The Greentech Center for Excellence, a Los Angeles-based green technology incubator, proposes a Solar School Initiative and Green Campus Program that aims to empower teachers and students to learn how to design and build a ’green and global’ economy in the Pacific Century. School campuses are uniquely situated to function as neighborhood communications centers during local and regional emergencies when power lines are down and other public challenges occur, in particular in the event of a massive earthquake emergency. Similarly, school administrators must be prepared to provide Online Learning to their schools’ students during epidemics and pandemics, such as the current swine flu pandemic, to enable the continuity of student coursework and learning when students are not able to come to school.
The Green Technology Institute, Inc. and the Green Institute for Village Empowerment, Inc. (www.GIVEforthefuture.org), both non-profit public-benefit organizations, have formed a coalition of companies, the Green Coalition, which will partner with the Greentech Center for Excellence to implement “learning by doing” programs in cooperation with local schools. Some of these educational programs will be conducted in ‘Solar Televillage Centers’ that will be patterned after the Audubon Center at Debs Park in Los Angeles, a zero-energy, platinum LEED-certified building near downtown Los Angeles whose mission is educate students about living sustainably and symbiotically between humanity and nature.
21st-century students must be prepared to think globally in the Asia Pacific Century as well as to act locally to create a sustainable global future. We are creating a new green civilization from the ground up and students must be given the tools to become the future leaders for change. Our schools and college campuses are an excellent place to meet this challenge. The new Green Internet Revolution, a product of the convergence of the information technology (IT) and green technology (GT) in whose evolution Los Angeles has played a prominent role, provides dynamic capabilities for the K-12 schools and colleges to help shape the future. The Internet — largely developed at UCLA – and aerospace technology — preponderantly developed in Southern California – contain the potential to revolutionize everything from education (e.g., universal distance learning, telemedicine, e-commerce by satellite/Internet TV, and Telepresence) to agriculture (e.g., NASA-developed aeroponics) to energy (e.g., solar-photovoltaic electricity generation), and much more.
The increasingly obvious need to decarbonize human activity and save the global environment is both an opportunity and a requirement for action. The Green Coalition proposes a multifaceted Green Campus Program that addresses these challenges, takes account of these capabilities, and meets these opportunities.
Saving the Earth . . . and Creating a Green Generation of Leaders
