Teaching Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming
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Photo by Elise Nicol |
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Award-wining photojournalist and author of Earth Under Fire, Gary Braasch, has teamed up with children's environmental writer Lynne Cherry to create a book on the science behind the headlines on Climate Change. How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate shows how scientists track data on global warming and tells the stories of children all over the world that help collect this data.
The book is accompanied by a teacher's guide with lesson plans for grades 5-8 that get students thinking about the knowledge behind global warming news and lets them take actions.
DOWNLOAD :: Sample of grade 5-8 lesson plans [PDF document]
POSTER :: What You—and a Million Kids—Can Do [PDF document]
PHOTO ESSAY :: Gary Braasch's Earth Under Fire
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What You—and a Million Kids—Can Do
The things you do every day use energy and release greenhouse gases into the air. From sunrise to sunset, and even through the night as your house keeps you comfortable, you are using energy—and leaving a climate footprint. When you flip a switch to turn on a light, a power plant somewhere burns fossil fuels. Gasoline powers cars, trucks, SUVs, lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, and boats, and sends up clouds of anthropogenic—human generated—CO2. One gallon of gas gives off nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide.
The actions below will reduce your climate footprint. They are easy changes that will make a difference right away. And it is better to prevent your own CO2 from going skyward than to pay someone else to “carbon offset” your emissions.
We have selected related YES! Stories of people making these changes in their lives and tips on what is possible.
 Walk or ride your bike to school …if it’s safe. Use public transportation. Shop near your home and make one trip instead of many. Vacation by train rather than airplane. |
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| Stop idling and ask your parents to drive an energy-efficient car. Idling the car 10 minutes less a day will save 550 pounds of CO2 per year. Driving a car that gets at least 32 miles per gallon saves 5,200 pounds of CO2 per year. Some hybrids can get 50 miles per gallon! |
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| Re-use, recycle and reduce. ...paper, glass and plastic. Start or improve a recycling program in your community and school. |
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| Replace incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents. |
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| Unplug your house. Heat and electricity in your house make up one-third of the average family’s greenhouse emissions. Turn things off, unplug them, and use appliances less. |
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| Drink filtered tap water rather than buying water in plastic bottles. Carry your own reusable travel-cup for drinks, rather than throwing away bottles and cups each day. |
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| Help to preserve old trees in forests, especially rain forests, which soak up a lot of CO2. If a million kids each raise $100 which is used to protect a million acres of tropical forest, those forests will continue to absorb and store 286,000,000 tons of CO2 per year. |
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| Eat less meat. Cows and sheep produce methane, a greenhouse gas. Raising and processing livestock creates more greenhouse emissions than all the gases from cars and SUVs combined. |
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| Buy mindfully and buy less. Think: Where did it come from? What was it made from? Buy locally grown, in-season food, which takes less fuel to transport, or grow some of your own. Buy un-packaged products. Think about thneeds. A thneed, as Dr. Seuss said in The Lorax, is something you think you need but don’t really need. |
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| Share what you’ve learned with your school. Help your school to be smarter about climate change. Encourage your school to recycle, reduce throw-aways, encourage car-pooling, stop school bus idling, and install a green roof and solar panels. |
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| Get involved in your community.
Write a letter to the newspaper editor suggesting that the town reduce its CO2 emissions. Ask elected officials to sign the Step It Up pledge. Volunteer to help town leaders who are already doing something. Let companies know that you care about using less energy. |
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Reprinted from How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate with kind permission of Dawn Publications.
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How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate by Lynne Cherry and Gary Braasch Dawn Publications, 2008, 66 pages, $17.95 |
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Teacher's Guide by Carol L. Malnor Dawn Publications, 2008, 56 pages, $8.95
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The above story accompanies the April 2008 YES! Education Connection Newsletter
READ NEWSLETTER: Barefoot College
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