How to Mitigate Climate Change
Articles/Websites
Grades9, 10, 11, 12, APEarth and Space Sciences, Economics
This resource has been reviewed by SubjectToClimate's climate scientists and verified for scientific accuracy and up-to-date information. Learn about our review process →
Provided by Council on Foreign Relations
What it is
- This article from the Council on Foreign Relations has six easy-to-navigate sections that provide infographics and discussions about how to reduce emissions from the energy, industry, building, transportation, and agriculture sectors.
- Students will learn about government policies that have been put in place to reduce emissions and some of the barriers holding societies back from more rigorous mitigation.
Teaching tips
Positives
- Students can easily access definitions for content-specific vocabulary with the pop-up glossary.
- Each of the readings is broken into easy-to-follow sections and provides visual aids, background information, and other elements to help facilitate understanding.
Prerequisites
- Students should understand the greenhouse effect and know the different greenhouse gases.
- Some embedded links to external resources throughout the articles may be blocked or unavailable.
Differentiation & Implementation
- For other mitigation strategies, students can check out this table of solutions. Teachers can sort students into five groups, assigning each group one of the sectors discussed in this reading. Students can then find solutions from the table for their given sector.
- If teachers are short on time, the class can read the introductory section together and break off into jigsaw groups, each tackling a different section of the reading.
- These sections can be used separately as introductions or additional materials for lessons about clean energy, green building, sustainable agriculture, and other topics.
- Economics and civics classes can discuss the different policies for reducing emissions, such as subsidies, cap-and-trade programs, and carbon taxes. Economics classes can also discuss the concept of circular economy in greater detail. Teachers can use this unit plan for a deep dive into circular economics.
From the scientist review
This resource focuses on climate change mitigation by sector. The text is clear and addresses goals, successes, and challenges to affecting change. All figures are cited, with most based on primary data. Throughout, all key terms are underlined with glossary entries linked for each term. This resource is recommended for teaching.
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