Hi, I’m Lindsey and I’ll be sharing with you the activity Carbon Crunch. Now this activity shows students that population growth and industrialization have taken a toll on our environment through the years.
Let’s Get Started with the Video Demonstration
In small groups, students will see how human impact on the environment has changed through the years. And then students will be looking at some visual data to see how carbon emissions are distributed inequitably around the globe and see how the impacts of climate change disproportionately impact the world’s most vulnerable populations. Now this is a fairly lengthy, in-depth activity. So you can do a condensed version or do only sections of this activity in one class period, or you could spread it out over several class periods and go more in-depth.
The activity is appropriate for high school audiences. It has very strong ties to AP Environmental Science, AP Human Geography, as well as World Geography, both general and AP.
To complete the activity, you will need access to the World Population History website and, for one part, the students will need access to the website as well. So it can work well to have students complete that portion in a computer lab. They’ll also need access to the provided student worksheet, the student reading, the provided country cards, and the climate vulnerability charts, as well as SnapCubes.
Now this activity is broken down into three parts.
Part 1: Investigating the Timeline
In the first part, students will be exploring the timeline in the World Population History website. So they’ll have to go to the main screen of the World Population History website, the map, and look on the bottom to find the timeline, and they’ll specifically be focusing on the green bar in the timeline that’s labeled with the tree icon. Now within that specific environment timeline, you’ll break students into small groups and each small group will investigate a different portion of the timeline.
Now using their student worksheets, students will be answering questions about their given period of time. For example, what’s the main source of energy during that time period? What are some of the main environmental concerns? Are there any actions being taken to mitigate negative human impacts on the planet? And then lastly, they’ll be creating a summary statement that outlines the general relationship between people and the planet during their given time period.
Past 2: Carbon Emissions Past and Present
Now moving on to part two.
In part two, students will see how carbon emissions have changed through the years and we’ll also see how carbon emissions are distributed inequitably around the globe. So to see how carbon has changed through the years, they’ll still be using the World Population History website, but you’ll want to play the carbon emissions overlay, which shows carbon data starting from the year 1751 and moving forward to 2010. Now by watching this overlay, especially as we’re watching the population dots being added to the map, we can come to some conclusions about the relationship between population growth and carbon emissions. Of course, what we see is that as population grows through time, so do our carbon emissions. However, does that relationship always hold true? That where we have high populations, large populations, we also have a large amount of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere? Well, that actually isn’t always the case. We do have areas that have very high population density that are emitting very little carbon. And conversely, we have areas in the world where we have very low population density and very high carbon emissions, for example, the United States or Canada.
So this is where these country cards come in. You can see on the front of each card, students will find the country name as well as information about how much carbon is emitted in that country in a year on a per capita basis. So we see in China, for instance, we’ve got 4.9 metric tons of CO2 per person in a year. And we’ve said that one snap cube represents half a ton of carbon. So at this point, using the information on the front of their cards, students will build what we call carbon towers to represent their country’s per capita annual carbon output. So the towers would look something like this.
Now, if we had a whole class represented, what you would see is something similar to what you see on your screen. So we’ve got Somalia and Malawi with zero carbon cubes, Haiti, Kenya, Bangladesh with one. On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve got Kuwait with 60 cubes. So that could be six stacks of 10, United States with 40 cubes, and so on. At this point, you’ll want students to line up an order from least carbon emitted to most carbon.
Now, looking at this information, can we tell which country is emitting the most total carbon? We cannot, because remember, we’re looking at per capita numbers. So while we can’t tell total carbon output, we can tell something about the lifestyles within that country, how energy intensive their lifestyles are.
You’ll notice also on your screen that all of these countries are represented in different colors. So you’ll want students to brainstorm what these colors mean. What they represent is actually an income level. And we’ve identified these countries based on the World Bank income levels. So all of the red countries represent low income countries, orange, middle-low income, blue, middle-high income, and green are the high income countries as defined by the World Bank. So can we see a relationship between wealth or income level and carbon emissions on a per capita basis? Well, yes, we can. We see that wealthier countries on a per capita basis emit much more carbon than are low or middle low income countries.
Past 3: The Carbon Budget and Who Stands to Lose
So now moving on to part three. In this section, students will be investigating who stands to lose in the battle against climate change. To begin this section, we ask that students read the student reading, which is a reading talking about the carbon budget.
Now the carbon budget is a concept that has been discussed in the scientific community, which really outlines how much carbon we can emit into the atmosphere before we cause irreparable damage to our planet. The reading naturally raises questions about: Well, how much of that budget do we have left? And of that carbon that we have left to emit, who should emit it? Are there countries that could increase their carbon emissions or some countries that should decrease their emissions? Essentially, how do we divide the remainder of our carbon pie?
After completing the reading and debriefing a little bit with students, students are going to again refer to their country cards. But at this point, look on the back of their card. Students will notice that on the back of their cards, their country has been ranked out of 167 countries in relation to their vulnerability level related to three different climate related risks. So we have the risk of severe weather events, sea level rise, agricultural productivity loss, and the last category is overall risk, which encompasses their risk level for the other three categories combined.
Now, at this point, as they continue to look at their rankings, you’ll move through each of these categories. And as you do, students that are within the top 80 countries most vulnerable to that risk will stand up. Now, as we’re moving through these different categories, have students paying attention to which countries are standing, which countries remain sitting, and especially paying attention to their carbon stacks and their wealth levels.
Now, after you’ve gone through all of these categories, you’ll want to debrief a little bit. So have students talk about which countries were standing the most, did any countries not stand at all, and what did they notice about their wealth level and the amount of carbon they emit. And what we see is that the countries that are the most vulnerable to climate-related risks are also the countries that are emitting the least carbon and are also in the lower income brackets.
At this point, ask the students in their country pairs to figure out which risk they are the most vulnerable to. In other words, where are they ranked the lowest? And brainstorm how they might mitigate some of that risk: what things could be done in their country to protect their people from this risk? So for example, if my country is the most at risk, the highest ranked for negative impacts of agricultural productivity loss, I could talk with my partner about the benefits of building better irrigation systems to water my crops. If my country is the most at risk for sea level rise, thinking about the benefits of building levees to prevent rising waters.
And then consider their income level, their color. Are they a low income country, a middle-low income, middle-high income, or high income? And taking that into consideration, think about if they’d actually be able to build the necessary infrastructure to prevent some of these climate related disasters, to enact the strategies needed to protect their people. And what we would see, or what students would come to, is that the countries that are in the lower income brackets, remember those countries that are emitting the least carbon, would not be able to mitigate those risks and cope with the challenges that they’ll face from climate change.
So to represent this, we have a second chart, which is climate related risk adjusted for coping ability. And what we see is that, as we expected, our low income countries and middle-low income, those red and orange countries, move to the top of the chart and our green countries move to the bottom.
Now, when we’ve come to the conclusion of this activity, a lot of the discussion has happened already as we’ve moved through this exercise. So during the debrief, it can be really helpful to have students think ahead about what do we do about some of these inequities around the world. Now one way to do this is to bring it back to that student reading and have students thinking about the carbon budget. And like we mentioned, thinking about how we divide the carbon pie. Are there any countries that might be able to increase their carbon emissions? Are there countries that will need to significantly decrease their carbon emissions? Essentially, how do we maintain our budget, stay within our budget, and continue to provide an improved quality of life for all of the world’s citizens?
And that’s the activity, Carbon Crunch. For more information on this activity and lots of other activities, you can visit our websites, www.worldpopulationhistory.org and www.populationeducation.org. Thanks for watching.