BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — As Earth Day approaches many are looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint. For one local teacher, that lesson is starting in her classroom.
“The Carbon Clean-Up Initiative is a program represented by the Livermore Lab Foundation and their idea was to educate the community and other people throughout California about the issues involved with climate change,” said Chelsy Lancanster.
Chelsy Lancaster, Science Teacher at Ridgeview High School, said before studying the new curriculum students across the region were surveyed and fewer than 50% remembered learning about climate change in a previous class.
“I honestly did not know that much, low to moderate on how our climate is really,” said Jasleen Kaur, Junior at Ridgeview High School.
Kaur’s classmate Gizelle Ortega shared that same sentiment.
“Before I did not have an idea of how much of an impact it was here on earth. After seeing all that information, like the statistics, the facts, it was scary and now I feel a lot more aware and more informed.”
Ortega said she learned that there are small things we can all do now to reduce our carbon footprint, like consuming local and seasonal products, limiting your meat consumption and using reusable shopping bag, but the Carbon Clean Up Initiative has more innovative ideas.
“The major new technology is called direct air capture. So, the idea is that there’s these giant filters that literally take carbon dioxide out of the air through special filters and liquifies it for transport and then it can then be stored underground.”
Lancaster said it’s important to remember that carbon dioxide is one of the main causes of climate change so reducing it will truly help the environment.
She said Kern County is the perfect place for this project.
“For Bakersfield, we have a lot of depleted oil fields so if you’ve ever driven out to Taft, Oildale, you’ve seen there’s a lot of oil fields. Well in those rocks there was once oil, right? But now its empty, so the idea is we will put that liquified carbon dioxide into the spots that are already open from the oil.”
