Day 33

Student contribution by Dylan, James, Charles, and Kishan

Overview of the Period

I started the period with Greta Thunberg address to the United Nation Climate Summit. Afterwards, the students read “The world isn’t ready for climate refugees.” As they read, they wrote things they questioned and things they agreed with. Afterwards, they talked to the people at their table.

The converstaions were amazing. I asked a group to record just a sample of the conversations took place.

Why can’t we just build things to house refugees and take them in?

After we thought more about this question we realized that it really wasn’t as easy as we were making it sound. In order to be able to build hotels and shelter for people to be housed in we would need to pout forward a lot of money and resources to a cause it seems like out government doesn’t really seem to care about. There are going to be about 200 million climate chasing refugees by 2050. It would take probably billions of dollars in order to be able to build shelters and help repair living space3s for all of these refugees.

One question we were generally concerned about is not about why can’t the government house all of them, it is more why won’t they and why do they no want to? It seems they have made very specific requirements in order for someone to be considered a “climate refugee. We feels that requirements should be lightened to house more refugees.

There are simple solutions to the crises afflicting the world. The students have found those simple solutions, but simple does not mean easy. The small capture of their larger conversation reflects most of what is happening at the global scale. The students have solutions, but recognize the difficulty is funding or starting these solutions. The students, freshmen, are aware of what could be done. It encourages me as a human that they can talk about these issues in such a constructive way that offers what we can do. Again, my students continue to inspire me.