The Soil Solution to Climate Change

What If A Solution To Climate Change Was Beneath Your Feet? 

Soil is a living universe beneath our feet. As important to our lives as clean air and water, soil also holds a potential solution to the global climate crisis. Increasing numbers of scientists, farmers and ranchers are implementing innovative land use practices that build fertile soil and sequester atmospheric carbon  These methods of land management have the potential to provide us with nutritious food, improved human health, cleaner water, and a healthier planet for all.

World wide, most soils are depleted of carbon. The atmosphere contains an excess of carbon in the form of CO2, a climate change causing gas. What if that CO2 could be removed and stored in our carbon-hungry soil through land management practices? Find out how in The Soil Solution.

The Soil Solution to Climate Change was one of thirteen films featured in A Climate of Change Tour sponsored by 350.org, TRUST campaign and Wild and Scenic Film Festival.  It has screened at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Sausalito Film Festival, Awareness Festival, Davis Film Festival, Wild and Scenic Film Tour 2013 and the One Earth Film Festival. 

Anything that we do to increase soil fertility could be a step in reversing climate change. 

Here's what you can do:

 What Goes Up Must Come Down!- Cover bare soil with plants! Fertile soil is a natural sink for atmospheric carbon; the very same carbon that contributes to climate change.  Excess carbon can be pulled out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis and into plants and the soil where it can have a beneficial effect. 

Support Farmers and Ranchers Who Treat The Soil Like Gold- Buy from local food producers who increase soil fertility by using climate friendly agricultural methods including no or low-till plowing, cover cropping, composting and organic farming. If you eat meat, buy grass-fed beef from ranchers who practice holistic or rotational grazing methods that mimic the natural patterns found in nature. 

If You Grow Your Own Food, Grow Your Own Soil- If you grow food, take care of your soil. Increase soil fertility by avoiding the use of toxic synthetic pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides on your garden or lawn. These poisons kill microorganisms that reside in and on the soil.  These organisms perform numerous ecosystem services; including providing nutrients for plants, creating soil humus and loam and increasing plant health.  The soil is filled with billions of unemployed microorganisms ready and willing to take on the job of providing nutrients to plants and indirectly to you. 

Increase Your Skill Set- If you feel hopeless about climate change- it’s time to take action. Learn how to grow food without increasing atmospheric CO2. Take a course in organic gardening or regenerative farming. If you work with animals, learn about the benefits of rotational grazing.  Get to know your local soil microbes and the Soil Food Web.

SYMPHONY OF THE SOIL

By the end of this video your will learn a lot about soil. Particularly, you will understand soil formation factors, soil formation processes and soil types. After watching this video you will have a good package of skills and knowledge about soil genesis and classification. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For details about soil you can check following links: 1. Living Soil Film    • Living Soil Film   -------------------------------------------------------- 2. Dirt! The Movie (FULL)    • Dirt! The Movie (...   ------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Symphony of the Soil - Deborah Koons Garcia, Thomas J. Akin, Serita D. Frey, PhD, Jim Ward    • Symphony of the S...   -----------------------------------------------

Climate Solutions 101 - Playlist of 6 Units

Source: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwYnpej4pQF7UPnt0nkZEa8sxR9TmWR1B

Your climate solutions journey begins now. Filled with the latest need-to-know science and fascinating insights from global leaders in climate policy, research, investment, and beyond, this video series is a brain-shift toward a brighter climate reality.

Climate Solutions 101 is the world’s first major educational effort focused solely on solutions. Rather than rehashing well-known climate challenges, Project Drawdown centers game-changing climate action based on its own rigorous scientific research and analysis. This course, presented in video units and in-depth conversations, combines Project Drawdown’s trusted resources with the expertise of several inspiring voices from around the world. Climate solutions become attainable with increased access to free, science-based educational resources, elevated public discourse, and tangible examples of real-world action. Continue your climate solutions journey, today.

Learn more: www.drawdown.org/climate-solutions-101

#ClimateSolutions101

Inner Climate Change

Source: https://www.findhorn.org/innerclimatechange

How do we navigate the intensity of emotions and reactions stirred up by climate change, or COVID-19 for that matter? How do we come to a place of peace, compassion, forgiveness and life-affirming action?

Both leading edge science and ancient wisdom traditions point us inwards for the answer.

In this documentary you will go with us on a journey to see how our inner climate relates to the topic of climate change. And how changing from within will create the change we need.

The INNER CLIMATE CHANGE documentary focuses on the very personal experiences, insights and responses to the climate crisis, of people who participated in the Climate Change and Consciousness conference (CCC19) held in 2019 at the Findhorn Ecovillage in the northeast of Scotland. Conference participants included 350 youngers and elders of multiple ethnicities and diverse genders from 45 countries.

How to work with your inner world?

The Findhorn Foundation Community has almost 60 years experience in working with the inner world. Use our resources on your own inner journey.

• Watch all the sessions of the Climate Change & Consciousness conference for free.
• Guidance for Life, Opening to Higher Intelligence through the Subtle Realms: 6 day online course to explore how to apply Findhorn’s principle of Inner Listening. Experience required, starts May 31st.
• Transformational Leadership in the Time of Corona. Weekly online Zoom meeting for those of you who are looking for support to work through leadership challenges, to connect with other leaders, and to discover ways to move through the crisis gracefully and effectively.
• Findhorn New Story Programmes: Our transformative suite of ‘Living the New Story’ online learning journeys are available live or on demand, in the spirit of the gift.
• Watch the free online talks and conferences that Findhorn has held over the last years

Food and Climate Change - A Systems Perspective - Online Interactive Guide

UNDERSTANDING FOOD AND CLIMATE CHANGE: A SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE

Link: https://www.ecoliteracy.org/download/understanding-food-and-climate-change-interactive-guide

Exploring the links between food systems and our changing climate from a systems thinking perspective.

Understanding Food and Climate Change: A Systems Perspective explores the links between food systems and our changing climate with an emphasis on systems thinking. A systems approach helps to illuminate how seemingly disconnected phenomena are often dynamically linked and can be understood best when viewed in a larger context. This collection of essays contains an extensive bibliography that provides resources for further investigation.

Available as a free iBook for Mac and iPad users.

A web version is available for all computers and tablets:
Understanding Food and Climate Change: A Systems Perspective

WHAT'S INSIDE: A SAMPLE PAGE

 

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

"Engaging. Smart. Comprehensive. Understanding Food and Climate Change is what our nation’s youth need to face the challenges of our changing planet."

Pam Koch, EdD, RD
Executive Director, Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education & Policy, Teachers College, Columbia University

"The food and wellness movement and the movement to foster awareness and understanding of climate change are among the most powerful social movements in today’s global civil society. And yet, there is hardly any connection between the two, either conceptually or organizationally, even though a thorough understanding of the multiple links between agriculture and climate change seems critical for the survival and well-being of humanity. Understanding Food and Climate Change promotes such understanding in a lively, multicultural way. It will be an invaluable tool for food and climate educators and change advocates, and I highly recommend it."

Fritjof Capra, Ph.D.
Physicist, Systems Theorist, and Author

"I have spent the last year educating myself about the critical and complex connections between agriculture and climate change. How I wish I had started with this guide!

Whitney Cohen
Education Director, Life Lab and Lecturer, UC Santa Cruz

"Agriculture has a huge impact on the environment—greenhouse gases as well as pollution of air, water, and soil. The Center for Ecoliteracy’s Understanding Food and Climate Change is essential for finding out how this happens and what we can do about it."

Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH
Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, emerita, New York University

"Understanding Food and Climate Change is a much-needed resource for educators everywhere that brings the food system “home" in a lucid and informed publication. The food sector, which includes farming, silvopasture, agroforestry, grazing, food waste, and dietary choices—is one of the two largest contributors to global warming, the other being transport. As a solution, it has the potential to be the largest sector in terms of its contribution because it can not only reduce and stop emissions, but it can also bring carbon back home through regenerative land use practices. "

Paul Hawken
Editor of Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

Activity Book: Discover Your Changing World With NOAA

Ten Activities to Introduce You to the Essential Principles of Climate Science

• How does the sun drive Earth's climate system?
• How have plants, animals, and humans affected Earth's climate?
• How do the ocean, ice, clouds and atmospheric gases affect the impact of the Sun's energy on the Earth?
• How may Earth's changing climate affect plants, animals, and humans?

Are you ready to discover your changing world? This free activity book will introduce you to The Essential Principles of Climate Science, help you learn about Earth's climate system, the factors that drive and change it, the impacts of those changes, and what you can do to explore, understand, and protect our Earth. Download the full activity book or individual activities below. Have Fun!

•  Full Activity Book: Discover Your Changing World with NOAA (8.5 MB , pdf)
•  Activity 1: The Great Glowing Orb: Make a Solar Heat Engine (611 KB, pdf)
•  Activity 2: The Climate Team: Make a Solar Cooker (1.5 MB, pdf)
•  Activity 3: Climate Is Our Friend…Isn't It? : Make an Extinction Polyhedron (621 KB, pdf)
•  Activity 4: Climate, Weather…What's the Difference? : Make an Electronic Temperature Sensor (474 KB, pdf)
•  Activity 5: How Do We Know? : Make Additional Weather Sensors and Set Up a Home Weather Station (799 KB, pdf)
•  Activity 6: I Didn't Do It…Did I? : Make Your Own Greenhouse Effect (1.3 MB, pdf)
•  Activity 7: Why Should I Care? : Show How Increased Carbon Dioxide Makes the Ocean More Acidic (295 KB, pdf)
•  Activity 8: Are You Climate Literate? : Play the Essential Principles Challenge (Paper version; 1.3 MB, pdf)
• •  Are You Climate Literate? : The Essentials Principles Challenge (PowerPoint version; 624 KB, ppt)
•  Activity 9: Communicate! : Create a Unique Message About Climate Change (399 KB, pdf)
•  Activity 10: The Incredible Carbon Journey: Play the Carbon Journey Game (2.0 MB, pdf)
•  Activity Alignment to Next Generation Science Standards, Climate Literacy and Energy Literacy Essential Principles and Fundamental Concepts (60 KB, pdf)
• Link: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/discoverclimate/

Rise Up - Climate Change Education Initiative

Rise Up is an IDB climate change education initiative that seeks to encourage children and youth to use their creativity and energy to come up with feasible, sustainable, long-term strategies to mitigate climate change.

Explore Rise Up themes 

We present instruction videos, a Green School Tool Kit and Videogames. These are all materials that teachers and students will be able to use in schools to turn children into brave superheroes with the mission of saving the planet!

• http://www.iadb.org/en/topics/education/initiative-rise-up/resources,20401.html
• http://www.iadb.org/en/topics/education/initiative-rise-up/home,20400.html

Climate Smart Agriculture

 This site is your gateway to implementing climate-smart agriculture. It will help you get started and guide you right through to implementation on the ground, connecting you with all the resources you need to dig deeper.

THE BASICS

• What is climate-smart agriculture?
• Why climate-smart agriculture?
• How is it different?
• Readings and videos

ENTRY POINTS

• Practices
• Systems approaches
• Enabling environments

DEVELOP A CSA PLAN

• Situation analysis
• Targeting and prioritization
• Programme support
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning

FINANCE

• Overview of sources
• Funding opportunities

 
Source: https://csa.guide/

UN-REDD: Registration open for free REDD+ online course

REDD academy learning journal

Interested person can now sign up and take the REDD+ Academy e-course here: http://unccelearn.org. Launched by the UN-REDD Programme in November 2015, the course is self-paced, free of charge and conducted in English.

Developing and implementing REDD+ goes beyond the forestry sector and requires input from a broad spectrum of informed stakeholders. The key term here is “informed”. Many stakeholders continue to feel challenged and overwhelmed by unfamiliar concepts and terminology, and often find it difficult to distinguish between facts and opinions. The demand for capacity building continues remains high. The UN-REDD Programme responded to the demand, with a series of regional and national REDD+ Academies. But clearly, face-to-face training courses can only reach a limited number of people. The Programme therefore developed a REDD+ Academy e-course in English with support from the One UN Climate Change Learning Partnership (UN CC:Learn). The course provides access to high-quality learning on REDD+ to an unlimited number of people.

In describing the REDD+ Academy learning materials, Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director stated, “The modules presented in the e-Academy will equip you with the requisite knowledge to better understand the various components of REDD+ planning and implementation, and provide you with tools to promote the implementation of national REDD+ activities in your country. I encourage all of you to apply the knowledge you will gain over the course duration and to do your part to make REDD+ a national and a global success!” (Link to the video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWipm8pAUVk&feature=youtu.be).

The e-course covers the following 12 topics:

• Forest, Carbon Sequestration and Climate Change
• Understanding REDD+ and the UNFCCC
• Drivers of Deforestation and Forest Degradation
• National Strategies and Action Plans
• National Forest Monitoring Systems for REDD+
• Forest Reference Emission Levels for REDD+
• Policies and Measures for REDD+ Implementation 
• REDD+ Safeguards under the UNFCCC
• REDD+ Finance
• Approaches for Allocation of Incentives
• Introduction to Stakeholder Engagement
• Good governance

Participants can also access to the REDD+ Academy Learning Journals (http://www.uncclearn.org/learning-resources/library/10427). They are available in three languages (English, French and Spanish). These journals aim to provide the introductory information, detailed accounts and learning exercises designed to build the capacity to implement REDD+. The learning journals can also be found on the UN-REDD Programme workspace (http://www.unredd.net/index.php?option=com_guru&view=guruPrograms&task=view&cid=29-redd-academy&Itemid=505).

Source: http://www.vietnam-redd.org/Web/Default.aspx?tab=newsdetail&zoneid=107&subzone=157&itemid=1238&lang=en-US

Disobedience

Disobedience is a new film about a new phase of the climate movement: courageous action that is being taken on the front lines of the climate crisis on every continent, led by regular people fed up with the power and pollution of the fossil fuel industry.

Disobedience is the story of the struggle to save the world.

Disobedience tells the David vs Goliath tales of front line leaders around the world risking life and limb in the fight for a liveable climate.

Interwoven with this riveting verité footage are the most renowned voices in the global conversation around social movements and climate justice for a series that is personal, passionate and powerful.
The stakes could not be higher, nor the missions more critical.

More: http://watchdisobedience.com/


Thanks to Kjell Kühne for sharing this information!

Climate Strike Coordination Support

http://climatestrike.net/

A million students for the climate. We will face humanity's greatest challenge. Together.

Urban resilience with gardening and sustainable employment hopes

by Stoney Chenal

Not until I moved to the South of Vietnam did I hold a strong idea of raising community gardens in cities. But this place is definitely different from Hanoi where I once spent 3 months to ride bicycles around Hanoi to find land for a community garden. One doesnt have to be very critical to realize that the chance for green jobs in Ho Chi Minh city is boundless.

Amazingly, all of reasons for the idea of urban gardening to be advocated and implemented are good. Starting a garden in the school, students can joyfully escape from existing boring environment and science lessons. Young learners even start growing curiosity and desire to explore the beauty of interconnectedness: every ecological element, such as soil, water, seed-plant-root, animals in the garden and so on, is a part of bigger systems and determine the way one another works. Children and youth grow physically and mentally from getting their hands dirty at the practical and interactive learning environment – that can alone solve many urban problems like internet addiction or street violence. At the household and community levels, the idea of growing your own food is far more than effective to protect human health, especially when food safety and chemical food poisons are no longer big concerns of housewives only. Imagine what can be better way to strengthen relationships between neighborhood members who share common spaces, planning, resources, labor works and benefits. Last but not least, there is no doubt that urban gardens are crucial parts in sustainable urban landscape design. 

Using different sustainable materials such as coconut and bamboo, architects find more fun and skillful in designing green spaces for the city.

In short, this is a win-win solution: for human and for nature. My question was that once it is this important, in what further term, urban gardening can figure out solutions for other ecological and environmental problems led by unsustainable practices, and at the same time, create new hopes? Systematic collapse such as man-made climate change threatens not only the natural ecosystem but also livelihood of thousands of people. That is the main motivation for me to start a vocational training programme on urban gardening in Ho Chi Minh City, together with Green Youth Collective – a local social enterprise. Through the process of feasibility study, nothing I could use to illustrate personal surprise to see how many local organizations, restaurants and cafeterias, schools had brought gardens into their spaces. (Im growing a journal saving all stories and people I have met working in the area!) That also means there are immense market demands for jobs available in urban gardening. The good news is this trend is nowhere going to stop.

Our plot for the training is located within a system of a big community garden, where youth easily interact with professional farmers and families with parents and kids spending free time to grow, to harvest and to cook right at the garden. The objective is simple: for them to know how to work with ecological elements, but not forget the idea of a system. This illustrates a picture of sustainability in which the output of a certain production process can be used as the input for one another.

Our working place! Such a beautiful harmonized space to think and to create. Dont you agree?

The programme offers many different faces of urban gardens: either its on a wall, or a rooftop, or a hydroponic garden like this with recycled plastic bottles. Half of bottles are white painted, in order to keep nutrient water from sunlight, and to change the way it should look. Sort of great idea, yeah? We have guest speakers who are gardeners and business owners of places like this to come and to conduct interactive sessions with youth. The design of vocational training programme also serves an objective of equipping youth essential skills, knowledge and attitudes to find their own jobs. There are many entrepreneurs who are our partners have already offered internships and jobs for youth!

Waste management, composting, plant container building..are also the things we are instructing to youth. From my perspective, this is a great way to learn how to live within the limits: when you can not exploit more, you learn how to use available resources in different purposes. Works can be creative and fun!

This start-up belongs to the range of what I belive and work for sustainability literacy. Urban gardening is a beautiful and powerful example of community empowerment, initiating sustainable practices towards resilience to change.

For all information, please contact My Hanh, Project Manager at hanh@greenyouthcollective.org.

Source: http://urbanclimatevn.com/2014/11/14/urban-resilience-with-gardening-and-sustainable-employment-hopes/

 

 

Better Growth, Better Climate

One of the most critical and urgent challenges facing countries today is achieving economic prosperity and development while also combating climate change. 

The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, and its flagship project The New Climate Economy, have been set up to help governments, businesses and society make better-informed decisions on these crucial issues.

The Global Commission is chaired by former President of Mexico Felipe Calderón and comprises former heads of government and finance ministers, and leaders in the fields of economics and business. The Commission's work is being conducted by a global partnership of leading research institutes. Reporting in September 2014, the project will make recommendations on actions and policies that can achieve high quality economic growth at the same time as addressing dangerous climate change. 

The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate was commissioned by seven countries - Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom - as an independent initiative to report to the interational community.

•   Website | The new climate economy

• Report | Better Growth, Better Climate
  02 Oct 2014, pdf, 3MB

 
Source: http://eukn.org/E_library/Urban_Policy/Better_Growth_Better_Climate
http://newclimateeconomy.net/

Leonardo DiCaprio (UN Messenger of Peace) at the opening of Climate Summit 2014

"Well done! Bravo Leonardo Dicaprio: putting carbon tax on emission, remove subsidies for fossil fuels and, of course, renewable energy is unquestionable."
Hang Dao

New Publication by IGES

A Policy Researcher on Resource Circulation and Integrated Waste Management Place of work: IGES Hayama Headquarters Application deadline: 30 April 2014 * Please apply as soon as possible. If there are suitable candidates, we may close the applications before the deadline. >>For details

Policy Brief Quality Education for Sustainable Development: A Priority in Achieving Sustainability and Well-being for All Research Reports Adaptation Decision Making Frameworks and Tools: Multi-criteria Decision Making Tools for Prioritizing Adaptation Actions at Community Level Community-based Forest Biomass Monitoring: Action Research in PNG, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR and Vietnam REDD+ Projects: Snapshots of Selected REDD+ Project Designs 2013

Policy Reports Major Developments in China's National Air Pollution Policies in the Early 12th Five-Year Plan Governance and National Sustainable Development Strategies: Implications for the SDGs Other Reports 3R Policy Indicator Factsheets Best Practices and Recommendations for Waste Reduction towards Sustainable Consumption PDF(1.1MB) (from FoE JAPAN)

Expedition Hope starts today!

Dear friends,

I would like to invite you to join Plant-for-the-Planet on an exciting journey: Expedition Hope from the North Pole to Canada wants to raise awareness about the endangered Arctic and the urgency of acting for our climate now.

Please forward the message from Plant-for-the-Planet's founder Felix (16) below to all interested teachers, students, and schools in your network, report about the project in your newsletter or introduce Expedition Hope on your website.

Many thanks for your support!

best wishes,

Kjell

_________________________________________________________________________________

Dear teachers,

Our global Children and Youth Initiative, Plant-for-the-Planet, has an exciting new project. Together with our friends, I will be planting a symbolic tree at the North Pole on 2nd April 2014. At the same time, Expedition Hope will begin, whereby three polar experts will trek from the North Pole to Canada. Our message:

The Arctic is in danger.

Now is the time to act.

Now is the time to plant trees.

You and your students can also be a part of our expedition. Follow the progress of the expedition team live at www.expedition-hope.org/blog/ and discuss the relevant topics in your lessons. Our e-learning platform, which will go online to coincide with the start of the expedition, will also offer valuable educational teaching materials that you may like to use in your lesson plans.

Your students and the entire school can join in and even plant trees or collect tree donations. For this purpose, we have developed a tree donation collection tool that you can embed on your school website. When expedition returns to civilization in Canada at the beginning of June, the world should be thousands upon thousands of trees better off.

At www.expedition-hope.org, you can find everything you need to know about the expedition. In the attached presentation, we show you how you can be a part of the expedition and how you can make associated lessons interesting.

There is still enough time before the team’s arrival in Canada for you to request support from us to help you to motivate your students:

    Our global headquarters will gladly send you the thematic plan of the expedition, which will contain an overview of all the topics that we plan to be discussing during the expedition. The topics range from the albedo effect, the importance of the Arctic for the global climate, legal ownership claims to the North Pole, to ethical considerations.

    Your students can also ask the expedition team scientific, socially relevant and personal questions. The science journalist Bernice Notenboom will respond in the team’s blog, which will be updated on a daily basis. Your students can prepare in advance, by watching the six-part documentary series Tipping Points. A list of broadcasters who have shown or will show this documentary series can be found here, along with clips from the shows.

    Encourage your students to participate in our global reforestation initiative, which was started by and is supported by students.

    Challenge other schools to a friendly tree-donation collection competition.

Our Carola Bick, Diana Arsulescu und Kerstin Knuth will gladly support you in your preparations and can be contacted at schools@plant-for-the-planet.org.

Please encourage your students to get involved with our global children and youth initiative.

Kind regards,

Felix Finkbeiner (16)

--

Kjell Kühne

Plant-for-the-Planet
Representative Latin America & Worldwide
web: www.plant-for-the-planet.org

• by Valerie Hannah

Climate change is a rich topic to explore in the classroom. From science and geography to politics, it's an area with roots in a range of subjects and can be a great source for debate.

Series: How to teach ...

Previous | Index

How to teach ... climate change

Climate change is a rich topic to explore in the classroom. From science and geography to politics, it's an area with roots in a range of subjects and can be a great source for debate

• Share 123
• inShare3
• Email

• Valerie Hannah
• 
  
• Guardian Professional, Monday 3 March 2014 17.00 GMT
• Jump to comments (5)

Climate change has shown itself recently in the recent flooding across the UK. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA.

Climate change takes on added significance this week as thousands of people across the UK take part in Climate Week, a national campaign to raise awareness of the issue and steps that can be taken to address it.

This week we have a collection of resources to help your students explore the wider issue of climate change and its potential impact.

For secondary pupils, start with the Met Office's Guide to Climate Science. It answers a range of questions including: what is weather; what is climate; has our climate changed before; and what could be the impact of future climate change around the world? The guide is accompanied by a Weather and Climate presentation and teacher's notes. There is also a Climate Zones Poster that helps explain how human activity is leading to changes in weather and climate.

Have I Got Climate Science For You is an engaging interactive quiz from the Science Museum that asks students to apply their knowledge of climate change and think about its implications. There's also a climate report activity designed to help students understand the difference between weather and climate, and to consider the impact that climate change can have on their and other people's lifestyles. Carbon Cycle Caper is an activity in which students play out the carbon cycle, to understand how it has been affected by our use of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution and how this underlies current worries about climate change.

Climate change controversies: A simple guide provides a user-friendly overview of the scientific understanding of climate change. Produced by the Royal Society, the document gives answers to eight of the most commonly asked questions about the science of climate change. There's also Climate Change: A Summary of the Science. It looks at the current scientific evidence on climate change, highlighting the areas where the science is well established, where there is still some debate, and where substantial uncertainties remain.

Combating climate change is a resource from the EU Commission that focuses on the EU's commitment to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 20% by 2020. It draws students' attention to ways of using energy resources more sustainably, switching to more renewable forms of energy, capturing and storing carbon dioxide and reversing deforestation.

The Climate Change resource pack includes an eight-page student booklet that features summaries of the world's climate, the greenhouse effect, the human contribution to climate change, the effects of climate change, and what can be done about it, created by BP Educational Service.

Explore the key causes of climate change by looking at and questioning a range of perspectives and explanations with this resource, Make the Link Climate exChange - What is Climate Change.

Big Picture Health and Climate Change is a magazine that explores the potential impact of climate change on human health and includes interviews with people whose lives are directly affected by climate change.

Oxfam have a variety of climate change resources for secondary students. The effects of climate change on the UK aims to enable pupils to make connections between their own lives and the issue of climate change by examining implications for the UK now and in the future, while case studies are used to explore the Effects of climate change around the world. There's a climate change quiz and a presentation that explores the impact climate change is having on the world's poorest communities. There are also lots of ideas for taking action on climate change including organising film screenings and writing to your MP.

Pathways to education for sustainable development is a guide from the WWF that offers a whole-school approach to addressing sustainability in schools for staff who are interested in facilitating the process. The guide can be used as a whole resource, or activities can be used alone. The WWF has also created a teaching resource that looks at the impact of climate change on the Russian Arctic and paths to solving the problem. There's also a poster that explores climate change by looking at the impacts of human activity in Latin America and in the UK.

For more information, check out the Guardian's interactive resource, Everything you need to know about climate change.

On a lighter note, Ditty Box: Tackling Climate Change is a teaching resource from the Poetry Society giving an adaptable lesson plan by poet Karen McCarthy Woolf around creating list poems on the theme of climate change.

For primary pupils, Sunny Schools have created a pack of six lessons that look at topics including climate change, carbon footprints and renewable energy. The lessons can be used individually or together to create a whole topic. They are accompanied by activity sheets and photo-cards. There's also an activity which looks at different people's opinions about climate change.

And finally, Primary Leap has created a number of reading comprehension tasks about extreme weather events sometimes attributed to climate change. These include flooding, tornadoes and hurricanes.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2014/mar/03/how-to-teach-climate-change

Hot spots: Global temperature rise

On average, global temperatures will exceed historical norms as soon as 2047 and no later than 2069, according to new research by scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In some places, it will happen a lot sooner: 2020 in Manokwari, Indonesia, and 2023 in Kingston, Jamaica, the researchers predict. For Washington, it will be 2047. If concerted steps are taken to rapidly mitigate carbon dioxide emissions, the warmup will be slowed by decades.

• Without carbon dioxide mitigation

• With carbon dioxide mitigation

*Using temperature data from 1860 to 2005 as a baseline, climate departure describes the point in time that the average temperature of the coolest year after 2005 becomes warmer than the historic average temperature of the hottest year, for a specific location.

Source: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/hot-spots/506/

Climate After Growth

by Rob Hopkins Asher Miller

In this provocative paper, PCI Executive Director Asher Miller and Transition Movement Founder (and PCI Fellow) Rob Hopkins make a convincing case for why the environmental community must embrace post-growth economics and community resilience in their efforts to address the climate crisis.

Executive Summary

The nearly ubiquitous belief of our elected officials is that addressing the climate crisis must come second to ensuring economic growth. This is wrongheaded—both because it underestimates the severity of the climate crisis, and because it presupposes that the old economic "normal" of robust growth can be revived. It can’t.

In fact, we have entered an era of “new normals”—not only in our economy, but in our energy and climate systems, as well. The implications are profound:

• The New Energy Normal. The era of cheap and easy fossil fuels is over, leading the industry to resort to extreme fossil fuel resources (tar sands, mountaintop removal coal mining, shale gas, tight oil, and deepwater oil) to meet demand. Unfortunately, these resources come with enormous environmental and economic costs, and in most instances provide far less net energy to the rest of society. They also require much higher prices to make production worthwhile, creating a drag effect on the economy. As a result, high energy prices and economic contraction are likely to continue a back-and-forth dance in the coming years.
• The New Climate Normal. Climate stability is now a thing of the past. As extreme weather events grow in severity, communities are increasingly adopting strategies that build resilience against the effect of these and other climate shocks. At the same time, we must take dramatic steps if we hope to avoid raising global temperatures more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. According to Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre, this would require a 10% reduction in CO2 emissions per year, starting now—a rate so significant that it can only be achieved through dramatic reductions in energy use.
• The New Economic Normal. We’ve reached the end of economic growth as we’ve known it in the US. Despite unprecedented interventions on the part of central banks and governments, the so-called economic recovery in the US and Europe has been anemic and has failed to benefit the majority of citizens. The debate between stimulus and austerity is a distraction, as neither can fully address the factors that spell the end of economic growth—the end of the age of cheap oil, the vast mountains of debt that we have incurred, the diminishing economic impacts of new technologies, and the snowballing costs of climate change impacts.

These fundamental changes in our energy, climate, and economic systems require unprecedented (and previously politically untenable) strategies. Yet this new reality is still largely unrecognized. As long as our leaders’ predominant focus remains on getting back to the days of robust economic growth, no national or international climate policies will be enacted to do what is required: cut fossil fuel use dramatically.

Instead of focusing on achieving climate policy within the economic growth paradigm, the US environmental community must embrace strategies that are appropriate to these “new normals.”

Responding to each of these new energy, climate, and economic “normals” will require one common strategy: building community resilience. Efforts that build community resilience enhance our ability to navigate the energy, climate, and economic crises of the 21st century. Done right, they can also serve as the foundation of a whole new economy—an economy comprised of people and communities that thrive within the real limits of our beautiful but finite planet.

Thankfully, innovations that build community resilience are cropping up everywhere, and in many forms: community-owned, distributed, renewable energy production; sustainable local food systems; new cooperative business models; sharing economies, re-skilling, and more. While relatively small and inherently local, these projects are spreading rapidly and creating tangible impacts.

Growing the community resilience movement to the national and global scale that’s needed will require the full support and participation of the US environmental community. Specifically we need to:

• build the capacity of groups—large and small—who are leading these efforts;
• support the growth of a global learning network; and
• enable local investments to flow into community resilience enterprises.

By making community resilience a top priority, environmentalists can offer an alternative to the “growth at all costs” story, one in which taking control of our basic needs locally has multiple benefits. Community resilience-building can create new enterprises and meaningful work, and increase well-being even as GDP inevitably falters. It can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels, while addressing social and economic inequities. And it can strengthen the social cohesion necessary to withstand periods of crisis.

On their own, community resilience projects can’t overcome all the environmental, energy, economic, and social equity challenges facing us. That will require coordinated global, national, regional, community, business, neighborhood, household and individual efforts. But the community resilience movement can help create the conditions in which what is now “politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

How the environmental community responds to the risks and opportunities of the new energy, climate, and economic “normals” will make an enormous difference in its success, and in the fate of humankind.

Source: http://www.postcarbon.org/report/1882095-climate-after-growth