5 Facilitating the Climate Change Challenge
The goal of this assignment is to determine ways that we can individually reduce our own carbon emissions and put our knowledge into action. For this assignment students will estimate their own carbon footprint, determine how they can reduce it, and take action! Students will create and share a photo journal of their journey to reduce their carbon footprint.
Video summary of the Climate Change Challenge:
Introduction
On a global scale, humans have altered the carbon cycle through the burning of fossil fuels and land clearance. As individuals we contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through our day-to-day activities. This, in turn, is altering the Earth’s climate, which will have profound effects on all parts of the globe. Governments are struggling to take action, but we can work from the ground up. If everyone takes action, we can do a lot! This momentum also pressures governments and institutions to do more. The Climate Change Challenge is your chance to do something and encourage others to follow your example. We want to empower you to make change, and for you to encourage others to do the same.
How the Climate Change Challenge fits into the course
By the time we embark on the Climate Change Challenge, students will have reviewed evidence that shows that the Earth is warming as a result of increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In the Climate Change Challenge, we begin to think about future consequences and what needs to be done to avoid those consequences. Over a 3 week period, students will consider what we can do. Students will explore actions that can be taken at the individual, institutional, community, provincial, country, and global levels to reduce CO2 emissions and global temperatures.
How can individual actions make a difference?
Although we know we need governments and corporations to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, individual actions can be powerful on multiple levels.
First, individual actions can motivate governments to take action.
Second, individuals can influence businesses through their purchasing choices.
Third, individual actions can set an example for others; when everyone participates, changes can happen.
Last, taking action shifts us from a “dark” place to one of hope. This hope gives us energy to seek even greater change on our own, with our family and friends, and with our communities. Keep this in mind as you complete the challenge, but also as your role in the world and sphere of influence changes throughout your life.
Climate Change Challenge Learning Outcomes
In the Climate Change Challenge, students will:
- Determine their carbon footprint and find ways to reduce their footprint.
- Improve research skills by investigating the impact of their climate change challenge on your carbon footprint.
- Improve their oral communication skills by presenting their reflections on VoiceThread.
Climate Change Challenge: The Journey
Use an online calculator to determine your carbon footprint
In this first component of the Climate Change Challenge, students will become familiar with the main sources of carbon that we as individuals contribute to the atmosphere, calculate their own carbon footprint, and use this calculation to determine what they will do to reduce their own carbon footprint as part of the Climate Change Challenge.
Go to the online carbon footprint calculator and calculate your carbon footprint.
You need to enter your country and year. After each calculation make sure to hit calculate. Keep track of your carbon footprint for each component – you will need this information for the Climate Change Challenge. At the end of the calculation you will be shown how you compare to Canada and the world.
Some tips:
- In Ontario the amount of electricity individuals used varies from 2400 kWh/year (a one bedroom apartment NOT heated with electricity) to 9600 kWh/year for a 4 bedroom house (NOT heated with electricity).
- In Ontario, if you heat your house with gas you probably use between 5,000 (little house) and 40,000 kWh per year (big house). If you use oil between 200-1000 US gallons per year.
About Carbon Footprints
We all contribute to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Part of the IPCC’s job is to figure out where the biggest increases in greenhouse gases are coming from and who is responsible for those emissions. We can look at this question at various spatial scales. For example, we can look at how much an entire continent or country contributes or we can take a look at how much a province within Canada, or a particular city, industry or institution contributes. We can also consider how much an individual contributes or how human contributions have changed overtime. These data are important to the development of policies that may be used to reduce emissions or otherwise address climate change.
In class you have learned about how greenhouse gases warm the world. In this assignment we will focus on carbon from carbon dioxide (CO2). Often we refer to an individual’s contribution to the total anthropogenic carbon budget as their “carbon footprint”, which is measured as the total amount of carbon contributed from methane and carbon dioxide from our activities.
Carbon footprinting is one of the most widely used approaches for quantifying anthropogenic impacts and helping to tackle climate change (Wilson et al., 2014). The term “carbon footprint” comes from the concept of the ecological footprint, originally defined by Canadian ecologist William Rees and Swiss-born Mathis Wackernagel in the 1990s. An ecological footprint is the area of land required to support a population or activity considering resources, pollution and waste. A carbon footprint is more specific and associated with the emissions of carbon related to consumption. In the early 2000s the term was popularized by a BP advertising campaign in an attempt to shift the blame for climate change from big oil and gas companies to individuals like you and me. Despite this negative use of carbon footprints, they are incredibly helpful in tackling climate change because they help to target main emission sources and encourage accountability. To tackle climate change we need societal shifts on a large scale, but the only hope for such change is grassroots movements telling governments the kinds of change we want and need.
Reflection questions to prepare for the Climate Change Challenge
After determining your approximate carbon footprint, consider these questions:
- What is your carbon footprint in metric tons for the year from (include dates)? List the values you entered to get to the total contribution.
- How does your footprint compare to the Canadian average?
- How does your footprint compare to the world average?
- How far off the worldwide target are you?
- What would be the easiest way for you to reduce your carbon footprint?
- CHALLENGE: What one thing could you do for the rest of the term to reduce carbon? How much carbon would it save?
- Based on your readings of the New York Times article – https://www.nytimes.com/guides/year-of-living-better/how-to-reduce-your-carbon-footprint What are you going to do for your climate change challenge?
Share your journey
Remember that Climate Change is everybody’s business. Sharing your own journey with the Climate Change Challenge will show students that you, too are making efforts, and that you encounter challenges like they do in addressing your carbon footprint. Course author Dr. Katrina Moser has been facilitating the Climate Change Challenge since 2018 with hundreds of students. She shares her story with students when they embark on the Climate Change Challenge.
“When I started the Climate Change Challenge in 2018 my carbon footprint was over 18 tonnes of CO2 per year – most of that was due to flights and driving. I have reduced my travel and switched to riding my bike to work and have also significantly reduced meat in my diet. In 2019 when I calculated by carbon footprint it was 12 tonnes of CO2 per year. In 2020 when I calculated my carbon footprint it was ~9 tonnes of CO2 per year, but that is largely because I did not take any flights due to COVID-19. Despite a relatively low carbon footprint relative to the Canadian average, mine is still almost double the global average. “
Dr. Moser has been successful in reducing her carbon footprint, and her brief summary also shows that this is a journey. She has addressed multiple aspects of her carbon footprint, but she has done so in step-wise fashion, devoting time to make each new habit stick.
Decide on an activity that will reduce your carbon footprint
Use the information in the calculator and the readings below to help you target an activity that will have the greatest effect on reducing your carbon footprint. Target one aspect of your life (diet, transportation, home energy, electronics, fashion, etc.) and pick something that can be put into action for a two-week period.
Example challenges:
- Adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet
- Shift transportation from car to bus, walking, or cycling
- Make a strategic change to your home energy usage
- Consider changing your consumer and shopping behaviours
Be as creative as you can to think about ways to try to make a difference, but be realistic and safe about your choice. Try to avoid spending money or buying new items, but saving money as a side effect (like on energy bills, or gas costs!) is allowed. Be creative and resourceful.
Helpful resources
These readings and the online quiz below will help you make your decision.
Jeff Tollefson The hard truths of climate change – by the numbers. Nature 573 (2019).
Thinking about emissions. Nature Climate Change 9, 81 (2019). https://rdcu.be/cNq7R.
Livia Albeck-Ripka. How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint. The New York Times.
Veronica Penney. Think you’re making good climate choices? Take this mini-quiz. The New York Times. (2020).
Create a photographic journal
Create a photographic journal of your climate change challenge journey. This journal should be less than 5 minutes in length.
You will include at least three photographic submissions and the rubric in one VoiceThread to document your journey. You may also include other visuals – be creative and have fun!
Reflection questions
In your journal you will include at least three photo entries. Use the photos to discuss the following:
- What you decided to do to reduce your carbon footprint and why you made this decision. You need to back your decision up with research and logical arguments that show that your choice will make a difference to your carbon footprint.
- Provide information about how you measured your success at reducing your carbon footprint.
- If you continued your change in lifestyle for a year, by how much would you reduce your carbon emissions? If everyone in North America took up the CCC how much impact could we have on North American emissions?
- What was challenging, what was rewarding, what were your successes and how did the exercise make you feel?
- What is your message to others about reducing carbon footprints and protecting the planet and humanity from the impacts of climate warming? Think about what you have learned in class and what you have learned through this exercise.
- Include the rubric as a final slide – this will be used for grading purposes
Making your journal and photos
You will need to take three original photographs that document your activities to reduce your carbon footprint and/or address questions above, as well as the rubric. The photos should document your climate change challenge journey. You may choose to include other supporting materials (e.g., graphs and charts – consider making your own original graphs and charts from data you collect), but you must have at least three original photos. To accompany the photos, include a narrated discussion using the VoiceThread tool. Using VoiceThread you will create a photographic journal that addresses the questions asked above and tracks your journey.
Choosing a tool for submitting photographic journals
Students in our offering of the course have been submitting their journals within the Plug-In tool, VoiceThread. This tool requires a subscription, and may or may not be available at your institution. You can see snippets of student VoiceThreads in the video at the beginning of this chapter.
We have found the use of VoiceThread to be very successful for this project. The benefits of VoiceThread for this activity are:
- Students find the tool easy to use with minimal support required on the part of the instructor. Therefore they can spend their effort grappling with their reflections and ideas instead of learning a complicated technology.
- Students can be creative in how they put together their reflection, using combinations of slides, photos, annotations, and their audio and video recorded over top.
- Students can record and re-record in sections, which is great for learners who may see presenting as an area of growth.
- Students can build on the VoiceThread at different times.
There are other possibilities for submitting this assignment. Seek out your Centre for Teaching and Learning or Educational Technology Office for options. You might consider:
- Blog entries with photographs
- A recorded video presentation (keep in mind how you communicate the expectations and support around video editing)
- A forum post (groups would need to be small).
Support students in using a new tool
VoiceThread is user friendly, but learners still benefit from some advice to get started – this will also help you better manage technology support requests. We used a short video to get students started. Create your own simple screenshare video that shows how to access VoiceThread (or other necessary) tool from your Learning Management System or Course Site. Many tools (including VoiceThread) also have their own tutorials that you can share with students
Connect with others
Students have two opportunities to connect with others about the Climate Change Challenge.
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Forum Posts
- Throughout the challenge, students can contribute to discussions in the forum tools to provide tips for other students. Consider using existing small groups, or, make groups based on the general category of action. For example, making a group devoted to diet changes means that students can share some of the vegetarian recipes they have been trying with each other, or share challenges that made it tough to stick to their plan.
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Climate Change Challenge Sharing Day
- At the end of the challenge, celebrate the changes made with Climate Change Challenge Sharing Day. This can be done in many ways. You can group students according to the activity they chose. Get them to write up a list of best tips for others who might want to take up this challenge. Ask students to share their videos or journals with the class. Have an “audience choice award” for the best video. Be creative, be positive, and have fun with your students!
Evaluation
Below we share a rubric that we have used for this assignment. Students post the rubric as their last slide, which means that we can provide comments right in VoiceThread by annotating the rubric with the pen tool and sharing our feedback orally. This rubric allows for creativity, as students can exceed the target, or standard for the assessment in a variety of ways.
Areas to develop |
Standards for this performance |
Above target
|
Refection quality: |
Reflection quality: |
Reflection quality: |
|
|
|
Ability to follow instructions:
|
|
Ability to follow instructions:
|
0-70 points |
75 points |
80-100 points |
Ask students to grade a sample Climate Change Challenge journal
Help students gain comfort with the task ahead of them by providing a sample photographic journal and asking them to try marking it with the rubric. The sample doesn’t have to be perfect, as an imperfect sample will help them consider what they could do differently. If you create the sample yourself, it will also give you insight into the Climate Change Challenge, which will help you connect with students and begin to address your own carbon footprint.
Consider student access and ensure open lines of communication
A camera and a device (tablet, computer, or phone) are required to complete this task. Many students carry a camera with them everywhere they go – on their smartphone. However, you may have students who do not have access to a camera. Make sure you offer students the opportunity to reach out if they need access to a camera or anything else needed for the assignment.
References
Wackernagel, M. and Rees, W. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on Earth. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers. 160pp.
Williams, I., Simon, K., Coello, J., Turner, D.A., Wright, L.A. 2014. A beginner’s guide to carbon footprinting. Carbon Management 3:55-67.