Homework Assignment For Tokyo Students: Cut Greenhouse Emissions

If you can’t make citizens do it voluntarily, try making it a homework assignment for their kids:
Tokyo’s Koto Ward Government is set to require all elementary school fifth graders in the ward to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at home as part of their summer vacation homework, officials said.
The ward will launch the project beginning in the academic year of 2008, which starts this April.
“We’d like to raise children’s awareness about the importance of protecting the environment while they are still young,” said Mayor Takaaki Yamazaki.
The local government hopes that families will help with the homework, eventually helping transform local residents’ lifestyles into more eco-friendly ones. “If children take action, then their parents will get involved as well,” a ward government official said.
Prior to summer vacations, teachers at public elementary schools in Koto-ku will give fifth graders sheets on which they are supposed to record their specific actions aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions, such as “turning off lights in unused rooms,” “setting the air conditioner to 28 degrees Celsius” and “shortening the period of taking a shower.”
| Related Posts: |
|
Japanese Baseball Game Time To Be Reduced Aoyama Gakuin University forcing students to carry tracking devices |


If it isn’t an entirely man made problem, we certainly have a hand in it. I think this is a great idea. Who says Japanese teachers and students can’t think outside the box?
Yeah, the best way to build consciousness and encourage people to think about the environment is to FORCE THEM. Similarly, people enjoy sex more after a couple of rapes and work best when there’s an overseer with a whip standing over them.
Why bother getting people to voluntarily adopt the lifestyle behaviors encapsulated in your ideas by convincing them of the merits of your arguments when you can just use the government to force them?
Exactly. What do you think governments are there for?
I guess the news isn’t traveling as quickly as would be hoped. 4 of the world’s leading weather recording companies have confirmed that the last 12 months have seen a loss of warmth. All of the gradual warmth from the last 100 years has been undone within the last year.
There is record snowfall, record cold and record ice cap sizes.
Certainly wouldn’t travel fast if you provide no links to news reports or any other sources. Unless you refer to the report Limbaugh went on about that used NASA data wrongly – NASA was merely comparing Jan 07 and Jan 08, not the trend for the entire year. Nature, not being a machine, does not progress smoothly: any trend is wobbly. Which is why it is so hard to predict the future.
It seems that a lot Japan Probe readers are rather gullible.