The world is going green and the next generation of green machines, inspired entrepreneurs, Earth conscious students from around the world and the hopes and prayers of humans concerned about the need to go green are all meeting in Atlanta, Georgia this week. To compete for glory and prizes in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, with 1,500 fellow green-machine inventors from 40 countries round the globe.

Canada is sending 16 high school age inventors to this year’s competition, where students from around the world put their science smarts, and desire to make the world a little greener on the line for judges, competitors and the world to see. Canadian entrants were chosen from 25,000 competitors from local science competitions from around the country and the final 1,000 finalists from the original 25,000 participants, to the final 16 that made the cut.

Ideas that will change the future of the planet are on display, including techniques to turn carbon dioxide emissions from cars into useful energy for the planet, a biofuel’s cell that uses cow manure to produce electricity and heat for the home, and the next big world changing idea could be unnoticed, just waiting to be found.

Canada has a storied career at the Fare, with about 85% of Canadian entrants over the past year coming home with some gold at the competition and recently Canada ranked in the top third in an international survey of grade 10 students around the world.
Canadian students, according to Statistics Canada, have been enrolling less and less in the areas of science, technology, mathematics, computer sciences, and engineering and information technology, and in the innovative technologies produced in recent years. A concern for Canadian education professionals, employers in the science trades and Canadian people as a whole, there has been a recent cry from the back benches to increase Canada’s efforts to convince Canadian students to take up the science trades and take our place as a world leader in environmental technologies and innovations, Canada has always been a country of inventors.

Canada and Canadians should make it clear to the Canadian government that the education of the next generation in the areas of science and technology related to producing the innovations of the world gone green is on the top of our list of priorities. Students need to be encouraged to take up the study of the sciences, more scholarships should be made available for students wishing to study the sciences, Canadian children need to be taught to be the next generation of Earth Sheppard’s and a new drive to educate our children on the needs of the planet in the next century should be implemented.

Canada is in a position to be an environmental leader of the next century, to lead the charge in a sense to clean the planet and provide the next generation with the benefits our generation was lucky enough to enjoy, but that are disappearing at an alarming rate. To be an example to the third world countries who would like to have the benefits all Canadians enjoy that we as Canadians are willing to do our part in the changes that are coming to the planet. That we have the strength to implement the policies necessary for the next generation to survive the changes to our planet and these 16 Canadian students and the thousands like them, are the leaders to take us there.

The energy, belief, willingness to go the extra mile, combined with a desire to make a better world lives within the young of the world, we just need to harvest it, direct it in the right direction and the world will benefit.