With an emphasis on solutions to the environmental crisis, Ecologues creates a much-needed space to debate and educate. Speakers from the first Ecologues meeting with staff members from The American Library in Paris and News Decoder. If you follow the headlines, the...
Anxiety about the fate of the planet is harming the mental health of young people. Can we help them funnel their frustration into a force for change? Climate change activist holding a banner with the message, “The world is dying and so are we,” 24...
In a prime example of a student-produced piece, high school student Kendal Andress from the Tatnall School in Delaware discusses solution-focused climate action in response to rising eco-anxiety among young people. With sources ranging from UNICEF to interviews with NGO founders and local leaders, this article highlights News Decoder’s mission to amplify youth voices.
Exercise: Prepare four large pieces of butcher paper. Label the sheets: individual action, local action (city/state/province), national action, international action. Have your class read the article, then divide students into four groups. Each group will begin with one sheet and write down ways in which people can act to fight climate change at the level written on their paper. After 10-15 minutes, have students pass the paper along, so another group can add to their responses. Continue until all groups have contributed to all four sheets of paper and discussed action at all four levels. (Activity can also be done through a shared Google Slide deck).
The Great Barrier Reef isn’t just an endangered world wonder. Protecting the world’s largest coral reef system is also key to Australia’s economic growth. A diver swims past coral on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, 18 October 2016. More than 90%...
Protecting the environment isn’t just the right thing to do, it can also be the profitable thing to do. Take the Great Barrier Reef, for example, which has an estimated value of $56 billion Australian dollars. Help your students disentangle the complicated world of environmental economics with this article.
Exercise: After reading the article, have students take the WWF Carbon Footprint questionnaire at https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/#/. The questionnaire estimates individuals’ carbon footprint, looking at food, travel, home and consumption habits. After the questionnaire, launch a class discussion on how changes in individual habits may contribute to fighting climate change — and might even be a profitable choice.
Turn on the tap, and the world’s most valuable commodity pours out. Maybe it’s time to invest in water — to line our pockets and protect our planet. Clean water pours from a hose. Credit: Cassio Henrique. Getty Images. This article is the seventh in a...
Water is one of the most important commodities in the world. It is also tradable as companies seek to make money by purifying and distributing it. Some organizations that are pushing for climate change action are investing in water companies to pressure private industry to be better stewards of water. These investments in water stocks are proving to be financially profitable.
Exercise: The story identifies a list of companies that provide water or water infrastructure: IDEX Corp., Xylem Inc., Danaher Corp., Ecolab, Roper Industries, Pentair Plc, Ferguson Plc and American Water Works Co. Inc. Divide students into investment teams with $1 million each to invest. Have them first brainstorm ways water and systems for providing water could be improved in their area or elsewhere. Then have them look up the website of one or more of those companies to see if they can tell what the company does to improve water supply or quality. Would their $1 million invested in that company help towards the improvements they identified as needed?
Oh Tang! If our seas rise too high there are exoplanets to settle. But hope you like freeze-dried food, because it’s a long trip out there. This illustration shows a fictional astronaut on Mars, as viewed through the window of a spacecraft. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)...
Fearing the prospect that our seas will rise and our climate will get too hot to make life comfortable on Earth, some smart people are thinking about new homes in outer space. But is there a so-called Planet B we could actually reach in a spaceship and what would life be like there? In an entertaining article that takes us through time and space, correspondent Tira Shubart explores these possibilities and comes to the conclusion that maybe we should concentrate our money and energy on cleaning up our own backyard.
Exercise: Shubart tells us that it is unlikely that Mars could be made habitable for humans. But let’s say that your students could come up with the technology that would make that possible. What would they need to produce to make Mars a place where people could live? Have them brainstorm a list of devices that would solve the problems Shubart discusses in the article. Then ask them to come up with a list of ways we could clean up our environment on earth.