Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes	Part A: The context
10 minutes	Part B: The challenge
35 minutes	Part C: The solution
05 minutes	Reflection

Note for teachers:

You could also use this as a pre-assessment task to discover how much your students already understand about energy, electricity, and energy production. In which case, you might wish to have students construct their mind maps independently instead of pooling their knowledge as a whole class.

You could also revisit this task as a summative assessment task, asking students to construct a vision of a utopian climate change future.

Part A: The context

Step 1.

Explain to your class that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. It was created to

provide policymakers (governments) with regular scientific updates about climate change;
highlight the impact climate change will have on the planet in the future; and,
offer some ideas about how to tackle the challenges of climate change's potential effects on the planet.

In 2021-22, the IPCC released Part 1 of the Sixth Assessment Report. This is the most up-to-date physical understanding of the climate system and climate change.

Step 2.

The report makes a number of important points:

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land (A1). You might like to take a moment to discuss with students the meaning of the word unequivocal.
Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades (B1). The report describes five possible climate futures, where #1 is not great and #5 is extremely bad. If we want to keep global warming at less than two degrees, which the IPCC says is the best-case scenario, we need to reduce our C02 and greenhouse gas emissions significantly, and start right away.

Step 3.

Explain that 'net zero' or 'carbon neutral' are terms that refer to achieving an overall balance between greenhouse gas emissions produced and greenhouse gas emissions taken out of the atmosphere. Getting to net zero means we can still produce some emissions, so long as we're doing something else to reduce the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere at the same time, kind of like balancing a set of scales (more info).

Step 4.

Give students some time to respond to this information. Enable them to share their feelings and discuss their thoughts on the matter, so that they feel validated and reassured about approaching this content.

Acknowledge how hard a challenge this report sets. While this real-world issue is essential for students to understand, there is no doubt it can make them feel sad or anxious about the future is becoming darker and scarier by the day.

So, reassure students that we can have a hopeful and optimistic outlook on this report, rather than one of doom and gloom. Explain that optimism involves looking objectively at a situation and making a conscious decision to focus on the good (more info), and that hope is the belief that you can make an impact (more info). Explain to students that you are going to look ahead, identify what needs to be improved, and then work on the skills and confidence so that they can go out and do it.

If you're interested in learning more about how to approach challenging topics in your classroom through a Hope and Optimism lens, consider our PD course.

Part B: The challenge

Step 1.

As a class, discuss everything you know about climate change. As you go, create a large mind map on the board.

Some of the categories you could explore with students might include:

transportation
nature (animals, the planet, oceans)
electricity and power generation
food production

Step 2.

Start with some of the challenges. Sub-sections of the above might include:

carbon emissions from fossil-fuelled transport
deforestation
ocean warming and coral death
global warming
bushfires and other extreme weather events
fossil-fuelled power generation

Step 3.

Finally, look at some of the solutions that are already occurring. Suggestions might include:

development and uptake of electric cars
planting of new trees and activism to protect old-growth forests
development and implementation of carbon-capture technologies
conservation efforts
solar panel and wind farm developments

Step 4.

The IPCC's possible climate-change scenarios paint quite a dire picture of our future. This is to jolt us into action to address our carbon emissions and climate change.

However, it's important to remind students that the writer's of the report stress that "Scenarios are not predictions; instead, they provide a ‘what-if’ investigation of the implications of various developments and actions.”

These futures are possibilities based on the consequences of our current climate-change inaction, and the emissions we have already contributed to the atmosphere. However, it is not certain that these things will come to pass - especially if we work hard to address the damage.

Part C: The solution

Step 1.

Watch:

(((video://vimeo.com/668443736)))

IPCC - Solar Punk Example (vimeo.com/668443736)

Step 2.

For this task, students will create a descriptive writing piece of their vision of our best climate-change future.

Step 3.

Prompt student thinking by asking:

What could our best possible climate change future look like?

Even the IPCC's most positive scenario still sees our climate warming by a few degrees as the planet deals with the consequences of decades of climate change inaction. However, what if we exceeded the IPCC's hopes?

What could our climate-change future look like if we took current technologies and efforts to their best possible outcome?
What is the potential if we went even further, working as hard as we can towards climate change solutions and even inventing more solutions that are beyond our current technological abilities?

Step 4.

Return to the mind-map you created earlier. As a class, discuss each of these categories in turn.

For example, what does our best possible green power grid look like? Encourage students to be ambitious with these hopes, and use creative thinking to imagine the possibilities if we aimed for a climate change utopia.

Other possible suggestions could include:

Transportation - Do we all still drive fossil fuel cars? Do we ride bikes? How else could we get around? How do we travel internationally? Or has that industry changed?
Food - What do we eat? How do we grow or cultivate food?
Education / Future jobs - What will they look like? What new jobs and industries have developed that we couldn't have envisioned in this day and age? Why are they necessary? How has the curriculum changed so that students are prepared for these jobs?

Use these discussions to help students plan an approach to their writing piece, offering a perspective on each of the categories as they appear in the best possible climate-change future.

Provisions for Learning Extension: These prompts are also available on the Student Worksheet to help students structure their writing.

Step 5.

Independently, students create a piece of descriptive writing reflecting on the state of the earth and society in our best climate-change future. Ask students to imagine they are living in this future, perhaps looking out the window of their house and noticing all the positive actions people are taking, technologies that are working, and the state of the world, as well as looking back on the recent past (our current possible near future) and what was done to achieve this positive future.

For example (Text - Our best climate change future):

High-speed electric trains cruise through the sky, able to take me halfway around the world in less than five minutes. They rest on grav-platforms so that they do not disturb the forests that cover every part of the earth.

Scientists and teams of 'land-guardians' have worked hard to rejuvenate these old-growth forests. They didn't even resort to cloning and genetic manipulation technologies to create super-trees as some people had pushed for early on, but instead returned to traditional land management knowledge and techniques to care for and restore the earth.

Grazing and farming land was dramatically reduced as we moved fully to lab-grown meat and perfected vertical farming technologies, reducing farms to a few small blocks that could feed the world.

Ages ago, the Collective Earth Council (CEC), established to eliminate national borders and rivalries and instead focus on the needs of the entire planet, introduced laws to ban logging and deforestation, but they were hardly needed. We have eliminated our reliance on wood and steel for construction purposes. Instead, we mostly use carbon recovered from the atmosphere by huge, floating artificial 'tree' turbines and reprocessed into building blocks of carbon.

Bushfires, droughts, and other extreme weather events and temperatures were our biggest challenges, but we invested heavily, first in water bomber fleets and fire lookouts, and later in rain machines capable of regulating rainfall in areas where it was needed it most. Soon even they became redundant as we restored our natural billabongs and farming drew on these less and less.

We derive most of our energy from the sun, having developed super-efficient solar panels and unlocking quantum storage capacity so that batteries the size of my thumb can power cities and last for decades.

We used asteroids to restore the icesheets and cool the ocean in time to recover much of the coral. The great barrier reef now encircles Australia.

Provisions for Differentiation: Set up a quiet space with a chair and a filming device. Invite students to narrate their vision of the best climate-change future to the camera.

Share these visions at an assembly, parent day, or on your social media.

Reflection

Invite some students to share their writing with the class.

Encourage students to keep this piece of writing close and safe. Encourage students, whenever they are feeling despondent or overwhelmed thinking about the future or about climate change news, to return to this reflection and remember that a positive future is possible if we work hard towards these solutions.

Teacher reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

IPCC - Imagining our Climate Future (Science Assessment task)

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