Week 9: Global Leadership School

Parisa Pajooh
Jul 23, 2017
2 min read

With the current political status of climate change, where the US politicians have said that “Climate change is created by Chinese in order to make U.S manufacturing non-competitive”!!! , I think it’s a must to talk and teach about climate change in classrooms. There can be little doubt that climate change will be a significant issue, and possibly the central challenge to humankind, during the lifetime of today’s students and possibly their children. The topic is complex because the Earth’s systems are complex; however, despite the complexity, talking about and taking action on climate change may not be as difficult as it seems. All it takes is a starting point. I started this week’s class with a presentation on climate change. Students began to explore some of the key questions related to climate change: What are its causes? What might we expect? What are governments doing about it? And, most important, what can schools and students do about it in their own communities?

In the presentation we discussed the key terms we need to know to understand climate change, and greenhouse gases and how they affect the earth’s atmosphere. We watched a video that easily explains how climate change is happening and the evidence of it that comes from many different sources. As always, I asked students: what can WE do?

I believe it’s important that each of us admit that climate change is everyone’s problem. No agency, government or scientist can fix it! We are all in this together! We got here because of our lifestyle, so maybe it’s the time to change it. I finished the class with some simple ways that we can do to take action on climate change such as ways to conserve heat and AC in our home, ideas to cut down on hot water use, use less gas, conserve electricity, and minimize on waste.

For the following week, students volunteered to deliver presentations on climate change long-term impacts on Mexico and what are some policies the country has developed to mitigate and adopt to climate change.