Hi there Everyone!

First of all, let’s get the ‘fear thing’ over quickly, shall we?  

Yes, I have been asked to deliver this course on sustainability in English…. but I am NOT primarily seeking perfection in your English – I just want you to contribute and participate and as long as you can make your meaning clear and as long as you  use (legal/acceptable) tools/aids like Grammarly and WordReference: that’s fine – I won’t mark you down! If you feel unable to contribute in English, then French is fine.

Please note: for some reason, last year this course showed as ‘Droit International de l’Environnement‘ on your ADE timetable, but I have been asked by the Dean to lead a course under this title:

‘Enjeux du Développement Durable

(en Anglais)’

You already have ‘official‘ English classes on your timetable, so here I am focusing upon and marking the quality of your work on Sustainability rather than your English.  The view of our Dean, M Sadok, is that delivery of this unit in English by a native English speaker might help bolster your English communication abilities as well as enhance your understanding of sustainability. 

The purpose of a sustainability course delivered in English

1. M2 is effectively the Last Chance Saloon for you to make your English operational.  What do I mean by this? Simple: to have the courage to launch out knowing you perhaps won’t be perfect, but you will be understandable and you will communicate successfully.  If you don’t do this, then, if ever you want to improve your English in your personal and/or professional life, it is likely to cost you ‘an arm and a leg‘ (between 30 and 100 Euros an hour for basic text translation!).

2. Sustainabilty: living a personal and professional life in such a way as to protect, conserve and enhance our planet and preserve its ability to protect and support us and future generations, is clearly going to be THE cornerstone of all our lives for the future, not just a take-it-or-leave-it option.  It is not something we can leave to politicians – yes it is ‘top-down‘, but it is also ‘bottom-up‘ (it starts with each one of us): it is omni-present.  That said, I am willing to bet that not many of you have had any opportunity thus far in your school and university careers to consider this fundamental issue from a personal as well as professional (maybe even political) standpoint.  One thing is certain: if you don’t buy-into sustainability in your personal lives, you won’t be able to participate in or to manage the issue at work (because people believe what you do / how you act rather than what you say).

Welcome … and a bit about me.

Welcome to you all!  We share a personal and professional interest already: the environment, climate change, sustainability [‘Développement Durable’ (DD)], CSR etc.

I started teaching Environment and Sustainability at Bournemouth University (in England) in 1989 – just after the ink was dry on the Brundtland Report [aka: Notre Avenir à Tous / Our Common Future. [NB. If you don’t know what this document is then you really MUST read it as it is the bedrock of your course and the modern origin of the concept of sustainability] and before the first global summit on the subject at Rio in 1991.   I am also a member of the Commission de DD of Brunstatt-Didenheim Council,  Secretary to the Préservons Brunstatt-Didenheim Association and a Founder Member of the local Repair Café , which we hope to be able to bring back to the Fonderie soon [perhaps in November 2023 to accord with the European Week of Zero Waste]– and hope you will participate in it too! Our Repair Café is, in turn, a member of the global Repair Café movement.   So I am not just a native English-speaker – born half Scottish and half English in fact – but now, thankfully (finally!), also 100% French. I have a considerable academic, personal and professional interest in sustainable living.

Prior to becoming a Senior Lecturer (Maître de Conf.) I was also Head of Research and Development for the regional tourism authority for Southern England working closely with national & local government, national & regional agencies and protection associations etc to make sure that development (if and where permitted) would be as sustainable as possible and that the economic imperative of Tourism should not overwhelm the needs of the environment and communities.

My intention is to use my knowledge and experience and yours to create interesting assignments and work for us to do- particularly in the form of ‘Realistic Work Environments‘ [which put you in circumstances and situations I could see you in durning your future career]  through which we all can learn more about our chosen subject and you can apply your English thereto and improve your confidence in its application within a variety of contexts.  I happen to believe that you will enjoy your English more if you can use it in an area in which you are already interested and committed.

At the level of the family, we are trying to become far more ‘sustainable‘ and to adopt a greater zero-waste lifestyle (the founder of this movement, Béa Johnson, is of French origin, you may be pleased to know!) and we have also been inspired by Pam Warhurst (watch her TED talk!) and her ‘Incredible Edible‘ project to develop a ‘Potager Partagé’ locally in Brunstatt.

So how this is all going to work?

Things may be a little different this year given that CoVid doesn’t seem to have finished with us quite yet. …  Let’s hope we can keep operating in the attendance mode (présentiel)…but there still exists the possibility of having to retreat to a distance-learning mode.  We will just have to hope it doesn’t come to that!  IF it does ‘come to that‘, then don’t worry – I have been developing and using ‘blended learning‘ tools since 1993/4, so I have some experience in using a combination of:

• my ‘Tonyversity‘ website
• Live Zooms
• 100+ Pre-recorded Zooms on my YouTube channel which are linked to Tonyversity pages and which you can watch asynchronously (when you want – not necessarily in the timetabled ‘slot‘ (créneau).
• Well-timed and reassuring emails reminding you of:-
  • where we are
  • where we are heading next
  • what resources you should be engaging with to make the progress required
  • assignment (contrôle continu) instructions and deadlines

I am now going to give you below a number of relatively short videos to watch between our first and second classes together on the subjects below – well those which I may not have had the time to cover in our first class.

• Rentrée
• My sustainability credentials (personal and professional)
• The role of English in the unit and my expectations (which should reassure you, I assure you!!)
• The shape of our course and its aims and objectives
• The principles of learning and teaching in my courses
• A number of videos designed to help you in your approach to academic work generally

So here are the videos as promised above.

Hopefully we will be in class and I can tell you these things without recourse to videos!

Rentrée

Just in case we have to revert to this sort of approach in 2023-24…here is the set up I ran with during ‘the covid years’…

My Sustainability ‘Credentials’ / Background

If the video above doesn’t work – try this link: https://youtu.be/3KSYFKWK58k

The Role of English in the Unit

The Shape of this Course and its Objectives and Learning Outputs

Here are the Aims and Objectives of the unit that I speak about in the video above (in full) :

• to offer students the opportunity to consider the personal and professional challenges presented to the modern and future world by the principles, practices and sheer necessity of sustainability
• to challenge students to take a stance in their personal and professional lives upon the issue of sustainability once in possession of the key facts and arguments and suitable tools of analysis and evaluation.
• to give students the opportunity to consider their lives, lifestyles, consumption, attitudes and habitudes and their impact upon others present and future and upon the planet and its resources.
• to enable students to identify the inhibitors to better sustainability performance and compliance and to conceive appropriate strategies and tactics to overcome them.
• to give students the opportunity to reflect upon the tensions between a commercial world profit motive and the need to incorporate sustainability within the business model. Might ‘Degrowth’ / Décroissance represent a feasible and viable alternative?
• to consider the ancient origins of sustainability and how these were ‘lost’ with the impact of money, population growth, capitalism, consumerism and marketing.
• to consider the origins and rationales for the emergeance in the 1980s of the modern concept of Sustainability as originally defined in the World Commission on Environment and Development report of 1987 (‘The Brundtland Report’) which is also called Our Common Future / Notre Avenir à Tous.
• to analyse and evaluate the systems and processes operating at global, international, national, regional and local levels which can influence (positively or negatively) the advancement of sustainability.
• to consider the respective roles of political systems, key players, activists and associations in the present and future of sustainability.
• to make things local: consider the role of the M2A, Mulhouse and the Commune of Brunstatt-Didenheim in furthering the cause of Sustainability as a positive example of  a suitably joined-up approach.
• Building upon and applying students’ existing and developing knowledge of English in order to consider and learn from worldwide resources in English concerning sustainability.

Principles of Learning and Teaching

 Please make the time to follow this link .  It will take you to a page with an assembly of some 10 x short videos from me (each between 6 and 20 minutes’ duration).  You will find they will help you as they are designed to assist in your learning activities even if they are not subject-specifc to Sustainability.

To these videos, I would also respectfully request that you look at a Tonyversity News item on the subject of the use of AI/IA.  Use of AI is forbidden in this unit. In this article you will see that I have expressed the ‘academic view’, but just for the sake of it, I also ‘asked‘ AI what it thought of its use by students in Higher Education.  You may be surprised by the results … and by the fact that authors are sick of having their intellectual property ‘ripped off’ and are taking AI system producers to court as a result for unathorised use of their work and failute to attribute it to the real authors.

Indicative work you may/will be doing on this unit.

Your performance in this unit will be based upon Continuous Assessment (contrôle continu) not formal examinations and is likely to involve the following:-

• Definitions of key sustainability terms
• A personal sustainability anlysis and evaluation.  An individual task whereby each student analyses and evaluates his/her own life and activities in terms of their impact upon the planet, involving ‘A Day in the Life’, a Carbon Footprint and ‘Earth Overshoot Day‘ analysis.
• Group cumulative impact analysis, whereby individual results are combined in order to establish where the current student generation is heading in terms of impact upon the biosphere and the sharing of the planet’s resources.
• Identification of the ‘inhibitors’ preventing us all as individuals from lessening our impact upon the environment and imporoving our sustainability performance.
• Consideration of creative and workable soultions to the inhibitors (those things we consider militate against better sustainability performance) and the means by which they may be sucessfully introduced in to our lives professional, personal and community. Advocacy of an Action Plan (personal, professional, commercial, political – if time allows) to address such inhibitors (in Alsace or Haut Rhin as a pilot project).
• Observation and evaluation (and involvement in too!) of all aspects of a Repair Café event at the Fonderie and consideration of whether the UHA should develop its own Repair Café and (if so) how it might do so.

Output & outcome.

M2 students of this unit should leave with their awareness of the  challenges of sustainability significantly raised and with a motivation to apply appropriate approaches and tools in their personal and professional (and possibly even political) lives in order to reduce the impact of their lifestyles and decisions upon others and upon the ability of the planet to support life and husband and share fairly its limited resources for the future.

So how are we going to be doing this?

•  I like to work in ‘Blocks’.   The normal format for the block will be:-
  • Part 1 (100% me). I set up the block with one or more keynote lectures and some guidance, then you begin work individually, in teams or as a whole group as directed..
  • Part 2 (50/50  me/you). You continue to work and I interact with you as appropriate looking at your progress and give further guidance and suggestions regarding your progress on the subject of the block concerned. I give you ‘formative feedback’ so you can improve your work with a view to getting a better mark in the end.  However, clearly my ability to do so will depend upon you advancing your work and bringing it to class.
  • Part 3. (100% you) You present (in some form or other) your thoughts / findings / opinions / conclusions / recommendations and then:
  • Part 4. (100% me) You receive feedback from me to explain your mark and how you might have improved it – and might improve in future work too (summative feedback).

• The form of our work will vary:
  • presentational, written, role-play, discussions, brainstorms, workshops – the whole gamut of things you will be expected to be able to do once at work, in fact.
  • individual, team & whole group
  • research & discovery, definitions, problem analysis & evaluation, solutions prioritisations, selection and recommendations/implementation
  • Looking at theory and practice.

NB.  Marking. When you are operating in a team or a group situation, I will produce a ‘base‘ mark, which I may then moderate according to what I call ‘conspicuous performance‘, whereby an individual may have the base mark adjusted:

• upwards for excellence or
• downward for lack of / poor contribution.

Resources

I tend not to use textbooks very much in the classroom as they can limit us rather when other resources such as the web exist.  Textbooks tend to be 3 or 4 (or more) years out of date by the time they are published. Sustainability is a very fast-moving / fast-changing subject (the COP meeting are one per year .. and the IPCC too!) , so it suits a medium where instant changes are the norm, so clearly much sustainability news is carried by the web.   There ARE, however, some truly classic texts, for example the Brundtland Report from 1987 (the publication of the World Commission on Environment and Development) printed in French under the title of ‘Notre Avenir à Tous’ and in English as ‘Our Common Future’), but these are now all available online and free to download in just about every spoken language. I have linked the English version above.

You therefore have a LOT of valuable resources:

• me
• each other: your respective knowledge and experiences personal and professional
• local, regional national, international and global associations, councils, government services etc
• libraries and textbooks
• Tonyversity  (this website)
• Local Government: the M2A (Mulhouse and surrounding communes) is a tireless worker for sustainability
• The enormity of the web – there are amazing things out there… but they are not always to be found in Google’s first page of search results!

Tutor Expectations

(My expectations of You)

• That you attend: I consider this class to be professional and I will treat you accordingly.  Were you at work you would turn up on time every morning and do a full day’s work (and more often than not take some home with you too!).  I expect the same from you.  If you really can’t attend by reason of illness, then fair enough, we are all ill at some time or another, but:
  • it will need proper certification
  • if you are working as part of a team you will need to notify me and the other members of the team in advance.
  • If there are non-medical reasons for your absence, you will need to convince your Head of Year / Course Director. If he/she tells me that I should accept a late submission, I don’t need to know the reason, I will trust his/her judgement.  NB. Late submissions of coursework without justifiction (as above) will be penalised in fairness to other students.
• that you participate: language is first and foremost: spoken, so I will be looking to see and hear you participate in English wherever possible.  I will even try to do this if circumstances force us into a distance-based model of delivery) by asking you to submit videos or audio files and not just hard copies… and by Zooming on occasions too.
• that whenever you furnish me with work, it is in fact your own and not ‘lifted‘ from the www or other original sources or produced by AI (both of which are forbidden here)..  I am quite adept at catching those who try not only to cheat on their subject, the real author and their tutors but on their own collegues as well.  People have failed M2 here at FSESJ because of plagiarism and use of AI.  Be warned – the penalties are becoming dramatic.   You should make very sure you have listened to the videos I supplied and directed you to earlier on this page.  If you don’t think you encountered these, then here are the direct links:
  • Plagiarism pt 1: what it is an what are its consequences
  • Plagiarism pt 2: plagiarism cases and their outcomes
  • Avoiding plagiarism by citing and attributing your work (using the Harvard or MLA systems) correctly.
  • Use of AI/IA forbidden.
• that you seek to improve: that will mean taking helpful and positive critique of your work, welcoming it and working with it.  I do take the teacher’s task of providing feedback very seriously: you will get a LOT of feedback (whether your work is excellent or less so): that takes a LOT of time.  Please try to learn from this and apply what you have learned in future tasks.
• that you do not consult email or telephones during class No-one in my role would find such activity anything less than disrespectful at worst and distracting at best when it happens in the classroom.
• that submission dates and forms for assignments and presentation dates be respected. In the commercial and professsional world, failure to hit a deadline is a life and death affair. I will operate in the same manner: failure to submit by the designated date will be penalised unless the Course Manager has evidence in his hand and is prepared to confirm that your absence was justified.  This may seem ‘Draconian‘, but that is how business in the Anglophone world (and the professional world in general) works.  Language is part of the cultural context in which I am teaching English and Sustainability.
• that I am not looking for perfection in English first and foremost: I want to massively increase your confidence in using the English you already possess in a variety of situations relating to Sustainability in which you might well find yourself in your career. When you have that confidence, then you can set about improving your pronunciation, precision expression, grammar and vocabulary.
• that we work together in a spirit of ‘professional informality‘: just because we are not in an office or facory and we are not wearing smart work clothes does not mean we can’t act professionally.

Your Expexctations of Me.

First of all I should say that it is only fair that you should have some reasonable expectations of your tutor based upon teaching professionalism and the subject content.  Here is what I believe you can and should expect of me:

• that I will turn up for classes promptly (again, this doesn’t apply to aysynchronous, pre-recorded classes when and if they are required). If for any reason I cannot make the class: illness etc, I will endeavour to get a message to you before the class if humanly possible via the course office.  Would you kindly give me a margin of 10 minutes – to allow for the occasional traffic jam or over-run of the preceding class. NB. If ever I have to be absent, I will usually try to set up an online work programme for you in my absence and notify you by email so that we do not lose the learning opportunity and none of us waste time.
• that I will give you as much feedback as is possible to enable you to improve.  I never liked the teacher who wrote on my assignment: « 12/20 – could do better », because I thought I had done my best and I was completely at a loss to understand what the teacher was looking for if it wasn’t what I had delivered and where I had lost those crucial 8 points. I will provide ‘formative feedback‘ where possible while you are working on your tasks and assessments and will always provide ‘summative feedback‘ to you individually and to the group as a whole when the work has been submitted.  You will be in no doubt as to why you have the mark that I have awarded you.
• that I will ‘build’ my teaching side of the bridge towards your learning side of the bridge and do my level best to ensure that we meet in the middle.  I have to trust that you will meet me at the half way point because I cannot learn for you…[NB. If you want to see a REAL bridge being built from both sides of the river and meeting PERFECTLY, then DO watch the National Geographic Megastructures programme on the construction of the Millau Viaduct: it is nothing less than astounding!
  
• you should call me ‘Tony‘, rather than Mr JOLLEY: in the Anglophone world you will find most of your colleagues and even your bosses will call you by your first name and expect you to do likewise.

Tasks for our first session.

There is a lot to do here, but it is simple if we organise ourselves…

A.  Quick English Task

1. Reflect upon / calculate how many years you have each been learning English.  Record the highest and lowest figures, then calculate the group average
2. Each consider the two workplace ‘scenarios‘ I give you below:
   • Scenario 1. what is your level of confidence of giving a VIP a tour of your company premises, people and processes: in English?  Your boss arrives at your office door.  A potential major buyer of your company’s products/services has just arrived asking to be shown around the office/factory, to be introduced to key people and to have the system of production explained to him.  However, his French is very poor/non-existent – he needs the tour in English.  The boss asks you to handle the matter in your best English.  How do you feel about it (as per the scale provided below)?  Is your English up to the challenge…..?
     • cite the highest and lowest individual results for each question (anonymously, of course!)  AND, most importantly, produce an average figure for the group.  Calculate on this scale: /10 where:
     • 0/1 = no confidence whatever: ‘find someone else!!’;
     • 2/3 = confidence far too limited to do it or to do it even remotely acceptably;
     • 4/5 = OK, if you can’t find anyone better, I’ll try, but I’m bound to make a lot of mistakes;
     • 6/7  = Yes, I think I can do it, but it will fall far short of perfect;
     • 8/9 = Yes, fine, I’ll do it and it should be quite reasonable with a few minor errors only; 
     • 10 = no worries, it’ll all be fine (even if not absolutely perfect) … fully confident..
   • Scenario 2. what is your level of confidence in communicating complicated and precise instructions in English? Your boss wants you to write detailed flight, hotel and transport booking instructions and reservations  for a very important series of  conferences and exhibtions in the USA .  To be sure, the Boss asks you to deal with this in perfect English so he can be totally confident everything will ‘work like clockwork‘ (without errors or mistakes) when he is over there.
     • cite the highest and lowest individual results for each question (anonymously, of course!)  AND, most importantly, produce an average figure for the group.
       

     Q. If the average figures for confidence levels do not really seem to match the confidence that one might expect from the average number of years learning English:

     • what does the group think might be the reasons for this?
     • what does this perhaps imply for you as students and me as a teacher?

B. Encounters with Sustainability throughout your education

TO BE DONE FOR OUR NEXT SESSION:

• Thinking individually: [approximately] how many hours of teaching and learning have you had throughout your school career on the subject of sustainability / environment / responsible citizenship (in its widest sense)?   .
  • What was the highest and lowest individual figure?
  • Combine your results with those of your colleagues to:
    • produce an average figure
    • divide this average figure by 18 (the number of years you will typically have been at school, college and university by M2)
  • These hours were part of what subject / which subjets for the mostpart?
  • How many of you had specific course modules on sustainability and citizenship / sustainable living [as opposed to a ‘transversal approach‘  which would see the issue given a few hours attention under other subject headings (Geography, History, etc)]?
  • In the light of the fact that most scientists and specialists feel that this matter is by far the most important and the most urgent challenge being faced by the planet, its flora and fauna and mankind (and have been saying so most vocally since 1987 or even earlier), do you feel that the educational time devoted to this subject in your ‘parcours‘ was:
    • 0 = non-existent
    • 1/2 = dreadfully lacking
    • 3/4 = some, but rather less than adequate
      
    • 5 = OK: not too bad … but not too good either
    • 6/7 = adequate / quite reasonable
    • 8/9 = good
      
    • 10 = excellent and entirely appropriate to the urgency of action that this issue demands of each successive young generation.
• AS A WHOLE GROUP:–
  • Pool / combine your individual results and calculate the averages etc as instructed.
  • Prepare a PPT / Prezi to feedback this information which a number of you can talk through / explain on behalf of the group as a whole.
  • Then, in the light of the above, each of you should have a think about how you will contribute to the discussion / plenary session outlined below which we will do after the presentation of your results.

To Do: Let us discuss:

• Why, if Sustainability was put on the global ‘map‘ in the late 1980s, some 30 years later, here in France (and despite the promise and momentum of the Paris COP 21 in December 2015), we may not yet be giving this critical issue time and its rightful and important place in the National Curriculum? 
• Why is there no compulsory Sustainability module at Universities (on all degree and Master’s  courses) ?  It still remains possible for young people to go throughout their entire school and university career and emerge with never having even had the opportunity to consider sustainability and its implications for our personal lives and careers and the future of our children and the planet.
• How might we begin to ‘tackle’ this issue here at UHA and FSESJ for example?

C: How would you categorise yourself as regards a sustainable life?

• 9 or 10  / 10 : A sustainability ‘warrior’ and ‘evangelist’ – on the leading edge and living a low-impact lifestyle… a beacon to others.
• 7 or 8 / 10: Doing much better than most people, but still with a way to go… perhaps hit a ‘roadblock’ (of inhibitors) and unsure whether you really want to do more or (if you do) quite how to do it.
• 5 or 6 / 10: About average or perhaps just a little better than average.
• 3 or 4 / 10:  Not very good. Don’t do much to reduce impact on the planet: perhaps just a little of sorting waste and recycling.  Do what is required by law: yes, but a wider ethical and moral responsibility: no.
• 1 or 2 / 10:  Undertake very little action relating to sustainability. Unconvinced of the need to improve / reduce impact. No-one is forcing me to do things – so I don’t…. if it was important enough then there would be strict laws and regulations and I would obey them (but there aren’t!).
• 0 : Sustainability is not an issue that concerns me at all – even if I did something, my individual contribution would be meaningless with a 7 billion world population, so there is no point in doing anything – other people’s inaction would cancel out my contribution anyway.  Not my problem.

Now that is how you perceive yourself to be … but is that how the Earth sees you?  It is time to do some ‘footprint’ tests! See task D below……………..

D: Footprint Scores: measuring our individual impact

[These tests will take each of you barely 40 minutes in total]

During this timetabled slot (‘créneau’) I want you all to do a couple of  Carbon Footprint tests (in English, of course) and to save and share the results with your IES colleagues by one means or another which will usually include information like:

• how many planets would we need if all the world’s population consumed like me / enjoyed my lifestyle?
• where do I stand in relation to the average in my country/France / the world average – am I performing better or worse than M. Average?
• where do I stand in relation to the targets the nations of the world have agreed in order to reduce CO2 emissions and keep (at least try to keep) the global temperature rise under 2°C for the century?
• how much CO2 am I personally responsible for producing?
• what is my personal ‘Earth Overshoot Day‘?  [Imagine that on the 1st Jan, Mother Earth gives each citizen of the planet his/her ‘fair share‘ of the planet’s limited and depleting resources … The way you spend these resources / live your life: upon what day of the year will you run out (and have to go ‘into debt’ and ‘borrow’ from the future which will only further impoverish the planet and future generations)?

Here’s my video overview of Footprint Calculators

Here are the calculators to use:

You MUST ALL do both the FIRST TWO of the tests shown and linked below and record each and every one of your results (and be prepared to share them with your colleagues). The tests give you different outputs and I would like you to provide all of the indicators and share them with your colleagues and to work together to produce the class averages for each measure. The THIRD link is to a test that is optional but it is an interesting to do. It concerns the impacts of our food consumption choices upon the environment. The results may well surprise you – they shocked the heck out of me!

• http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/
  • My scores:
    • I am using 79% of my ‘allocation’ (i.e. what is ‘fair’ for me to use according to the global targets). And you?
    • I produce 8.2 tonnes of CO2 –  a lttle under the global average target of 10,5 tons.  And you?
    • my overall impact is 50% less than the UK average (NB. France is just a little bit higher than the UK), BUT I am consuming resources at still a full 50% more than the world average which is still unaccptable. And you?
• http://www.footprintcalculator.org/
  • My scores:
    • my personal ‘overshoot day’ (because I am consuming more than the Earth can provide in any given period if everyone lived like me) – was 3rd Sept in 2017 … but by reason of increased air travel in 2018/19 to visit ailing parents this date advanced to 17th June (my birthday, ironically) – i.e. it got worse!  For the rest of the year it was as if I had nothing left in the ‘Mother Earth Bank’ and I went into an unauthorised overdraft situation – which I (or my kids and grandkids) will have to repay!
    • BUT…  Good news! With lifestyle changes which my family and I began in 2018/2019,  our overshoot day has steadily advanced to early/mid October – we’re getting better….and in 2020/21 /22 it may well have got better still given CoVid restrictions.  I’m sure it did, actually.  …  And you?
    • we would need 1.4 Earths if everyone were to live and consume like me (which is a LOT better than the French or British average of approaching 3 planets)… BUT, of course, I’m still ‘failing‘ and badly – the problem being that we will only ever have just the one planet Earth and we have to share it with more and more people every day: just take a look at the live ‘World Population Counter‘ … and be prepared for a shock.  I am writing this in the middle of the afternoon, and already the day has seen births exceed deaths by 250,000…. suggesting that three populations the size of France’s (62,000,000 x 3) get added to the sum total of humanity every year….  Sharing resources and sharing them fairly is going to become much more and more of an issue with every year that passes….or for as long as the resources last…...

• https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46865204  .  OPTIONAL (but interesting!). Scroll down to the middle of the article. Embedded there you will find a calculator of food environmental impacts that, for everything from an apple to a beef steak, gives you an idea of its impact in nutrition, C02, water consumption terms and shows you how much of the world’s land surface your consumption requires.  Have a look – it is quite startling.  It might even get you thinking that there are some simple changes you can make right now which can have a significant, positive effect.  We did and it has changed our family’s consumption choices:
  • our red meat consumption has reduced dramatically from once every couple of days to once every couple of weeks
  • we continue to consume some white meat (but we haven’t increased this to compensate for the lack of red meat – in fact we now eat less of it because we have significantly increased the proportion of veg and fruit on our plates.  For me that has meant far more veg and for my wife far more fruit).
  • We have some 100% veggie meals and 100% veggie days now
  • We buy almost exclusively locally-grown (sometimes in our back garden) fruit and veg from our village market which is bio and always seasonal: lower pollution, better for our health, cheaper than buying meat and the money stays in the hands of local farmers so it helps the local economy and population.

OUTPUT REQUIRED

• Share your results for EACH of these MEASURES in class:–
  • What are the highest and lowest results [i.e. what is the ‘range’]?
  • Calculate our class average for each measure
  • Consider how this relates to the Earth’s limited resources and the world’s targets.  I suspect you may be shocked by the results.
  • What are the impacts and implications of these measures? [Remember that you have chosen to study in this area – you are interested and have made some level of commitment to the concept: your group should be out-performing others of your generation (and the rest of us!) by a long way….. Is it?  What if it isn’t?]

Individual Report 

Can the Planet Afford Me?

INSTRUCTIONS.

In the light of your scores and outputs from the tasks you have undertaken above (you must incorporate such scores as part of an introduction to this assignment) : consider your daily life and how you are living it (what you eat, what you wear, what you spend your money on, how you live in your home, how you travel etc…. the things you do do and the things you choose not to do for sustainability’s sake or do not know how to do) and write (in English)  a personal analysis and evaluation to address the question:

“Can the Planet Afford Me? …

… and What am I Prepared to do About it if it Can’t? »

Preamble.

The World Commission on Environment and Development (AKA The Brundtland Report, AKA Our Common Future / Notre Avenir à Tous) set four preconditions for the achievement of sustainability one of which was that we should all (especially the citizens of the richer nations) ‘live within the planet’s ecological means‘.  Although the Carbon Footprint Tests you will have done by now (and their underpinning algorithms) are far from perfect, they do at least offer some basic ways in which we can come to understand our impacts upon the planet: no mean feat when you think of the size of that task!   So by now, if you didn’t already know, you should have a sense of whether or not and to what extent your lifestyle fits within the planet’s ecological means.

Instructions.

If the planet can’t afford 100% of your lifestyle and consumption activities, what (perhaps a LOT more than just one or two things!)  EXACTLY is stopping you personally from changing to a lifestyle the planet can afford and how do you feel that such inhibitors to better sustainability performance in your life could be overcome?

The specifics of how you will deliver this are outlined below:-

Date set: 5/10/2023 in class (inc 2 – 3 hours to work on it with tutor support).  This may be done in English or in French, but whatever the language, it must absolutely follow the instructions given in class and written below.

Date due: 9/10/2023.  I know this does not give you long to do this, BUT:-

• you will have been prepared for this and have time to advance it in class and have developed the necessary raw materials.
• it is based upon self-analysis and evaluation – this does not require personal research time
• I am handing you the report format/structure ‘on a plate‘ – see below….

Please be there and hand in your work in person.  If, for any reason,  you can’t be there, give your hard copy to someone else who can hand it to me in class [NB. I will not be accepting or marking emailed copies unless you have medical certification].

Your output will be: a REPORT (not an essay – do you know the differences?  Make sure you do!)

Length: 3 x Pages of A4 MAXimum – 2 Pages of A4 MINimum.  (plus an appendix for carbon footprint diagrammes  if you so wish).  12pt text size. No excessive line spacing!

Language: Preferably English – or French if you really have to. [NB.  This is NOT technically an English class – so I will not be marking your English: as long as your meaning is clear, then even if you make mistakes, I promise they will NOT be penalised.  I will, however, try to give you some feedback to help you improve.]

Format: Printed hard copy please.  I am more than happy for you to use:

• ‘scrap‘ paper already printed on one side.
• the draft ‘brouillon‘ mode on your printer [did you know that, weight-for-weight, printer cartridge (cartouche) ink is more expensive than gold?]
• If you are using a fresh sheet – please print on both sides.

NB. I realise that printing on paper is not the most environmentally-sensitive option, but I much prefer it his way because:

• correcting and commenting on screen takes twice as long as marking a paper copy
• it means hours and hours sitting in the same position for me – which is bad for the neck and back.  [Once, after a marathon on-screen marking session, I got up and fell over in agony having three disks displaced. Result: three days and nights on a hard floor.  Not doing that again!]
• Sometimes students think they have sent to the right address or that they have attached their work…yet I never receive them and have to chase people all the time.
• Occasionally the spam-checker system can decide to route a file to Spam and not to the inbox, so it is sent…’technically’ received [but in the wrong place] and I have no idea it is there!
• If only 10% of students in each of the classes I teach ignore my instruction and send by email, that can amount to 40 pieces of work each time I set an assignment (I have appx 400 students).  Can you imagine the time and trouble to chase and find these missing pieces of work or the cost to myself of printing?!?

REPORT FRAMEWORK:

Your report absolutely MUST start with ALL your footprint test scores (from BOTH tests) and your reaction to them.  I suggest you write these in your first paragraph – perhaps in brief bullet points. [Then, if you want to include the diagrammes, you can put them in an Appendix – they won’t count as part of your page limit. DO NOT fill your two pages with the footprint diagrammes so you don’t have to write much!!].

Here is the structure you MUST adopt for your report (ignore this advice at your peril – failure to comply will be heavily penalised):

• Introduction: provide details of ALL your personal carbon footprint test results and tell the reader what you feel about them…
• Main Body: your analysis and evaluation (not just description) of key aspects of your life / lifestyle and consumption activities which have led to these scores
• Conclusion: five key elements:

1. Consideration of where you see yourself on the AIDA (Awareness -Interest -Desire-Action) continuum I will have explained in class (and why)
2. A well-considered list of your personal inhibitors with explanations as to why each one of them is so difficult or impossible for you to overcome on your own / without assistance.  What would it take to be able to overcome them (who would need to do what in order to make it possible for you)?
3. Where there are no real inhibitors stopping you making a change – what are the THREE most significant changes to your personal lifestyle that you CAN and WILL adopt and put into operation TODAY and how will you know you have been successful if you do?
4. Given your professional career is set to be in the environment, sustainability and social responsibility field – what do you feel are the principal sustainability challenges that you might be facing which might affect colleagues / clients /readers / artists /viewers and their ability move along the AIDA continuum towards ‘Action‘ end..
5. Has this exercise had an effect upon you?  If so what?
   

 

FEEDBACK. I will try to mark this as soon as is possible.  I will bring your scripts/copies to class and give you general feedback as a group  and personal feedback as written on your scripts.

Tony