The Vermont Energy Education Program, a nonprofit organization, would like to get access to all Vermont students as well as adults to address climate matters and energy policy.

The organization already has influence. It has been operating in 80% of Vermont schools within the last five years, according to Andy Shapiro, the energy engineer for the organization.

On Tuesday, he told members of the House Education Committee that educational efforts regarding green technologies should focus on youth.

“I realized it was pretty hard to convince adults about payback, but kids, they just want to know, does this stuff work?” he said. “They generally think [green energy policies] are a good idea.”

He detailed the range of programs that they bring to Vermont’s K-12 schools.

FOCUS ON YOUTH:  The Vermont Energy Education Program wants all school children and adults in Vermont to be educated about the dangers of climate change so they will embrace massive transformations in energy.

“We provide to teachers the materials they need, a complete kit that’s even got all the consumables and training at whatever level they need,” he said. “… We provide materials, training, and ongoing support —  how solar electric works, how wind works.

“We have units on transportation, we have units on housing, on how climate change works, on how global warming works, these are all hands-on kits.”

The organization seeks to get children to continuously think about their own impact on the environment.

“What’s the energy and climate impact for each mile that you walk to school, ride in a car, ride in a big SUV with one person or four people, ride in a school bus, and so on,” he said.

“We then inflated a big polyethylene tube whose volume was equivalent to the carbon dioxide emitted by the class to get there for one week, and it was about four feet in diameter and about 60 feet long, and so this was pretty impressive for the kids.”

Sophia Donforth, the organization’s executive director, also testified before the committee. She said demand is high for this program.

“We are getting contacted by people left and right for the need for more energy and climate education in the state, specifically related to the climate action plan that was passed recently,” she said. “The Climate Action Plan identifies education as one of the single most important pathways to making the transition that we all know needs to happen.”

Kids not understanding the case for climate action

“We’re hearing from youth activists, kids who choose to spend their time making year-long commitments on a high-school team to work with us to try and make a change within their community, that they don’t have a good enough understanding about how climate change works, what the human impact is, and what are the things that we can do,” Donforth said.

“Despite that being a part of our science standards, it’s not happening in Vermont schools sufficiently, the kids who care about it enough to be climate activists are feeling ill-prepared.”

She also commented on the challenges of address climate matters with adults, including that some people don’t share the notion that major investments in green energy are going to pay off in the end.

“It looks like the money they are going to spend and they can’t see the savings,” she said. “… We would really, really, like to have the support to bring this to adults as well,” she said. “We have a document that we’ll pass around that we call, ‘Climate Education for All.'”

Wants close to a half million dollars

Donforth said her organization wants $458,000 in one-time state funds to “make sure that we are training all of our teachers to teach this very important content to kids.” She also wants the money to go to programs for libraries and other venues to reach more people.

Michael Bielawski is a reporter for True North. Send him news tips at bielawski82@yahoo.com and follow him on Twitter @TrueNorthMikeB.