Climate Change Book Clubs: Engaging Citizens of the Anthropocene Through Inquiry and Choice
This is a unit I developed through on-going professional conversations with an NWP friend and colleague. The emphasis here is on enabling students to enter into this issue with as much choice as possible and to foster an inquiry mindset.
Unit Plan: The Obstacles and Opportunities of Climate Change
Climate Change Book Clubs (Choose one text)
- Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben (CHS owns)
- This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein (CHS owns)
- Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses, and Citizens Can Save the Planet by Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope (CHS owns)
- Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World by Bill Nye (must get text on your own)
- Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand (must get text on your own)
Essential Questions on Craft:
What are the environmental, economic, technological, and humanitarian facets of the climate crisis, and how do writers address these facets in rhetorically compelling ways?
Why hasn’t the message of the climate crisis resonated more resoundingly with audiences, given the overwhelming scientific consensus on the issue?
How do writers craft rhetorically effective messages on climate change that do resonate? How do they make the science accessible? How do they address the partisanship that surrounds the issue?
How do particular messengers impact an audience’s reception of the message?
How do writers use narrative, graphics, or charts to convey the dangerous impacts of climate change in rhetorically effective ways?
How do writers address the work that frontline communities are doing in terms of organizing and leading movements in ways that are sensitive to the cultural beliefs of these communities and to the historical mistreatment and discrimination that many of these groups have faced?
Whole-Class Texts on the Rhetoric of Climate Change
“A Life of the Senses:” Nature vs. the Know-It-All State of Mind from The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv
The Year in Climate Change: 2018
Fourth National Climate Assessment (2018)
Generation Anthropocene by Robert Macfarlane
David Roberts on the Problem with Individual Personal Actions
Project Drawdown (there’s no one solution to the crisis – it’s complicated)
“Recalculating the Climate Math” by Bill McKibben
The Psychology of Climate Change Communication by Yale Center for Research on Environmental Decisions
How Americans Think About Climate Change in Six Maps
Is Nature Stable, Delicate, or Random? Class and Views of Nature (Yale study)
Can You Stay Within the World’s Carbon Budget?
Excerpt from The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh
Excerpts from George Marshall’s Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change
The Most Important Thing You Can Do To Fight Climate Change: Talk About It by Katharine Hayhoe
What policies, practices, and pathways might we/must we pursue to address the climate crisis?
Because of the scope and severity of climate change, we will need to employ a variety of strategies to address it effectively. As a result, it will be useful for you to have a basic understanding of several key areas of climate debate/discussion. You will also be practicing your synthesis skills here.
Tasks:
- Select ONE mini-unit topic from Units 1-5 on which you will write a synthesis essay that you will post to your blog by the end of this unit. Use the questions provided, and select one or more that you want your essay to address. Include 4-5 sources from those provided, your book club text, and/or other sources you seek out. Your aim is to 1) bring these sources into conversation with one another to illustrate the scope and complexity of the issue and 2) take a stand on one (or more) of the questions provided. This essay is argumentative (you need to stake out a claim) but it is also analytical in that you need to draw together disparate texts to explain the issue in a sophisticated way and craft your argument effectively. (100 points)
- Select TWO other mini-units from Units 1-5 to participate in Schoology discussion assignments on. For your post for each discussion, you will need to drawn 3 of the provided sources into conversation with one another. You must also post two responses to peers’ posts. You will respond to one or more of the questions provided. (20 points each)
- Participate in a Socratic Seminar on the Unit 6 Topic, “Hope, Art, and Humor.” This Seminar will take place at the end of the unit. You should come prepared to discuss three texts of your choosing from this mini-unit. (16 points)
Each week, you will have time in class to read/view content and be working on these assessments. You may need to read/view at home too. I’ve starred pieces that are especially interesting rhetorically, meaning that the writer is doing some impressive things with language, structure/approach, or argument, or that showcase a rhetorically interesting development in the world of climate science, business and government, and/or activism.
You must create slides each week so that I can monitor and assess your progress in terms of your research. See here for directions. Create a slide deck and list your name on the linked doc in the slide deck (slide #2), and then link your slide deck to your name.
You will also be meeting with your book club four times throughout the course of this unit. Each time you meet, you will need to bring in four “discussion starters” on post-it notes to guide your discussions in your book club on those days.
Topics
Mini-Unit One: Legal Action and Civil Disobedience
Questions: How might we/must we spur action to address climate change? Are court battles helpful/necessary/harmful? What about civil disobedience – is it helpful/necessary/harmful in spurring action? Should we employ a combination of these approaches, one or the other, or neither?
- Court battles (legally challenging government and industries)
- ‘Biggest Case on the Planet’ Pits Kids Vs. Climate Change by Laura Parker* (on a group of 21 children suing the federal government for failing to secure a stable climate)
- Dutch Appeals Court Upholds Landmark Climate Case Ruling by Mike Corder
- This Tiny California Beach Town is Suing Big Oil by David Hasemeyer and Exxon Fires Back at Imperial Beach by Rob Nicolewski
- New York Sues Exxon for Deceiving Investors on Climate Change by Erik Larson
- Patagonia Is Suing the Trump Administration by Cam Wolf
- NJ Continues Fight Against PennEast Pipeline by Josh Rultenberg
- NJ Signs On to Multi-State Lawsuit to Preserve Tough Fuel Economy Standards by Tom Johnson
- NJ Joins Multi-State Suit Over Offshore Drilling, Seismic Testing by Daniel Munoz
- A pipeline fight close to home: Chatham Township and Chatham Borough Take a Stand Against Pilgrim Pipeline
- Civil Disobedience and Nonviolent Resistance
- The New Abolitionism by Chris Hayes*
- Meet the Teens Leading a Global Movement to Ditch School and Fight Climate Change by Jeff Berardelli and Haley Ott
- Excerpt from The Hour of the Land by Terry Tempest Williams (focuses on “Bidder 70,” Tim DeChristopher, a college activist who illegally bid on public lands auctioned to oil and gas companies to prevent their sale and served prison time for this crime)
- A Pipeline Fight and America’s Dark Past by Bill McKibben
- Excerpt from This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein (on “Blockadia” – hyper-localized movements to block fossil fuel infrastructure)
- The Youth Group that Launched a Movement at Standing Rock by Saul Elbein
- A Lakota Historian on What Climate Organizers Can Learn from Two Centuries of Indigenous Resistance by Alleen Brown
- I Shut Down an Oil Pipeline by Emily Johnson (on an activist “valve turner”) and Victory for Valve Turners as Judge Allows Necessity Defense by Jessica Corbett
- The Disarming Case to Act Right Now on Climate, TED Talk by Greta Thunberg (16 year-old Swedish climate activist and organizer of worldwide student climate strike)
- Dr. King Said Segregation Harms Us All. Environmental Research Shows He Was Right by Kendra Pierre-Louis
- The Trump Administration Finds That Environmental Racism is Real by Van R. Newkirk II
Mini-Unit Two: Business, Markets, Government and Energy
Questions: How does climate change impact the economy? How does it hurt us economically? What economic opportunities does it present for us? What do we do about energy? Switch to all renewables? What about nuclear energy – is it clean or dirty energy, and is it necessary and feasible? Retain fossil fuels? How might we move to cleaner fuels – should businesses and markets drive this shift, or government action? Federal action? State, local?
- Market-based approaches
- A Conservative Case for Climate Action by Martin Feldstein, Ted Halstead, and N. Gregory Mankiw*
- Cut Carbon Through Innovation – Not Regulation by Sen. John Barasso
- Yellow Vest Protests Shake France: Here’s the Lesson for Climate Change by Alissa J. Rubin and Somini Sengupta
- Cut Carbon Through Innovation – Not Regulation by John Barrasso
- The Divestment Movement To Combat Climate Change Is All Grown Up by Carolyn Kormann
- Shell Acknowledges Global Divestment Movement in Annual Report by Joshua S. Hill
- Big Oil Diversifies In Renewables Push by Velda Addison
- Every Two Weeks a Bank, Insurer, or Lender Announces New Coal Restrictions by Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
- Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends
- How a Big Bank Fueled the Green Energy Boom by Matthew Heimer
- It’s Not the Economy, Stupid: How Focusing on Money Misses the Big Climate Picture by Eric Holthaus
- A Healthy Economy Should Be Designed to Thrive, Not Grow by Kate Raworth
- Sustainable Investments: Why Not? By Dan Carreno
- Risky Business
- Moody’s Warns Cities to Address Climate Risks or Face Downgrades by Christopher Flavelle
- The Next Financial Crisis Lurks Underground by Bethany McClean (writer who broke the Enron scandal)
- Ski Resorts, Winter Sports, and Climate Change by Porter Fox
- NJ Is Now the United States’ Hottest Clean Energy Economy by Mike O’Boyle
and Barbara Blumenthal
- Battery Start-Ups Are Raising Millions in the Battle to Crush Tesla by Andrew Zaleski
- Renewable Energy, Nuclear Energy, Fossil Fuels
- http://thesolutionsproject.org/infographic/ and Stanford’s Mark Jacobson’s Plans (often cited plans on moving the US and the world to 100% renewable energy)
- Joe Romm’s Financial Times Declares Winner In the War for Energy’s Future or Everything You Know About Clean Energy is Outdated
- Can the US Phase Out Fossil Fuels by 2050? By Katy Tur (Stanford prof argues yes)
- Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet by Michael Shellenberger
- The Simple Argument for Keeping Nuclear Plants Open by David Roberts
- What Does Nuclear Power Really Cost? By John Parsons (published by World Economic Forum)
- Excerpt from Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto by Stewart Brand (on nuclear power)
- Documentary Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution*
- The $3 Billion Plan to Turn the Hoover Dam Into a Giant Battery by Ivan Penn
- Electric Cars Are Far Greener Than Gas Cars by Nicolas Zart
- The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels by Alex Epstein (by a consultant who works with fossil fuels companies to create more effective messaging about their industry)
- To Combat Climate Change, We Gotta Get a Better Battery by Jason Pontin
- Visiting Theodore Roosevelt National Park with My Father by Terry Tempest Williams (about gas boom in national parks)
– Government Action (large-, medium-, and small-scale)
- “We Need to Literally Declare War on Climate Change” by Bill McKibben* (rhetorically impressive piece that advocates for a WWII-style mobilization to transition to renewable energy)
- Excerpt from This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein (on “planning and banning”)
- Big Oil Asks Government to Protect It from Climate Change by Bill Weissert
- Green New Deal Explained by David Roberts or The Common Sense ‘Extreme’ of the Green New Deal by James Ellsmore or The Good News About the Green New Deal by John Cassidy (supportive pieces on Green New Deal)
- Identifying the Problem by Jonah Jonah Goldberg or Green New Deal: Reality Continues to Leak by George Will or What Is the Green New Deal? By Travis Kavulla (critiques of Green New Deal)
- CDC Report: Climate Change and Health by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Winning Slowly Is The Same As Losing by Bill McKibben
- The Disarming Case to Act Right Now on Climate, TED Talk by Greta Thunberg
- Climate Change, Extreme Weather Already Threaten 50% of Military Sites by Sammy Roth or Pentagon Warns Bases Imperiled by Climate Change in Dire Report by Bloomberg News
- Excerpt from The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell (about Naval Station Norfolk and sea level rise threats to military installations there)
- A Red State Goes Green by CBS News
- California Approves Goal for 100% Renewable Energy by 2045 by Alexei Koseff
- Five New Governors Aim for 100% Renewables by William Driscoll
- New Brunswick Takes Big Step Forward for the Environment by Michael Sol Warren
Mini-Unit Three: Technology, Infrastructure, and Climate Adaptation and Resiliency
Questions: How does geoengineering fit into climate change mitigation? Is it necessary? Dangerous? Both? What kind of adaptations should we/must we make to enhance the resiliency of our infrastructure in the face of climate change? How might our future look? What are the worst- and best-case scenarios for the future, in your view?
Geoengineering, Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS)
- Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything Chapter 8 “Dimming the Sun” (anti-geoengineering)
- Excerpt from Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand (an “ecopragmatist’s” take on geoengineering)
- Cost of Carbon Capture Plummets Thanks to Two New Techniques by Steve Hanley
- We Need to Capture Carbon to Fight Climate Change by Madison Freeman and David Yellen
- Scientists Back Effort to Pull CO2 Out of the Atmosphere by John Fialka
- 8 Ways to Sequester Carbon and Avoid Climate Catastrophe by Mary Hoff
- How Oman’s Rocks Could Save The Planet by Henry Fountain
- How Engineering Earth’s Climate Could Seriously Imperil Life by Matt Simon
- The Cautious Case for Climate Optimism by David Wallace-Wells*
- The Carbon Chase by Jon Gertner
- Climate Mitigation/Adaptation/Resiliency
- NJ and Climate Change: Impacts and Responses (video)
- 6 Things That Will Drastically Change in NJ if We Don’t Address Climate Change by Robert Kopp
- Federal Report on Climate Change Has Grim Warnings for NJ by Tom Johnson
- Future Proofing Is How You Say Climate Change in Texas
- Five Big Ways The US Will Need to Adapt to Climate Change by Brad Plumer
- San Patricio by Alex Steffen*
- The Suburb of the Future by Alan M. Berger
- My Drowning City Is a Harbinger of Climate Slums to Come by Virginia Eubanks
- Climate May Force Millions to Move, and the US Isn’t Ready by Christopher Flavelle
- Rising Seas May Cause Problems for Internet Infrastructure by Rebecca Hersher
- Oh, the Places Mosquitoes Will Go! By Linda Poon
- NJ Faces Growing Health Threat from Virus-Carrying Mosquitoes by Tom Johnson
- Welcome to the Age of Climate Migration by Jeff Goodell
- Rising Waters Are Drowning Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor by Christopher Flavelle and Jeremy CF Lin
- Life After Climate Change, The Ezra Klein Show (podcast)
- The Vulnerability of Home on an Afflicted Planet, from California to Calcutta by Torsa Ghosal
- My New Plan to Climate-Proof Lower Manhattan by Mayor Bill DeBlasio
Mini-Unit Four: Managing Earth Systems
Questions: How can we manage land and agriculture in ways that help us mitigate climate change and create healthier ecosystems? What is the nature of the relationship between climate change and the biodiversity crisis? Are there possible pathways for action that address both? What are the benefits and detriments of those actions? Does nature have rights? Is so, what are they? If not, why not?
- Land/Water Management and Rights
- Mni Wiconi (short film)*
- What a Simple Psychological Test Reveals About Climate Change by Dylan Selterman (involves Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons”)
- Tragedy of the Climate Commons by Richard B. McKenzie
- Excerpt on Ecosystem Engineering from Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand
- How a Small Town is Standing Up to Fracking by Justin Nobel
- Should Rivers Have Rights? By Jens Benohr and Patrick J. Lynch
- Parks Are People Too by Devon O’Neill
- Native Knowledge: What Ecologists Are Learning From Indigenous People by Jim Robbins (from Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. HERE.
- The Best Technology for Fighting Climate Change Isn’t a Technology by Han de Groot
- Why Global Greening Is a Bad Thing by Carl Zimmer
- The Melting Arctic Is a Real-Time Horror Story – Why Doesn’t Anyone Care? By Jeff Goodell
- Earth Will Start Becoming a Desert by 2050 If Global Warming Isn’t Stopped by Leah Thomas
- Ocean Warming Is Accelerating Faster Than Thought, New Research Finds by
Kendra Pierre-Louis
- The Window to Save World’s Coral Reefs is Closing Rapidly by Michael Greshko
- Can One Man Single-Handedly Ruin the Planet? (Brazil’s Bolsonaro) by David Wallace-Wells
- We Depend on Plastic. Now We’re Drowning In It by Laura Parker
- The End of Recycling? By Alana Semuels
- Biodiversity
- The Dawn of De-extinction by Stewart Brand (a TED talk about whether we should bring back extinct species.)
- Kolbert, Elizabeth. “The Sixth Extinction.” This is a PBS produced video about how we are now witnessing mass extinctions that addresses some of the content in Kolbert’s book.
- We’re Losing Monarchs Fast – Here’s Why by Carrie Arnold
- Honeybees May Be Dying in Larger Numbers Due to Climate Change by Alan Bjerga
- Remembrance Day for Lost Species by John R. Platt
- Can the World Really Set Aside Half of the Planet for Wildlife? By Tony Hiss*
- Scientists Call for a Paris-Style Agreement to Save Life on Earth by Jeremy Hance
- Could Your Lawn Be Lethal? By Editors of Men’s Health
- Food and Agriculture systems
- Soil Power: The Dirty Way to a Clean Planet by Jacques Leslie*
- Diet for Planetary Health by Damian Carrington
- No One Is Taking Your Hamburgers. But Would It Even Be a Good Idea? By Kendra Pierre-Louis (on the complexities of animal agriculture, human health, and emissions)
- How Empowering Women and Girls Can Help Stop Global Warming by Katherine Wilkinson
- The Road by Stephanie Nolan (about a road being built through the Amazon Rainforest – in addition to the journey and the conflicts it explores, it has amazing visuals)
- How Can We Reduce Food Waste in NJ? By James O’Neill
- How Climate Change Will Alter Our Food by Renee Cho
- The Colorado Couple Saving Beer from Climate Change by Kaelyn Lynch
- Falcons, Drones, and Data: How a Winery Battles Climate Change by David Gelles
- Climate Change is a Workplace Hazard for Laborers Working Outdoors by Yamiche Alcidor
- What You Need to Know About Genetically Engineered Food by Greg Jaffe
- Excerpt on genetic engineering from Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand (about bioengineering and biotech as means to increase crop production/help feel growing world population)
Mini-Unit Five: Civilization, Cities, and Development – Looking Toward the Future
Questions: What role do cities play in climate change mitigation? What about suburbs? Farmlands and rural areas? What does good development look like? What is the nature of the relationship between humans and the environment – are we in harmony with nature, in dissonance with nature, totally separate from it, a drain on it, a boon to it, or simply part of it?
– “Why Squatter Cities Are a Good Things.” by Stewart Brand (video)
– Cities Are Central to Any Serious Plan to Tackle Climate Change by David Roberts
–4 Ways Cities Can Be Climate Heroes by David Roberts
– Climate Change and Cities: What We Need to Do by University of Houston Energy Fellows
– To Build the Cities of the Future, We Must Get Out of Our Cars by Robert Kunzig
- The Suburb of the Future by Alan M. Berger
– It’s 2050 and This Is How We Stopped Climate Change by Dan Charles
– Sustainable Jersey Green Design Checklist for Development
– From ‘Not In My Backyard’ to ‘Yes In My Backyard’ by Alana Semuels
– Should We Be Having Kids in the Age of Climate Change? By Jennifer Ludden
- Population Excerpt from Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand (on the incorrect predictions about population growth and the dangers of zero population growth)
- We Need To Talk About the Ethics of Having Kids in a Warming World by Umair Irfan
-The Trouble with Wilderness by William Cronon (this is a long but excellent piece that challenges traditional Romantic/Transcendental ideas about nature as “unspoiled wilderness”)
–The Road by Stephanie Nolan (about a road being built through the Amazon Rainforest. In addition to the journey and the conflicts it explores, it has amazing visuals)
– National Geographic documentary based on Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse. (Diamond is also the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which you may have read in Social Studies) or Are We On the Road to Civilization Collapse? By Luke Kemp
–The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (this piece got a lot of attention for being especially dark and lacking in hope – be forewarned) or It Is Absolutely Time to Panic About Climate Change by Sean Illing (interview with David Wallace-Wells)
Unit Six: Hope, Art, and Humor
Questions: What are the reasons to be hopeful about the future and our capacities to address the climate crisis? How might we sustain hope and find levity in the face of the climate crisis? What does climate change offer us – spiritually, politically, socially, economically? How might humor play a role in spurring action on climate change? How can humor offer us comfort/hope/community/knowledge? What do art, literature, and poetry offer us? How might they spur action and/or provide comfort/hope/community/knowledge?
- Hope
–The Case for “Conditional Optimism” on Climate Change by David Roberts
– Show Up With Hope by Anne Lamott
- Darkness and The Needle by Emily Johnson
- Stopping Climate Change Is Hopeless. Let’s Do It. by Auden Schendler and Andrew P. Jones*
- Don’t Despair: The Climate Fight Is Only Over If You Think It Is by Rebecca Solnit
- We Are All Riders on the Same Planet by Matthew Myer Boulton and Joseph Heithaus
- Humor
- Late Night Comedy Talks Climate Change by John Schwartz (videos)
- You’ve Got to Joking by Kate Yoder
- What’s So Funny About Climate Change? By Writers Guild of America (video)
- The Yes Men Are Revolting* (film)
- John Oliver’s Viral Video on Climate Scientists’ Consensus (with Bill Nye) by Dana Nuccitelli (video)
- Art
- Selections from The Guardian’s 20 Poems on Climate Change
- We Need Stories of Dystopia Without Apocalypse by Emmalie Dropkin
- Toward a Poetics of Climate Change by Katy Waldman*
- What The World Needs Now is Art, Sweet Art by Bill McKibben
- 12 Artists on Climate Change by Zoe Lescaze
- Art Makes Environmental Change Real by Scientific American’s “Artful Planet” and University of Washington’s Conservation Magazine