“No One Warned Us”

I live in land-locked Worcester, but I come from the sunny Suffolk coast: listening to the news just now, how 200 meters of Hemsby’s road has fallen into the sea, makes me feel incredibly sad, incredibly angry, and utterly, utterly baffled. 

A resident said it came out of the blue: it was “unexpected, absolutely terrifying, heartbreakingly – I’ve been crying all day – I don’t actually understand why this has happened because no one told us it was going to happen, no one warned us about high tide, no one said about storms or anything – it’s just terrifying.”

Hemsby Resident on BBC 6 Music News (approx. 1 hr 30 in)

So whose job is it to inform us of the disastrous effects of climate change?  Who informs the public on the climate emergency?  Government? Media? Local communities?  Ourselves?

 

 Climate change is the defining crisis of our time, and it is happening even more quickly than we feared: and yet, daily life does not look like an emergency.  Article 12 of the Paris Agreement, written in 2015, entered into force on 4 November 2016.   It is a legally binding international treaty – legally binding – but today’s news story is just one example of the UK’s failure to take appropriate measures to enhance public awareness.

 

The news stories, too, are baffling, with their lack of any explicit, direct mentions of climate change being a driver for this type of emergency.  The BBC article ‘Hemsby: How many other communities are at risk of erosion?’ (published in March), starts their article with “Coastal erosion claimed three homes in Hemsby last weekend and a further two properties in the village are deemed at serious risk.” Notice how this is phrased - Coastal erosion claims the houses – the way the article tells it, people don’t seem to have any choice in the matter.

 Hemsby: How many other communities are at risk of erosion?

You have to read quite far into the article before you get an explicit mention of climate change: A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said parts of England's coast were “amongst the fastest eroding coastline in Europe", and “Climate change, sea level rise and increased storminess will increase the rate of change which will threaten the resilience of coastal communities if no action is taken.”   Notice this phrasing too – separate lists of disastrous reasons, rather than a holistic consideration of climate change driving sea-level rise and causing an increase in storms.

"What can be done to prevent or slow down the impact of coastal erosion?” Asks the article, right at the end.  Well, amongst the “limited range of options” detailed, there’s no mention of our role in sticking to our climate targets, individually or collectively.

 As Ben Rawlence says in his essay “Public Education in an Era of Planetary Emergency”, “The reality of the planet is not real for most people most of the time. ...the planet you think you live on no longer exists.” He goes on to say “what needs to change goes much deeper than specific laws or policies... Systems change when there is a culture that demands it.”

 Public Education in a Planetary Emergency - Ben Rawlence

I passionately believe that education is the transformative tool that can develop the necessary shift in mind-set that we so desperately need to tackle the climate and ecological crisis – and, as a matter of urgency, it must be all of us who are educated, not just our children and young people.  The urgent re-wiring of society is essential for all, as climate change is a safeguarding issue for us all.  

On the whole, the general public still know very little.  We need our leaders to deliver an ongoing, evolving Public Information Campaign, with the core aim of keeping people safe from Climate and Ecological Breakdown. 

 As Greta Thunberg says, “we all have a role to play, but the bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility.”  A Public Information Campaign would have a hugely positive impact on attitudes and behaviours, resulting in a cultural demand for change.  We need expert panels, explainer films, national radio and press adverts; we need to know the importance of our individual and collective roles in helping to reduce emissions, offering concrete actions (such as these actions from the UN https://www.un.org/en/actnow/ten-actions;), continuous updated science and news stories (both good and bad). Leadership, urgency and authority. would give the climate emergency the sustained attention and prominence it demands 

We must never again hear on the news “I didn’t know – no one warned me!”  

We must all know – and we must all act.

 

 Lesson ideas:

In English, we encourage pupils to ask these crucial who, what, why questions when exploring any text: Who wrote it?  What is their view?​ Why – what is the purpose?​

 This news story can be used to teach a whole variety of skills, and form the basis for debates, writing, and reading tasks. Why not explore the emotive language of the press?  Questions to ask: Why interview this particular resident? (I am sure there are hundreds of residents that did know!). Why bury any mention of the climate crisis deep into the article?  Or use as a basis for creative writing: e.g. Diary writing, how would it feel to be a resident of Hemsby? Descriptive writing of the beach; narrative writing, with a walk along the coast.

 RE & Ethics: whose moral responsibility is it to inform us of the climate crisis?

Politics: considering article 12, if our government don’t inform the public effectively, are they breaking the law?

DT: how can we build effective sea defences?

Maths: use coastal erosion data

Psychology: Why do some people know, and others seem not to – what’s the psychology behind that?