ENGLISH 23
(A.K.A. CLIMATE CRISIS 101)
Week #10
The Climate Crisis
What It Was and What Each of Us Did About It
Weekly Assignments
Read this page carefully, as this week’s assignments are unusual.
Reading
With the exception of five short webpages (noted in #4 below), there is no reading for this week. In its place, you have an assignment, which is to evaluate your climate footprint.
Here are the details:
1) Please watch Ken’s short YouTube video on “Calculating your climate footprint.” Make sure that you watch this video before moving to the below steps, as it has full details on how this week’s reading comment works.
2) Go to the online Ecological Footprint Calculator and calculate your personal climate footprint. If you are given the option to “add details to improve accuracy,” please take it. When you are finished, please note how many Earths we would need if everyone lived like you. Then, select the “Facts and Figures” tab and also note your “CO2 emissions in tonnes per year.”
3) In the lower right corner, select the option to “re-take the quiz.” This time, play around with the settings. Curious what would happen if you just changed one thing in your life, such as eliminating beef or lamb from your diet? Then go ahead and run the calculator again, but, in order to see the climate impact of this decision, make this single change on the “details” popup of the page on animal-based products. If flying was a significant part of your initial footprint, try cutting it in half. Spend some time experimenting, repeatedly re-running the quiz to see what can be learned about your climate footprint
4) After playing around with your footprint, select the “Solutions” tab and select “Learn More” for each of the five categories (i.e. City, Energy, Food, Population, and Planet – or just click on the preceding five links). Please read all the relevant text on these five webpages (you do not need to read any linked pages). Note that while some of this material is similar to what we read in Project Drawdown, there is new and interesting info here as well. The information on these pages may well appear on the final exam.
5) Finally, after doing all of the above, please make a comment to Ken’s above-mentioned short lecture on “Calculating your climate footprint.”
This will be your weekly “reading” comment. *See the note below regarding this week’s comments.
Films
1) Rewatch AOC’s short (7-minute) “A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez”
2) Watch its sequel, A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair.
After watching the above two “Message From the Future” videos, please watch Ken’s “The Climate Crisis: What It Was and What Each of Us Did About It” video and comment on it. Make sure that you watch Ken’s video before commenting on it, as it has full details on how this unusual comment should work.
This will be your weekly “film” comment. *See the note below regarding this week’s comments.
Lecture
Because the final exam is on Thursday, there is only one lecture this week, which will be on Tuesday during regular class period.
Final Lecture (2024)
Pulling it all together: 20 things that each of us can do to save the planet
download as a PDF / watch as a video / listen to as a podcast