This video explains the dangers of relying on fast fixes, like geoengineering, to mitigate climate change.
Students will learn about the benefits and risks of silver-bullet solutions like bioengineering with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and stratospheric aerosol injection.
Teaching Tips
Positives
The video description offers links to many articles and reports for further reading.
Students will learn that there is no perfect method for stopping climate change. Instead, it will require a combination of many different solutions.
Additional Prerequisites
Students should understand how greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change.
There are two ads at the beginning of the video.
The video's content ends at 10 minutes, 51 seconds.
Differentiation
Science classes could brainstorm solutions for making BECCS more sustainable.
Cross-curricular connections could be made with economics or social studies classes by discussing why entrepreneurs and business owners prefer geoengineering over cutting emissions and how different industries would be affected by reducing fossil fuel use.
This resource presents the reality and practicality of so-called "silver-bullet solutions" to climate change. This video shows how these solutions may not be feasible and may even have adverse, unintended effects. This resource 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.
HS-ESS3-2 Evaluate competing design solutions for developing, managing, and utilizing energy and mineral resources based on cost-benefit ratios.
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.
ETS1: Engineering Design
HS-ETS1-1 Analyze a major global challenge to specify qualitative and quantitative criteria and constraints for solutions that account for societal needs and wants.
HS-ETS1-3 Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics, as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.
