Suggested activity for the 2007 CEBF

Topic:  Careers in Climate Change
Best suited for High School Students ages 13 – 18
Time needed:   At least one hour

General premise:  The impacts of climate change are expected to strengthen significantly within our lifetime. There is an urgent need for people with the skills and training to support education, research, monitoring, and the cultural, political, and technological responses to ensure that its effects are minimized.

Materials needed:  Audio or printed information on climate change.  This could be either the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore, a news paper article, or Journal article. That is, anything speaking about the causes, effects and proposed measures to mitigate against the impacts of climate change.

Procedure: The first half of this session will be used to read or watch the climate change focus material as a group.

The class will then be asked to discuss and list in groups:

• The more severe impacts by region of the world.
• The areas that further research may be required.
• How the society at the level of the individual, governments and the planet should respond.
• The role that improved technology might play in this process.
• The role that a change in social values and practices might play in the process. 

The final session will be used to identify who are the persons and what skills are needed to do the various jobs that must be done to collectively prevent the effects of global warming. 

Each student will be asked to link the above skills to currently existing careers, and if they do not exist suggest names for them (e.g. Conservation Biology, Environmental Law, etc.)

Students will then write these careers around a circle containing the words “climate change”.

A discussion could then follow about what course of study should be chosen for careers in these areas. 

Thanks to Leo Douglas for suggesting this activity!