Essay by Eric Worrall
The CO2 ate my homework…
Climate change set to drive down school results and job prospects: Zurich-Mandala Climate Risk Index
Zurich Australia & Mandala
03/02/2025Extreme heat is set to reduce the academic attainment of Australian students by up to seven per cent, which could translate to $73,000 in lost earnings during their lifetime, according to a landmark new report.
…
Extreme heat is projected to reduce writing, spelling, grammar & punctuation, and numeracy by over 7% in some parts of the country by 2060, with students in the Northern Territory and Queensland disproportionately impacted.
Two-thirds of schools in Australia currently face high climate risk. This is set to increase to 84% of schools by 2060 under an intermediate climate scenario with 2 degrees Celsius of warming.
Australian students are projected to experience 34 annual heatwave days by 2060.…
Mandala Partner Dr Adam Triggs said:
“High classroom temperatures can slow children’s cognitive ability and cognitive function, impairing the way students make decisions and process and retain information.
“Under a 2C temperature rise by 2060, our modelling shows this could equate to a $73,000 reduction in lifetime earnings – the equivalent of missing an entire year of employment.
“Perhaps most troubling is how climate risks compound existing inequalities. The same schools already facing socio-educational disadvantage are often those most exposed to climate impacts, creating a double burden for vulnerable communities.
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Read more: https://newshub.medianet.com.au/2025/02/climate-change-set-to-drive-down-school-results-and-job-prospects-zurich-mandala-climate-risk-index/85797/
The referenced report is available here.
The NSW and Queensland education systems have bigger problems than climate change.
We pulled our kid out of the Queensland state system because of out of control bullying. During the last week, a visiting education inspector approached me and asked me if there were any problems. I explained we were pulling our kid out and why. I’m guessing the school teachers gave the inspector a different story, because I got some pretty angry looks a few days later – one of the teachers must have spotted me talking to the inspector, and figured out too late where the inspector’s information had come from. None of them lost their jobs for lying to the inspector.
In addition, there is a big problem with experienced teachers in remote communities. Newly qualified teachers are pressured to serve a few years in the outback, but there are real risks to safety being posted to such schools, so I doubt they stay long. Many outback towns in Queensland and NSW suffer lawlessness and gang violence, along with high levels of alcohol and drug abuse. Towns like Alice Springs in the Northern Territory regularly feature in the news in Australia, but there are plenty of messed up remote towns which rarely make the news, perhaps because they are not serviced by a high quality airport.
I saw one of these trouble spot towns in NSW with my own eyes in 2023 on a road trip. The town rarely makes the news, they don’t have a regular air service. I spoke to someone who was repairing an EV charger, he was laughing – repairing that charger was making him rich, the gangs kept wrecking it. The town doesn’t have a gasoline station, and many of the shop windows are boarded up. The EV charger repair guy kept his van door locked the whole time, even though he was only 3 ft from his van. In the time I stopped, two teenagers did a walk by of my vehicle. I didn’t hang around for long.
I’m not dissing the people who stick it out, and try to deliver an education to students despite intolerable working conditions – those people are heroes as far as I’m concerned.
But there are a lot of issues with Australian education which need to be fixed, which have nothing to do with climate change.
And even if climate change did become a problem, an air conditioner and a bit of building refurbishment is all that is required to make poor quality school rooms habitable, whatever happens to global temperature.
If you want to see how bad gang violence is in some inland towns in Australia, the following video provides some insight.
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Climate ChangeLeftist Academic Woke Agenda and Suicidal Empathy (courtesy Gad Saad) is Causing Aussie Education Standards to PlummetTo wit – School administrations refusing to supply AC in classrooms because we need to save the planet.
If the can’t afford AC, change the class hours to avoid the hottest parts of the day.
Inconvenient, yes, and it addresses and non-existent problem, correct.
However, it the off chance it is a reality, a simple shifting of classroom hours solves a lot for little expense.
What a hoot. Somebody needs to tell those smart little Indians to slow down they are climate deniers by being so bright.
Jacinta has the usual suspects worried-
The left is ‘frightened’ of Jacinta Price
The useless woke dilettantes are on the run everywhere
I could be wrong but surely schools in continuous above average temps would be air conditioned??? If so….. what’s the kerfuffle? More climate scare tactics…. how can any right thinking average Joe buy this bullshit. I’m amazed at the amount of nooks and crannies this climate bollocks has infiltrated…. it kinda confirms my opinion of humans in general… (Not you dear reader 🙂 ) …. we aren’t all that far from the cave.
Some of the buildings haven’t been maintained in a long time.
They can afford expensive new and unreliable energy systems, but they cannot afford to maintain the buildings where future citizens are educated?
Seems there might, maybe, perhaps, be a priority inversion.
I wonder if they factored in all the days the students skip to attend climate protests.
This is weird. I’m not sure about remote areas, but here in Brisbane, more and more schools (and daycares) have air conditioning, compared with even one decade ago, let alone more. I’ve worked in Outside School Hours Care going back to the early 1990s, and we went through plenty of hot summers, with ceiling fans as the best way to cool off. In 2012, the OSHC I worked in had to move to the school hall for the summer holidays because the library above us was getting air conditioning installed. We didn’t get it, they did. Finally. In all this I’m saying that surely, in regard to heat, schools in Australia are getting BETTER, not worse.
Divert and deflect to avoid anyone seeing the real problem. Today’s standard is to do exactly that.
We cannot allow anyone to feel responsible for making a mistake or worse, a stupid decision. Their “self-esteem” would get bruised.
Why do we fall? So we can learn how to get back up.
This is not the same world I was born into, sadly.
I’m curious how hot it gets?
I remember heat waves in SoCal where they gave us days off due to the heat reaching 115-120F in my hometown at times.
There are only a handful of places in Australia where it gets much hotter. But in the North Australian heat is also very humid, >100 with near 100% humidity is pretty hard to take, unless you are very used to it.
100 degrees and 100% humidity? Not even possible.
Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it is well known by me that everyone who lives more than 100 miles south of me is mentally retarded if they didn’t die years ago. This is how I know that a degree of warming retards/kills.