I put this picture of the polar bear on the melting ice, and explained that since the ice is melting, the polar bears have less area to hunt seals, and this leads to polar bears starving to death, and the possible extinction of a species. They can also get trapped like this one did.
The picture is funny and sad.
After our discussion I wrote some questions on the board like:
- What most about Global Warming bothers you?
- What can we do to help?
- Do you care? Be honest. Why or why not?
I gave out this paper below, as a handout with lots of solutions. All of them are struggling students low on the totem pole, so of course they don't fly, of course they don't have cars, of course they don't eat meat everyday, or even once a week. They don't have hot water or stoves in their dorms. Of course they hang their laundry to dry, and they aren't ultra consumers because they don't have the money or space to be. Many parts of this list were irrelevant to their lives, but I still wanted them to see it.
I said, "How many of you have a car?" Nobody raised their hand.
Ok. "If you had enough money and a good job, would you buy a car?" I asked. All the hands shoot up. "Of course!" they bellowed. We had just finished talking about how cars emit CO2 into the atmosphere, blah blah blah, and instantly if they had the cash, "of course" they would buy a car.
"But you can't drive cars!" I wanted to shout out. "If all of you buy cars and your friends buy cars, and everyone your age buys cars, the planet will die!"
Bottom Line: Most Chinese want to live well, comfortably, and have the modern luxuries that Americans have. In Michael Meyer's essay in the NYtimes, "China's American Way of Life," he wrote “'If Chinese want to live the American way of life, then we need seven earths to support them,' the founder of China’s first environmental nongovernmental organization once told me."
Great. There goes our polar bears.
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