come in to present? No. Did they ask just, they just would come in and when I first started teaching, there was full paid, go out to the oil patch and see all these amazing things that you can do in the oil industry for your future. Just perpetuating this idea that my grandparents did this, my parents do this, and I guess this is what I’m going to do. Thanks for all that space.

Key Takeaway Action Items for Everyone

Jenny (38:23):

Oh, that was fantastic. I think the key that you said in there is this. It’s the description of intergenerational trauma. To me, that’s what’s happening here. It is the perpetuation. I can say honestly, and this is embarrassing to say out loud, but I want to say in 2016, I remember picking up my son from school and him saying, “I just learned that the icebergs are melting”. And I said, “Well, there are other areas where it’s growing.” It was my immediate response from working in the industry and what the rhetoric is around it. It’s how it impacts me and impacts my kids. And I feel, to your point, that I’ve fostered critical thinking skills in my kids and then I’m challenging them with stuff that is very confusing even for me to not understand. Okay, if we can move into some action items, because this is a lot of stuff to take in and we want to make sure that people understand there is something we can do with this.

I’m going to offer a few things and then I’ll pass it around for you. I know, Anne, you have something to do about it, and I’m really excited about colouring books, for example. I just really want you to touch on that. But anyway, Claire, I’m going to let you speak to the Four Our Kids campaign, but I wanted to make sure to mention that I have a greenwashing or misinformation complaint form with The Gravity Well. If anybody sees anything that you’re concerned about, I’ll put the form in the chat here and include it with this conversation so that we can start making sure that people are talking about these things and we highlight them for people. And there is a way to complain. Ad Standards Canada has a route and in June of this year. There’s going to be an opportunity to call out greenwashing officially with fines.

We want to work towards that, and that’s why I have that open for us. And then I also want to mention, I live in the Education Minister’s riding. I’m in Calgary-Bow, and I spoke to the minister actually on the backs of conversations with Claire last January, highlighting for him this problem. I said, there is misinformation in our schools. And I want to touch on a couple things that all of you have said, which is that I left the industry knowing that this is a land-based solution. This is a net restoration solution. The more sites we take off the landscape, the water, the land, and the air will heal. This isn’t when we only talk about carbon capture and storage, that gets into this whole redwashing component that Anne brought in because it’s saying, “Yeah, yeah, you can participate provided that you’re going to continue industrialization” when the solution is to stop developing, maintain the production we have down and take away the sites that are mostly emitting off the landscape.

And that’s the responsibility that we’re not talking about to everybody’s point here, I think today. With that, I took it to Demetrios and I was asked to leave his office and told I wasn’t allowed to come back. Fast forward a year, I’m working with the Alberta Resistance to potentially recall the minister in this riding. Anybody who’s interested in that, I’m going to include the campaign details here. I’m looking for two things, people to help spread the word. I’ve got some flyers that we’re distributing throughout the riding right now, or constituency I should say. And then also I’ve got an intake form. I want feedback from people, what are your top concerns and how can you help take this all the way through? Right now we’re just trying to float it and get a sense of if people really want this to happen. I think this is our kids, me first and foremost, if we’re looking after our kids, we’re moving in the right direction. That’s why I’m doing that work. I’m going to stop there. Anna, if you wouldn’t mind leading us off with some takeaways.

Anne:

Sure. Over at For Our Kids, and I’m sure we can share the link after the show, there are actions that we can take whether you’re a parent, a teacher, or a student at different levels of government. There’s an action letter at the school board level, which is asking school boards to establish a policy banning fossil fuel sponsorship in the school board. And then also to establish a policy around vetting resources to make sure that resources that are coming into the classroom are not from the fossil fuel industry or fossil fuel funded. That’s at the school board level. At the level of the provincial government. Similarly establish a province-wide policy banning fossil fuel involvement in the education system, fossil fuel sponsorship in schools, but also really critically establishing and funding good climate change education. It’s publicly funded curriculum reform, teacher education, professional development, and all the resources that we need for our kids in age appropriate ways to teach them about climate change and teach them the real solutions that they are equipped that they can take action, not individual actions by turning off the light bulb, but get involved, for instance, in their city or towns climate action plan, get involved in community actions.

I feel like that particularly right now is we really need to be working with each other and for kids working together in their communities, it’s building those community building skills which they need for resilience and they need for hope. And then there are also actions at the federal government level. The federal government will be coming out shortly with an environmental learning framework, and we want to ensure that that is aligned with the Paris Agreement, which Canada is a signatory to. The goal is still limiting warming to 1.5 and doing our best to keep it below two degrees. And that does require the transition away from fossil fuels. Making sure that the framework recognizes that and that at the Federal Level as well, any climate change education is not done in consultation with groups that are fossil fuel funded. Unfortunately right now, we’re seeing the federal government, that is the direction that they’re going.

They want to promote climate change education through NGOs and third party providers. Many people in those third party organizations are good people, but it does mean that what we’re not getting then is the publicly funded education that kids deserve, that it’s accountable to the public in a democracy and not accountable to a board which is filled with representatives from corporations who might have other interests. That’s problematic. And we want the federal government to step up and outline public education guidelines for climate change education. Go to For Our Kids’ website and you’ll see all those actions there and really encourage folks to take those letters, personalize them, and write and let us know what responses you get.

Jenny:

Thank you so much, Anne. I just want to reiterate the importance of centering everything we’re doing on public interest, not on corporate interests. This is the key. Okay, Claire, you’re next, please.

Claire:

I can’t top what Anne said. I do have an anecdote about our group in Edmonton did send a letter to the school board, and they did receive a response. The response was that it is up to the Principals to take a look at those materials. And they did say that they train their teachers to look at materials. I don’t really know if I have had conversations with teachers, and I don’t believe that they are getting the training they need in order to identify those strategies that Anne talked about earlier, greenwashing, red washing, balanced bias. And I do want to say, I remember being a new teacher, and I remember we would sit down as a grade six team and we would plan our field trips or our guests to come into the classroom. And I was just grateful. I was just grateful like, oh, we can enhance our students’ learning with this programme and they’ll come in for a day and we can kind of just be in the background helping out, but we don’t have to plan the day.

And it was like, “Oh, I didn’t ever think to question those materials.” I just thought, “Oh, this is available for teachers to use. This must be a good resource.” I do think parents need to look at their kids’ backpacks, see what’s there, and ask questions. Don’t be afraid to go to your child’s teacher and ask them questions. Share the report with your teacher, share the report with your child’s principal. That is absolutely a great thing to do. Share the report with your parent council. We do have a webinar coming up, and we’ll be speaking along with Jennifer, and that’s on April 8th. Share this information with your parent councils and with your friends and your principals and just share it widely and just have conversations about it. I do think, like I said, teachers are very busy. It’s not their fault if they don’t know this information. It took me years looking into it on my own time to really start to understand this. I just want to make that clear that there’s no fault, no fault on the educators that I think are doing a wonderful job given all the stresses and the pressures that they’re going through right now. Those are my thoughts.

Jenny:

As usual, you have tremendous actions. Yes, I am going to reach out to my boys’ principals before April 8th and make sure they’re aware of that opportunity to hear about this from you again. I just want to touch quickly before I let Tylene go, which is this concept of delegated responsibility. When I hear that the principles are expected to take this on, this is similar to, in my view, carbon capture and storage. If a geoscientist or an engineer signs off on this technology, we can potentially be subject to public safety litigation or lawsuits, whereas the companies are delegating that responsibility rather than taking it on themselves because they’ve wiped their sites of carbon capture and storage technology. Now they’ve said, we know we’re subject to potential lawsuits, if they wipe themselves of it, we’re still exposed as professionals, I believe. This concern I have about delegated responsibility, go ahead and I’ll let you finish with any closing thoughts if you have. Okay, go ahead, Tylene.

Tylene:

Yeah, amazing job For Our Kids with providing actual actions. I find that’s what happens is it’s hard to know what to do. But I would like to say that what everyone can do as well, regardless of any big campaign, is talk about it, have conversations, mostly listening and trying to find common ground. And our children are definitely common ground and our health, and to not blame anybody, we are all victims of this very purposeful manipulation by powerful and wealthy people. All the people that I work with here in my small town, we’re all trying to make a living. We’re all trying to do the best we can. And you work in the jobs that you can work in and we need to not feel guilty, and we need to not feel that we owe all this debt to a company because it was our bread and butter and put our clothes on our back.

We worked, we provided the labour. Those organisations should be grateful to us, those industries, and they should be protecting us. There needs to be a real shift in that thought and that common ground of talking and discussing without feeling the need to defend and be upset and be angry. And then the second thing is, we all need to flex our very weak muscles on working together, on coming together instead of being fractured apart into groups that are fighting against each other, is to realise all the common ground that we have and to find ways to work together. And the first thing is in our minds is to actually think about these things and understand these things together and then just keep going forward from there.

Jenny:

Incredible. Any final words from anyone before we wrap? I just want to make sure if there’s any last things you wanted to highlight.

Anne:

Also, on the April the eighth webinar, we’ll be joined by Raffi, which is very exciting. And Britt Ray, who has written a lot about climate anxiety. And I’d just like to thank my two fellow panellists here for all of their great observations and insights and completely agree with both of you. I mean, we are doing this for our kids, for love. We love our children. We want to protect them, and we want to protect the planet that they’re growing up on. That is the common ground I think that we can reach other people on. Thanks again, Jenny, for this opportunity.

Claire:

I’m grateful for this opportunity, Jenny and Anne and Tylene. I’ve heard this now before, Anne, and I love listening to you speak about the report, and I learn a little bit more about life in rural Alberta every time we have a chat. I really am grateful for your insights.

Jenny:

Agreed. Yeah. I have a special place in my heart for Provost as I worked assets in Provost for a company called Black Shire Energy at one point. Yes, I feel you in terms of, I picture that place and the amount of holes in the ground, and you were talking about the air pollution and that it’s that area and it all rings so true. Thank you for your honest voice in a place where it’s really hard to be a voice in that space. Thank you guys. This has been fantastic. We’ll be in touch soon. Take care for now.

Tylene:

Thank you. Bye. Thank you.