This article details the communities that are disproportionately impacted by greenhouse gas pollution and climate change: frontline communities, and fenceline communities.
Students will read about the communities already negatively affected by climate change, those that share borders with polluting industries, and the socially-just solutions to address both.
Teaching Tips
Positives
This article lays out complex concepts in a way that is easy to understand.
The included links are great resources for additional learning.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should have some prior knowledge of systemic and/or environmental racism.
Differentiation
Connections can be made in social studies classes learning about systemic structures that affect low income communities or people of color and how different communities are impacted by similar issues.
Health classes can use this article when discussing how climate change impacts the health of humans.
As an extension, have students research one way to help a frontline or fenceline community and consider if or how they could implement those solutions in their own household, community, or school.
Scientist Notes
This is an article discussing environmental injustice and the communities that face the challenges of climate change. This is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
HS-ESS3-1 Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the availability of natural resources, occurrence of natural hazards, and changes in climate have influenced human activity.
Common Core English Language Arts Standards (CCSS.ELA)
Reading: Informational Text (K-12)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.2 Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).
