1996 - Mitigation
"Actions taken to reduce the damaging effects of something that is harmful"
The "greenhouse effect" has been known about for a long time. In 1824, French mathematician Joseph Fourier realised that the Earth should be considerably colder than it actually is and proposed that the atmosphere must act as an insulator. In 1856 the American scientist Eunice Newton Foote, a notable early campaigner for women's rights, demonstrated that this was due to gases, particularly carbon dioxide, acting as insulators. By the time I was teaching geography during the 1980s, seminal works such as Silent Spring and Limits to Growth were embedded in the consciousness of those who understood this and cared about the future. The Brundtland Report of 1987 coined the phrase "sustainable development" and it became clear that children growing up during the 80s and 90s would need to understand the concept of mitigation in the hope that they would act more wisely than previous generations reared during the age of exuberance and encultured into the cornucopian myth.
The Millennium Children
In 1990 I moved to a new school and in 1992 I began work on my PhD. I realised that the youngest children I was then teaching would attain the age of eighteen in the year 2000 and thus become the first citizens of the new millennium. On this website, the term "Millennium Children" refers specifically to those born in the year 1982. In parallel with my PhD research, I conceived the “sustainable millennium project” which was enthusiastically supported by the school and won the WWF Curriculum Management Award. The 1990s was a decade of optimism in which these children would learn the importance of mitigation and, on reaching voting age in 2000, demand of governement the urgent mitigation strategies that were needed.
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The project built an Earthkeepers' Training Site and a Sustainability Laboratory.
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It ran FutureWorld energy courses where pupils set a "fair price" electricity through generating it by small scale renewables. They learned that boiling a kettle used energy equivalent to lifting their own weight a height of 50m. (Kilve Court, 1995-2000).
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It received the Worldwide Fund for Nature Curriculum Management Award.
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Pupils marooned on Flat Holm were found hording water under their beds in genuine panic because they had to pay for everything in island currency and water is expensive. A real eye opener!
Flat Holm Island in the Bristol Channel was an ideal location to teach children principles of sustainability base upon value.
Marooning groups of ten twelve-year-olds there for five days at a time was probably the highlight of the project.
At the time of writing, it is clear that we are in deep trouble. Mitigation has been too little and too late. We are now locked into the future the Sustainable Millennium Project hoped to avoid. The UK government has recognised this as an issue of national securuty
Global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security is the title of the UK governments consequent national security assessment.
As of 2023, six boundaries have been crossed: (1) biosphere integrity (including biodiversity loss); (2) climate change; (3) land use change; (4) freshwater change; (5) nutrient flows (nitrogen and phosphorus); and (6) novel entities (chemical and plastic pollution)". (UK Government National Security Assessment, P7)
"There is a realistic possibility that coral reefs in SE Asia and boreal forests will start to collapse from 2030 . . .Restoration of some ecosystems (tropical forests) is more feasible than others (coral reefs, Himalayas)". (UK Government National Security Assessment, P7)
What else does it say? Click for short summary
Why did the Sustainable Millennium Project fail?
Many reasons might be given, but the most concise answer comes from page 208 of my thesis.
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Children are socialised into an anthropocentric culture in which resources are committed to to environmental protection or sustainability only when demands for high levels of service in areas such as health and education have first been satisfied.
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Children have, in general, acquired the values of this culture by the age of eleven.
Click the journal on the left to see an article that demonstrates the truth of this conclusion.
So, are we now "on a highway to hell with our foot on the accelerator"?
António Guterres Secretary General of the United Nations.
Is Guterres right? Read Time and the Anthropocentrism Trap and decide for yourself.
Then reflect upon this:
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How will we know we have got there?
Key Publications
(2026) Speeding Down the Highway to Hell: Could it have been different? Evaluating the potential contribution of Rudolf Steiner’s teachings for a sustainable millennium. Bloomsbury Handbook of Steiner Waldorf Education, forthcoming 2026.
(2008) Here's what you must think about nuclear power: Grappling with the spiritual ground of children's judgement inside and outside Steiner Waldorf education, International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 13 (1), 65 – 74.
(2006) Finding the right kind of awe and wonder: the metaphysical potential of religion to ground an environmental ethic, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 11, 88 – 99.
(2005) Tensions between indoctrination and the development of judgement: The case against early closure, Environmental Education Research, 11 (2), 187 - 197.
(2000) Science: an unreliable friend to environmental education?, Environmental Education Research, 6 (3), 265 - 276.
(2000) Behaviour Change and Environmental Citizenship: A case for spiritual development? International Journal of Children’s Spirituality, 5(2), 131–145. https://doi.org/10.1080/713670914
(1999) Sustainability and the humanities. In. M. Ashley (ed) Improving Teaching and Learning in the Humanities. London: Falmer. 184 -203.
(1998) Economics, environment and the loss of innocence. In N. Clough and C. Holden Children as Citizens, London: Jessica Kingsley, 176 – 182.
(1998) Value as a Reason for Action in Environmental Education. Unpublished PhD thesis, Bristol: University of the West of England.