Over the next decade, critical policy decisions will be made with irreversible consequences for the future. Dr. James Hansen, the top US government climate scientist, believes that if we do not stabilize greenhouse gas emissions soon, we may set in motion a process leading to collapse of the West Antarctic and Greenland Ice sheets, events that would raise global sea levels by over 40 feet, inundating many of the world’s major cities. This of course is just one of the myriad potential consequences of human-induced warming, with regional and global impacts ranging from hurricanes of greater intensity and duration, global water shortages, altered patterns of rainfall, drought and flood, massive forest die-back, and large-scale species extinction.
Students today face many important social, economic, and security issues. Global warming however, is unique, in that if we are to reduce the risk of large-scale, irreversible, world-wide damages, then ambitious—and potentially costly—policy solutions must be undertaken within a very compressed time frame. Failure to act soon increases the likelihood of a swing in global temperatures of Ice Age magnitude within our children’s lifetimes, only in the opposite direction. We have a window of time now to create the foundation for a just and sustainable future.
The second motivation for this project is to explore a new model of collaborative, interdisciplinary education, on a national scale. Focus the Nation will require campus-based teams of faculty and students to draw on campus expertise across the broad range of disciplines. Focus the Nation provides an exciting model opportunity to create, for one day, a true national community of scholarship bridging traditional disciplinary boundaries.
This is an opportunity for educators to take a leadership role, and catalyze a process which indeed will “Focus the Nation”. For the last 150 years we have been engaged in an unprecedented natural experiment, drastically altering the basic nature of the planet’s climate control system. Focus the Nation is engaging the country with the question: How far can we let that experiment go?
Useful Resources:
SCIENCE RESOURCES
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
NASA
Hadley Centre
RealClimate
RealClimate's Web Guide
How-to on talking to skeptics
SOLUTIONS RESOURCES
Regional Solutions
Northwest: Climate Solutions
Southwest: Grand Canyon Trust
Midwest: Environmental Law and Policy Center
Mid Atlantic: Chesapeake Climate Action Network
Southeast: Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
Northeast: Clean Air - Cool Planet
California: California Global Warming Campaign
Texas: Texas Public Citizen
Campus Solutions
Campus Climate Challenge
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE)
Justice and Global Warming
Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative
Climate Justice: The Time Is Now
Indigenous Environmental Network
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Faith Organizations
The National Religious Partnership for the Environment
The Interfaith Power & Light - The Regeneration Project
New York Interfaith Power & Light
Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth
Earth Ministry National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Program
Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life
Religious Witness for the Earth
Cities and Towns
Cities for Climate Protection
RESOURCES FOR EDUCATORS
American Sociological Association (ASA) teach in materials for Sociology
American Solar Energy Society
Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI)
Climate Ark
ClimateChangeEducation
ClimateClassroom
ClimateCorps.org
Earth Day Network Lessons
Global Warming Challenge
National Wildlife Federation
Oral History Project: Climate Change Documentary - Alaska
Union of Concerned Scientists
