This video from Hot Mess gives individuals ways they can reduce their average carbon footprint along with the amount of carbon saved from each action.
It covers several topics including transportation, food choice, and family planning.
Teaching Tips
Positives
Students will feel empowered to make informed decisions to reduce their carbon footprint.
The video is under five minutes and is able to provide context around multiple potential solutions to an individual's carbon emissions.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should be able to compare units of mass like kilograms and metric tons.
Students should already have a basic understanding of why we need to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
There is an ad before the video.
Differentiation
Math classes can do word problems or comparison problems based on the carbon emissions of different personal actions students in the class will take.
Biology and environmental science classes could use this video before lessons about the carbon cycle, ecological carrying capacity, or land use changes.
Students who are interested in learning more about their footprint can use the Footprint Calculator and if they want to learn more about solutions they can look into the Table of Solutions.
This resource presents ways to reduce individual carbon footprints. It is important to know that collective actions can limit carbon emissions and reduce the impact of climate change. This resource is recommended for teaching.
Standards
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)
ESS3: Earth and Human Activity
MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth's systems.
College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Dimension 4: Taking Informed Action
D4.7.6-8 Assess their individual and collective capacities to take action to address local, regional, and global problems, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies, and potential outcomes.
