Take Action for Air
Take Action for Air is an environmental education programme for students in years 6-8. Greater Wellington has developed the programme so students can learn about air and air pollution, and take action to keep their air healthy and clean. Take Action for Air complements our Take Action for Water programme and like that programme develops children's environmental awareness and teaches them the skills needed to act responsibly for their world.
Why do Take Action for Air?
Our air is vital for life. We need to protect it to protect ourselves. Of all the planets we know, only ours has an atmosphere that can support life like us. Even that could be a stroke of luck, because for a long time our earth's atmosphere was mostly a very toxic mix of methane and ammonia. These eventually broke into nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon dioxide, and water vapour turned into hydrogen and oxygen.
Considering this immense good fortune we treat our atmosphere poorly. Even the most day-to-day actions - driving the kids to school, heating the house, leaving the lights on - come at a cost to the air we breathe, the atnosphere, and sometimes, our health.
In our region the quality of the air is often good but that is also due in most places to our fortunate geography, sitting bestride Cook Strait and buffeted regularly by both southerly and northerly winds. Nevertheless, there are towns, suburbs and streets which regularly suffer from poor air quality caused by household fires and emissions from transport.
Poor air contributes to agitated asthma, bronchitis, and lung and heart disease. As well as this we're changing the outer skin of the atmosphere. The vital ozone layer has thinned because of artificial chemicals and the planet is warming as we fill the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.
How does Take Action for Air work?
Take Action for Air has three stages which give students opportunities to:
- investigate the reasons why their air is the way it is
- explore their local environment for themselves
- take action to change things by undertaking 'action projects'
This structure us based on the national strategy for environmental education, which says environmental learning should be about the environment (students receive information about environmental phenomena, issues and processes at the investigate stage), in the environment (field studies are undertaken to develop a personal connection with what is being studied at the explore stage), and for the environment (activities are undertaken to influence or change the state of the environment and develop skills).