Stewardship and Sustainability

•Stewardship refers to the responsibility we all have to the environment and resources that has
been left to us by our ancestors. We are all stewards to our planet.

•Sustainability refers to the ability to develop in order to meet the needs of the present without
negatively affecting the ability of future generations to meet their needs

•If we are not all following our role as stewards in the global village, then we will not have a sustainable environment for our future children.

•“We do not inherit the earth from our grandparents, we borrow it from our children.”

•We must all do our part to keep our consumption of resources to a minimum, and to keep the environment around us clean.

•Are you doing your part?

Greenhouse Effect

•In a greenhouse, energy from the sun passes through the glass as rays of light.

•This energy is absorbed by the plants, soil and other objects in the greenhouse.

•Much of this absorbed energy is converted to heat, which warms the greenhouse.

•The glass helps keep the greenhouse warm by trapping this heat.

How a Greenhouse Works

•greenhouse gases absorb heat and radiate some of it back to the earth's surface – surface temps become higher than normal.

•The most important naturally occurring greenhouse gas is water vapour and it is the largest contributor to the natural greenhouse effect.

•other gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxidealso play a substantial and growing role in the greenhouse effect.

Climate Change and the Arctic

•Avg. temps in arctic – rising 2X as fast as anywhere else in the world!

•Arctic ice is getting thinner, melting and rupturing.

•the largest single block of ice in the Arctic, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, had been around for 3,000 years before it started cracking in 2000.

• Within two years it had split all the way through and is now breaking into pieces.

Effects?

•When the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf splintered, the rare freshwater lake it enclosed, along with its unique ecosystem, drained into the ocean.

•Polar bears, whales, walrus and seals are changing their feeding and migration patterns, making it harder for native people to hunt them.

•Along Arctic coastlines, entire villages will be uprooted because they're in danger of being swamped.

•The native people of the Arctic view global warming as a threat to their cultural identity and their very survival.

•Acceleration of global warming - Snow and ice usually form a protective, cooling layer over the Arctic. When that covering melts, the earth absorbs more sunlight and gets hotter.

•Rising temperatures are already affecting Alaska, where the spruce bark beetle is breeding faster in the warmer weather.

•From 1993 to 2003, they chewed up 3.4 million acres of Alaskan forest.

•rising sea levels - threatening low-lying areas around the globe with beach erosion, coastal flooding, and contamination of freshwater supplies.

•major cities like Shanghai and Lagos would face similar problems, as they also lie just six feet above present water levels.

•Scientists project as much as a 3-foot sea-level rise by 2100.

•increase would inundate some 22,400 square miles of land along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States, primarily in Louisiana, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.

•affect weather patterns and thus food production around the world.

•Wheat farming in Kansas, for example, would be profoundly affected by the loss of ice cover in the Arctic.

•Kansas would be 4 degrees warmer in the winter without Arctic ice, which normally creates cold air masses that frequently slide southward into the United States.

•Warmer winters are bad news for wheat farmers, who need freezing temperatures to grow winter wheat. And in summer, warmer days would rob Kansas soil of 10 percent of its moisture, drying out valuable cropland.

What’s Up With The Weather?

PBS/Nova – What’s Up With the Weather?

  1. Over the last century, global surface temperature has risen ______degree Farenheit.
  2. Why do some climate historians study records having to do with cherry blossoms?
  3. What did Charles David Keeling begin measuring in 1957?
  4. What is the average surface temperature of the Earth? ______degrees Farenheit
  5. How long does carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels remain in the atmosphere before being absorbed by the ocean?
  6. What percent of U.S. electricity is produced by burning coal?______percent
  7. How many pounds of carbon is emitted per year by lighting an average house?
  8. As a result of the Kyoto treaty,
    (A) Most developing nations agreed to cut back 20 percent in carbon dioxide emissions by 2020.
    (B) No nations agreed to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
    (C) Developing countries made no binding commitments to cut back carbon dioxide emissions.
    (D) Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in the year 2100 will be about half of what they are today.
  9. The total energy consumption of all humankind today is about ______trillion watts.
  10. How long is it projected that it will take before total world energy consumption reaches 40 trillion watts?
  11. How many U.S. Senators voted against the Kyoto treaty?

Definitions

•Climate Change is a major shift in the overall temperature levels of the Earth (up or down).

•Global Warming is the rising of the average temperature of Earth.

•The Greenhouse Effect is the trapping of heat by the Earth’s thickened atmosphere. This is caused by pollution.

•Carbon Footprint?

•Total amount of greenhouse gases emitted by a person, group, or company

•What is your carbon footprint?

Footprint calculator

•What can we do?

•Reduce our carbon footprint

•Recycle

•Become active in local environmental initiatives

•Help to persuade environmental changes in big business

•GET INVOLVED!!!

Who Will Speak for the Trees?

•Watch The Lorax (Original) (25 mins) and answer the following questions.

1. Compare the Once-ler to Modern Industry.

2. What does the Lorax represent?

3. What does the Lorax mean when he says "They say I'm old fashioned and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast". Agree or Disagree with this.

4. What do "thneeds" represent?

5. Describe the conflict between the Lorax and the Once-ler. How does this relate to our environmental movement and industry?

6. What happened at the end? Can this happen to us?