At Cop26 in Glasgow there is also the Minister of Education Patrizio Bianchi to talk about the ReGeneration project after having just launched it in Italy: the focus is on the health of the planet, therefore for ours, through every subject that is taught and studied in schools. Addressing problems in their complexity, with programs that embrace all disciplines. And there are those who, starting from Piedmont, address the questions about the health of the Earth through the evidence of climate change with courses dedicated to professors who can then transfer to the students what they have learned in the in-depth analysis. It is Gianni Boschis, a geologist who teaches at the Galilei Institute in Avigliana and who conceived the “Fragile Ice” project six years ago. After the lessons in the field at the end of summer on the glaciers of Mont Blanc in the Aosta Valley, they now continue online.
The professor says: “Ours is a message of educational commitment that also brings with it an urgent request addressed to Minister Bianchi, to renew soon the programs of the Italian school in the field of ecology and sustainability, with a particular eye towards the climate crisis”. An appeal already made to other ministers because Boschis’s opinion is that children, a generation now aware of the danger facing the planet and therefore our lives, “need to learn a scientific basis at school”.
The protests and awareness-raising events born with Greta Thunberg and which accompanied the great international and world summits, such as the G20 and Cop26, are a great stimulus to the world‘s rulers, but the spread of a scientific culture can give even more strength and prevent the continuous questioning of science. Boschis: «Since the eve of COP26, all the importance of information and educational actions in relation to the climate crisis has emerged once again. We are stunned by a schizophrenic communication, by a science challenged by social opinions and conspiracies ».
This is the purpose of “Fragile Ice”, to stop these trends. The geologist: “The school plays an even more essential role, as a vaccine against the virus of indifference and the mystification of reality, a dramatic reality that is now well understood by climate scientists, but which requires the direct involvement of the teachers who bring the weight of education “. The project thus created a synergy between glaciologists, meteorologists, ecologists and teachers, becoming the first national teacher training initiative.
«It is necessary – says Boschis – to make students aware on a scientific basis to be protagonists of a change from below in bearable lifestyles. In the face of a scientific consensus that exceeds 99.997% on the anthropogenic causes of climate change (Environmental Research Letters, October 19, 2021), still a large part of the population (in the USA about 27% of citizens) persists in doubting the role of emissions industrialists behind tangible and expanding facts such as tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts, sea level rise (20 cm only in the last hundred years), migrations and extinctions of species ».
According to the professor from Avigliana, the school cannot ignore this necessary mission: “If public opinion is partly absolved by the cultural gap and the dishonesty of some mass media on the problem, teachers have the moral task of informing correctly and educating young people, making a common front in a multi and interdisciplinary educational action. All teachers of all subjects are called to make their contribution to environmental sustainability: just think of the identical root and meaning of eco-logy and economy, that is the house understood as the ecosystem Earth, “common home” which requires our care, an appeal that Pope Francis never tires of renewing ».
Scientific data shows a rapidly degrading ecosystem due to overheating that has exceeded 1.09 ° C on average compared to the pre-industrial era. According to NASA data, 2016 was the hottest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. «The 10 hottest years of the 139-year record – explains Boschis – have all occurred since 2005, with the five warmest years among the most recent five. The correlation between rising temperatures and increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is unequivocal. According to the IPCC (the world‘s leading scientific body that studies the causes and effects of global warming) in 2019, atmospheric CO2 concentrations were the highest in the last 2 million years “.
Precisely in this period of pandemic, “Fragile ice” reached teachers from every Italian region with online courses. The conclusion was the stage on the Aosta Valley glaciers of Mont Blanc. Boschis again: “It was possible thanks to the collaboration between the numerous institutions that the initiative was able to involve, from the University of Siena to the National Museum of Antarctica, the Municipality of Courmayeur, the Metropolitan City of Turin, the Italian Glaciological Committee, to companies involved in the energy transition such as Iren and many others “.
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