Exeter School hosts joint lecture

Exeter School hosted a joint local Geographical Association/South West Region Royal Geographical Society evening lecture attended by RGS members and over 100 pupils and parents from Exeter School, King’s Taunton, Taunton School and King Alfred’s School in Burnham on Sea.

Attended by 119 people, the lecture was given by Dr Stewart Barr, senior lecturer in the geography department at Exeter University, on 7 October.

Entitled ‘Are You Doing Your Bit? Environmental Responsibility in an Age of Anthropogenic Climate Change’, this was a fascinating and challenging lecture which focused on  the motivations and barriers encountered by individuals for adopting more ‘sustainable’ forms of behaviour.

Dr Barr began by asking the audience to discuss and consider what leading a ‘good life’ means, and he then presented us with a paradox: as society becomes richer we are not necessarily becoming any happier.

His lecture covered a range of ideas including the economic growth model and the extent to which our society is built around the consumption of oil, a dwindling resource.  He discussed the way in which oil has allowed us a way of life that was unimaginable 100 years ago. To illustrate this he just looked at the distance that some people had travelled to attend the lecture (from Plymouth, Burnham on Sea, Tavistock and Sidmouth).

Ways to promote the behavioural shifts necessary for creating a 'sustainable society' were considered. We were encouraged to consider who was responsible for management of the environment and the point was made that increasingly, responsibility is devolved to us, as citizens and consumers.

Through a critical approach to the links between sustainability, policy and citizen engagement, he argued that sustainability policy needs to move towards using the well-known technique of social marketing. This, he argued is likely to be the only effective means of engaging the majority of citizens in the environmental debate, given the major influence of the consumer society on individual aspirations and beliefs.

Mrs Helen Sail, Head of Geography at Exeter School and secretary of the local Geographical Society said: “The questions asked by pupils at the end of the talk showed that the audience had engaged at a high level with the lecture and pupils stayed behind to ask questions and discuss the implications of his ideas.”