Educating ourselves as if life depends on nature

photo by Ahmet Yüksek

While another school year begins, I look for teachers and students exploring how to live within their bioregion’s offerings—by the fuel, food, water and ores provided within their watershed. I want to study with communities that prepare for power outages, dry taps, dirty water and Internet shut-downs. I look for people growing and preparing healthy food and encouraging healthy water cycles. I look for building skills to resolve conflicts within ourselves and with others. I need places that support us in decreasing our society’s ecological harms. I’d welcome meeting neighbors dedicated to decreasing their dependence on international supply chains. I look for schools with room for mistakes and questions. I welcome teachers who know about human-to-human relating with humility and humor.

SCHOOL PROJECT IDEAS: START WITH YOUR BIOREGION

(Each project could take a semester or two.)

Take this bioregional quiz.

Test what you know about your region’s mineral deposits

Map a favorite meal’s supply chain—and move toward eating within your means.

BEFORE ENGAGING A DEVICE OR SERVICE, ASK HOW IT AFFECTS CHILDHOOD

Each time a child picks up a device with a screen, it overstimulates and hyper-arouses the brain, yet American schools increasingly use VR/AR/MR headsets.

Smartphones are ruining our brains at unprecedented speed.

Children’s Health Defense reports that Mattel (owner of Barbie, Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Fisher-Price and Polly Pocket) has partnered with OpenAI to develop artificial intelligence-powered toys designed to provide emotional support to kids. Marc Fernandez wonders, “What are we teaching our children about friendship, empathy, and emotional connection if their first ‘real’ relationships are with machines?” Meanwhile, U.S. Public Interest Research Group reports that some AI-powered toys may collect a child’s iris, vital signs and fingerprints without parents’ knowledge or consent.

BUILD AWARENESS OF TECHNOLOGIES’ CRADLE-TO-GRAVE IMPACTS ON NATURE

Trace the supply chain of one substance in a smartphone or laptop. Share your findings.

Identify the data centers within 100 miles of your school, then calculate how much water each one consumes using attorney Masheika Allgood’s calculator.

Learn how nearby data centers can affect your electric bill.

Consider what it’s like to live in the shadow of bitcoin.

MOVE TOWARD LIVING WITHIN YOUR BIOREGION’S OFFERINGS

Learn how to grow at least three favorite foods—and make soup.

Play Fish Banks, a game developed by Dennis Meadows (Limits to Growth): determine the maximum number of fish you can harvest from year to year without degenerating the fish population.

Like South Korea (and many schools), ban the use of mobile phones and smart devices during class hours.

Try Screen-Free Sleep—and have students report their findings.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS—AND MAKE RULES THAT PROTECT NATURE & PUBLIC HEALTH

Study Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. Consider a People’s AI Action Plan.

Study a localism manifesto—and create your own.

Pacific shipper Matson halts transport of EVs over fire safety concerns. Can you find manufacturers that value safety as much as profit?

In 2023, Apple claimed that (based on carbon offsets) its new Apple Watch was “carbon neutral.” In Germany, Deutsche Umwelthilfe sued. In August, Frankfurt’s Main Regional Court ruled that Apple’s advertising was misleading and breached Germany’s Unfair Competition Act. Would your class explore the meaning of “carbon neutral?”

Learn about Community Rights. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) helps citizens to reaffirm local decisions and resist state legislation that denies their authority to enact local lawmaking. For example, after the Ohio legislature prohibited communities from enacting “rights of nature” laws after Toledo residents overwhelmingly voted for The Lake Eric Bill of Rights, CELDF offered Community Rights. After the Athens and Cuyahoga County banned single-use plastic bags, the Ohio legislature banned local “bag bans—and CELDF offered Community Rights.

Create an organization that provides mutual aid.

STUDY HOW TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS WATER SUPPLIES AND WATER HEALTH

Watch Asianometry’s The Big Data Center Water Problem. Jon Y reports that a single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes. For one example, the Utah Data Center (part of the U.S. National Security Agency) daily guzzles seven million gallons of water. Also see Jon Y’s Big Semiconductor Water Problem and

Data Centers in Southeast Asia.

Rare earth mining contamines dust and groundwater with heavy metals and radioactive chemicals that threaten public health. But the Trump administration will bypass contracting laws in a $3.5 billion rare earth minerals deal in order to avoid standard safeguards like the Competition in Contracting Act and Cost Accounting Standards. In UK, in response to rising energy bills, Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch called opposing extraction of all remaining North Sea oil and gas reserves “an act of economic disarmament.”

The UK’s government recently announced a “nationally significant” water shortage. If dry weather continues, the whole country could run out of water. The UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has warned of exceptionally low river flows. Reservoirs are also at extremely low levels and groundwater is dwindling. Businesses could be banned from using water; hotel swimming pools could be drained, offices to go uncleaned. What causes UK’s water shortage?

After Meta broke ground on a $750 million data center (to support AI) in Newton County, Georgia, Beverly and Jeff Morris’s water taps dried up. One data center company asked for nine million gallons of water a day (enough for 30,000 households.) Some legislators tried to slow down new data centers with a bill to repeal tax incentives; but Governor Kemp vetoed those efforts because the bill would hurt economic development. Should people, farmers or tech corporations get the water?

STUDY HOW TECHNOLOGIES USE ENERGY

In Wyoming, data centers use alarming amounts of electricity (and water). Could any legislation support Wyoming residents?

At Amazon’s biggest data center (for A.I.) will consume 2.2 gigawatts of electricity—enough to power a million homes. Meanwhile, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is building a two-gigawatt data center in Louisiana. OpenAI is erecting a 1.2-gigawatt facility in Texas and another, nearly as large, in the United Arab Emirates.

As more cities lose drinkable water, Erin Brockovich and Suzanne Boothby suggest planning for No Water. Would you change your media and A.I. habits if it meant your could still have water?

UPDATES

Since Vistra Energy’s lithium-ion battery storage facility burned down at its Moss Landing, CA site in January, 2025, the public has not received any list of the pollutants’ concentration or their footprints’ spread. Never Again Moss Landing (NAML) has requested several actions, including that the EPA require that Vistra provide a pollution profile before hazardous cleanup work begins.

The Santa Fe County Commission voted to permit AES’s proposed 680-acre solar and battery energy storage facility beside Rancho Viejo and Eldorado—despite the project’s numerous code violations and fire risks and the County’s lack of personnel trained to deal with a BESS fire or toxic fallout. The Clean Energy Coalition (CEC) will appeal this decision to district court. Meanwhile, PNM aims to sell itself for $11+ billion to Blackstone, a private equity firm. This is relevant because AES can’t build its solar and battery storage facility without a Power Purchase Agreement with PNM; and PNM has already denied this several times.

TURN, The Utility Reform Network, reports that California has saved landlines and stopped AB 470, despite AT&T’s spending $2 million on lobbyists. This is welcome news. However!—a new, proposed FCC rule would eliminate all requirements for telecoms to retire landlines. Given the recent outcry in California around retiring that state’s landlines, shouldn’t the FCC enact a law that landlines should continue to remain available? Send your comments to the FCC! Alert AARP, our local cities and counties in California and the other states that still have landlines, League of California Cities, CWA, TURN, CPUC Public Advocates, and all the organizations that have opposed the landline and COLR retirement in California, so that they send comments to the FCC.

An MIT study finds that despite $30-40 billion in GenAI investment, 95% of organizations get zero return from it.

In Colorado, legislators are deliberating on the nation’s first for AI regulations. Juan Sebastian Pinto notes that we are delegating a lot of decisions to AI systems’ designers—the richest people on Earth, who have aim to advance technology at all costs. He also asks: Could software support communities, rather than large corporations and governments? Could we return to human decision-making?