Hot Potato: Climate Change, Food Systems, and You

How Carbon Affects Nearly Everything on Earth – Including Our Future

(Mellow music playing)

(Wind whipping)

(Blue sky with dozens of little white balls, or bubbles, with the letter "C" in them)

Carbon affects Earth's climate and life. 

(The bubbles move around, making a popping sound. An upside down cone of brown earth appears, with a potted plant on top of it. The words "Crust" and "Deep Layers" are superimposed on the chunk of earth. Some bubbles move around the earth and in front of it.)

Carbon is in the Earth's: Crust, Deep Layers

(The "C" bubbles move up to the potted plant and the graphic slides down, revealing the entire pot in cross-section, with a green stem poking through its soil.)

Carbon is in the Earth's: Soil

(The bubbles move up, the pot moves down off-screen and is replaced by a fishbowl with fish and coral in it.)

Carbon is in the Earth's: Ocean

(The fishbowl disappears and the bubbles circle around on the sky-blue background.)

Carbon is also in the air as the planet-warming gas carbon dioxide.

(Whale singing, water churns)

(Gas hissing)

(A white, oval gas tank appears, with "Atmosphere" stenciled on the side. Bubbles circulate inside the tank. The tank disappears.)

Carbon is in all living things

(A flying insect buzzes around the screen. The insect leaves; a human hand appears parallel to the bottom of the screen, palm up.)

... including us!

(The hand goes off-screen to the left.)

Our planet is like a great carbon machine

(More bubbles with the letter "C" in them float around the screen.)

moving carbon around in an endless cycle ...

(The atmosphere gas tank appears, with a spigot on one end. The spigot is directly over a green plant in a pot, which is on the left side of the screen. There are green "C" bubbles in the plant.)

Plants pull carbon out of the air to grow.

("C" bubbles move from the tank through the spigot and fall onto the plant, making a popping sound as they exit the spigot. Some bubbles go through the plant and into the soil.)

Animals get carbon by eating plants or other animals.

(A beetle buzzes around the plant, lands on it and starts munching on it.)

Dead plants and animals leave carbon in the soil.

(A skull and crossbones appears atop the beetle. The skull and crossbones disappear, but the beetle falls dead onto the soil in the pot. It decomposes, sinking into the soil and disappearing. A "C" bubble appears in its place in the soil.)

When they decay, most of their carbon soon returns to the air.

(New pipes appear, going from the soil in the pot to the atmosphere gas tank, and from the plant to the gas tank. Gas hisses. "C" bubbles move from the soil and the plant to the atmosphere gas tank. Bubbles also move from the gas tank through the spigot and onto the plant.)

In the same way, carbon also moves rapidly between the air and ocean ...

(The plant fades to a light outline of itself. The fishbowl appears on the right, with two pipes protruding from the top of the bowl and connecting with the atmosphere gas tank. One pipe has arrow pointing up and out of the bowl, the other pipe has arrows pointing down into the bowl. "C" bubbles move from the gas tank down into the bowl through one pipe, and from the bowl to the gas tank in the other pipe.)

(Machine churning, water flowing)

But carbon accumulates in the Earth very slowly as dead animals and plants become fossil fuels like coal and oil.

(The screen scrolls down so we see the pot and the lower part of the fishbowl, both sitting on the ground. A cross-section of soil is under them. We no longer see the atmosphere gas tank. New pipes appear; one goes from the plant pot to the fishbowl, another goes from the pot to the ground, and another goes from the fishbowl to the ground. "C" bubbles move slowly into the soil under the pot and fishbowl. The "C" carbon bubbles start to accumulate underground.)

As rocks weather, carbon moves from the air to the ocean where it combines with calcium dissolved in water and forms limestone.

(Light-colored limestone rock starts to form in the soil under the fishbowl. More "C" bubbles accumulate underground.)

(The plant slides to the left off-screen. The fishbowl fades to a light outline. A brown volcano appears to the right of the fishbowl.)

Volcanism returns it to the atmosphere as rocks are heated deep in the Earth over millions of years.

(Earth rumbling and crackling. A vertical red column forms under the volcano and expands upward, pushing a "C" carbon bubble up. The red column disappears into the volcano and then the volcano explodes, pushing out ash. A pipe extends from the volcano's summit and connects to the atmosphere gas tank. "C" carbon bubbles start moving from the volcano to the atmosphere tank.)

This machine has chugged along, with nearly balanced flows, for tens of millions of years. 

(Machinery churning, gas hissing, water bubbling. Now we see the atmosphere gas tank above the potted plant, fishbowl, and volcano – plus all the pipes connecting them. "C" carbon bubbles move through the entire system.)

Until ...

(Steam whistle blaring)

About 150 years ago, when we began to mine fossil carbon and burn it for energy.

(A hand appears holding a graphic of a brick building labeled "Fossil Fuels" with a smokestack coming out of it. White gas comes out of the smokestack.)

(Ominous music playing)

(The hand puts the Fossil Fuels building down next to the potted plant, and a large pipe comes out of the smokestack, connecting it to the atmosphere gas tank. Another pipe connects the Fossil Fuels building to the ground. Carbon bubbles move from the ground to the building, and from the building to the atmosphere.)

(Electricity zapping)

Today, we release carbon into the air more than 100 times faster than natural processes return it to the Earth.

(Machinery churning, gas hissing, water bubbling. The carbon bubbles from the Fossil Fuels building speed up as they go to the atmosphere.)

(A hand pulls a movie screen down over the scene. A film or slide projector whirs. The screen has icons on it portraying a power plant, a farm, and a tree with stumps and logs next to it.)

Farming and cutting forests also add carbon to the atmosphere.

(The icons disappear. The projector clicks. A graph appears on the movie screen. It is titled "Carbon in the Atmosphere" and has CO2 ppm on the Y axis and Years Ago on the X axis. The X axis is labeled 150 years ago on the left and Today on the right.)

So carbon is rapidly building up in the atmosphere – faster than ever before in Earth's history.

(A red line starts at bottom left of the graph, near 280 ppm of CO2 and 150 years ago. The red line moves to the right, going slightly up as it moves right. Then the curve turns up a little more. When the red curve nears the right side of the graph, it bends sharply up, becoming almost vertical and passing 400 ppm of CO2. The red curve punches a hole in the film screen, making a tearing sound. A red box appears on the graph with the words "42% increase.")

(The projector whirs and clicks and words appear.)

Natural processes will take many thousands of years to remove the excess carbon from the air.

(The film screen disappears. The view zooms in on the atmosphere gas tank. Gas hisses. The carbon machine keeps going.)

More carbon in the atmosphere warms the climate making life hard for many species – including us.

(The atmosphere gas tank changes color, going from white to pinkish-gray. The view changes to show the potted plant.)

(Plant crunching as it desiccates. The plant withers and turns yellow and brown.)

Excess carbon also makes the ocean more acidic, threatening marine ecosystems and raising sea levels.

(The view changes to show the fishbowl. Lots of "C" carbon bubbles enter the fishbowl and the coral turns white.)

(gas hissing, water bubbling)

(The view pans out to show the entire carbon machine. The plant is withered and the coral is dead. Industrial machinery chugging frantically.)

It's up to us to work to stop our carbon emissions to rebalance the cycle and preserve our quality of life.

(A hand comes down and taps the Fossil Fuels building, which turns into a modern white building with solar panels behind it. The pipe from the building to the atmosphere gets smaller in diameter. Trees and wind turbines appear next to the building. The pipe from the building to the atmosphere disappears, and the atmosphere gas tank changes color back to white.)

(The view changes to show planet Earth from space.)

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides lesson plans, datasets, career resources, multimedia resources, articles, and activities for multiple topics on climate and climate change.

https://www.noaa.gov/climate-education

These resources are bundled into four themes:

1. Changing seasons
2. Climate data monitoring
3. Climate change impact
4. Carbon cycle

 

Discover why the climate and environment changes, your place in the Earth system, and paths to a resilient future. This website designed for formal educators and curious individuals breaks down the causes of, and the solutions to, a changing climate and environmental change by creating models that explain what drives global change.

https://ugc.berkeley.edu/ 

Science education can take many forms — from textbooks and museum exhibits to documentaries, news articles, and yes, even poetry! And you don’t need to be an adult in an education career to talk to others about science. Amanda Gorman, former National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, was only 16 years old when she presented her poem "Earthrise" to the Climate Reality Leadership Corps in 2018.

Watch and Read the Poem
Watch the video linked below of Amanda Gorman’s poem and follow up by reading the text of the poem.

• Video of Amanda Gorman Reciting Her Poem 
• Text of the Poem "Earthrise"

Reading Questions

1. The full title of this poem is "Our Purpose in Poetry: Or, Earthrise." What is Gorman’s purpose in writing this poem? Who is her primary audience, and what does she want her audience to do? 
2. Do you think Gorman is more hopeful or pessimistic about the future of the planet? Provide evidence from the text to support your answer.
3. Do you agree with Gorman’s statement that "climate change is the single greatest challenge of our time"? Why or why not? 
4. Identify a specific environmental concern of your own and write a poem to teach your peers about it. Be sure to include details about the issue, why you are concerned about it, and steps your audience could take to improve the situation.

Download a PDF of This Activity

Students can download the PDF to their devices, type answers into the PDF, and then save the file.

Climate Change: ELA Connections through Poetry (PDF)

"Food!" is a freely available community research guide developed by the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) in partnership with the InterAcademy Partnership, as part of the Smithsonian Science for Global Goals project. These Smithsonian Science for Global Goals community research guides use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to focus on sustainable actions that are defined and implemented by students.

https://ssec.si.edu/food

Teaching materials developed by Yale covering a wide array of climate change topics for 6th -12th grade. These lessons utilize Yale Climate Opinion Maps and Yale Climate Connections stories to immerse students in climate change issues in accessible, digestible, and interactive activities.
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/for-educators/