Teaching Process

What to do:

1)Ask your group to take a look at the world map.

2)Firstly, ask them what sorts of activities lead to carbon emissions. They should cover activities like driving cars (petrol is a fossil fuel and releases carbon dioxide), flying, electricity that is generated from fossil fuels, manufacturing cement and steel.

3)Now, ask them to consider which countries in the world emit the most carbon.

4)Give everyone five sweets and ask them to ‘vote’ for the countries they think are the top five emitters. They should place their sweets on their choices.

5)When everyone has voted then ask them why they made the choices they did.

6)Then show them the Guardian carbon atlas. This atlas shows the size of countries based on the amount of carbon they emit.

7)Ask the students:

Was anyone surprised by any of the results? Why do they think those countries were the biggest emitters?
Which countries do you think are already affected by climate change?
Do they note that most of the countries that are already severely affected by climate change do not emit much carbon?
You could highlight that while China has a very large carbon footprint many of the goods they manufacture are consumed (bought) by people in the West.