The greening of the nation’s schools continues to generate headlines.
The San Francisco Chronicle writes that schools are going increasingly green, but quotes the executive director of the Berkeley-based Green Schools Initiative as saying that the movement is “fragmented, with individual schools or districts addressing energy waste and environmental inefficiency in schools, but few statewide efforts doing the same.” The article notes that “California made it easier [last year] for districts to build green schools by allocating $100 million of a $10 billion school facilities bond to help districts” cover green building costs.
Chronicle staff writer Jill Tucker visits one San Francisco school to report on its progress on the green front and visits with students as they harvest salad makings in a school garden.
Some of the students like their homegrown salad; others not so much. But Tucker says all are amazed to hear that a salad like the one they’ve grown could sell for $10 in a restaurant.
As to the bigger picture of where their efforts fall in the scope of a larger environmental movement, and, in particular, what climate change or global warming means to them, at least one of the students seemed a little uncertain.
Tucker talks about one little girl ‘ “who wasn’t quite sure how the school garden would help stop global warming -- a problem she knew was “melting the ice in the North Pole.”
Her advice for preventing global warming?
“Don’t smoke,” she said.’
Meanwhile, MSNBC reports on “Step It Up,” a nationwide event planned by college students to build momentum for cutting carbon emissions. In its Web story, MSNBC reports on “a growing number of teens and college students who are picking up the banner of global warming and run-ning with it.” The article cites alternative-fuel projects at a high school in San Gabriel, Calif.
MSNBC sees more of the same in students’ futures. As correspondent John Larson writes: “student activism like the issue (or the Earth) itself, appears to be warming up.”