Green Day With SD Al Muslim Wadungasri

By Curtis Deschambault

The extra sleep I received today was very much appreciated. After waking up at 5 a.m. for the last couple of days it was nice to sleep in until 6:30. I was picked up at 8:00 and we were off to SD Al Muslim for a “GREEN DAY”. Pippin, Mandy, Pasquelle, Yvonne (the new intern from China) and I gave presentations on our current projects. My presentation discussed what carbon footprint is and why it is important. The basic concept behind a carbon footprint is that is allows for individuals to calculate their impact on global warming. By calculating your impact people are able to make changes and try to lower their footprint.

It is important to note that it is hard to make drastic changes but even if you only make small changes to reduce your impact this can have huge benefits. One of the teachers brought up the point that it should be up to the government to implement rules and regulations to stop CO₂ emissions. It may be true that the governments of the world should be implanting stronger regulations to limit the amount of CO₂ realised. However, this does not mean that people should do what they can to reduce their emissions. If 6 billion, the world’s population, reduce their emissions that is a huge reduction and this would cause companies to also reduce their emissions because people would be able to hold companies accountable.

For the last 50 years we as individuals have effectively ignore the problem and it has not gone away. If we continue to ignore the problem we know exactly where we are headed and it is not good. In contrast if people start making conscious decisions to reduce their emissions we do not know what will happen, maybe it will stop global warming. Like the old expression says “you don’t know until you try,” the time for watching is over and it is now time for action. Complaining about global warming will get us nowhere if people do not take action.

After our presentations we joined the children for fun activities. The children were playing games that used no electricity. It was fun to play with them and they seemed to have fun playing with us. We also talked to the children a bit about our countries. I really enjoyed playing with the kids and sharing information about my country with them.