On 25th May, Nick Drake, Principal Consultant at Greengage talked to the whole of Windlesham primary school about his profession as a Climate Change scientist. Every month a parent is invited to talk to the school about their profession to demonstrate to the pupils the breadth of opportunities in the working world.
Nick started off by introducing the concept of Earth as a Goldilocks planet, whereby similar to the story, if a planet is too close to the sun it is too hot for life, and similarly, if too far away is too cold for life. That captured the children’s imagination and from there, talked about the length of geologic time and how miniscule a time we humans have been around, and yet in that very short term it is now through huge population explosion, and the desire for consumption has led us to damaging and impacting our planet which is manifesting itself as Climate Change. Having introduced the damage we are causing to this fragile planet, Nick then spoke about what he does as job, trying to help businesses to identify where they are impacting and what they might be able to do to reduce their Carbon footprint. Finally, to end Nick provided five easy things which each child could do to be more environmentally conscious.
It was difficult to aim a Climate Change presentation to an audience from 5yrs to 10yrs but it was felt it was very successful, the children looked captivated by some of the animations and graphics and Nick sincerely hopes that some of the children will be inspired into a career in science, especially his two wonderful children who listened proudly to their Dad talking to their school.
