This video from Rutgers Climate Institute is an introduction to the current effects of climate change around the world and in New Jersey.
Students will learn about the evidence of climate change and the proposed solutions, with a focus on a transition to clean energy.
Teaching Tips
Positives
It is a convincing introduction to the causes and effects of the climate crisis.
It includes interviews from experts alongside visual evidence, including maps and graphs, to support their claims.
Additional Prerequisites
It is focused on New Jersey but the content can be applied globally.
The content of the video ends at 2:21 and the remaining time is the credits.
Differentiation
The video references using temperature records to prove global temperature has increased about two degrees Fahrenheit over the last century. Students can use this Global Temperature resource from NASA to confirm this claim.
Students can do a quick write on how New Jersey will specifically be impacted by the effects of climate change and steps we can take to decrease our carbon emissions.
Civics classes can discuss the policies that will be needed to transition to 100% clean energy sources.
This video narrates the impact of climate change in New Jersey. It articulates how the increase in CO2 emissions as a result of human activities has accelerated more extreme weather conditions and storms in New Jersey. It calls for concerted efforts to transition to 100% clean energy while also implementing climate adaptation policies to draw down CO2 levels. This is insightful and recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-2 Analyze and interpret data on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
MS-ESS3-5 Ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.
HS-ESS3-5 Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth systems.
