Summary

It is also important for Canadians to recall from Chapter 3 that one of the root causes of much environmental degradation is the result of the overconsumption of resources by the one billion wealthy members of the Earth's 5.3 billion people. Changing consumption patterns among peoples in the developed countries will require changing personal values, demanding stricter legislation, and educating the public about ways to reduce, reuse, recycle and refuse.

Educational Significance

Global change issues are both abstract, complex, and in many ways beyond the scope of the individual student to solve.. Students need to feel empowered to make positive changes, even if they cannot solve all of the global change problems. Students need to "think globally-act locally": to investigate specific environmental problems, to find solutions to those problems, and to see that changes are possible.

Students need to take positive action, and receive positive reinforcement for their actions, in order to feel empowered to make changes that will improve the world economy and environment. Student action projects can offer students the opportunity to have their efforts affirmed in public.

Ecological Momentum. Students need to understand that the problems we have been discussing throughout this Teacher's Guide, and outlined in Global Change and Canadians, have occurred over many years. Human activity has been especially detrimental to the global environment since the Industrial Revolution. It is unlikely that solutions to all of the global change problems will occur in the short term. What is important for students is to realize that they are not powerless to effect positive changes.

How Global Change will Affect Society. Students need to understand that the effects of global change are having an impact on the Canadian environment, economy, and culture.

Learning Outcomes

• develop a survey to investigate consumption patterns in the home, school, and community;
• assess attitudes towards environmental issues in the home, at school, and in the community;
• assess environmental improvement projects in the local community, region, and province;
• prepare a plan of positive action to help resolve problems outlined in the assessment survey;
• develop an educational program to raise environmental awareness in the home, school, and community;
• investigate Canada's part in alleviating environmental degradation and economic hardship worldwide;
• become advocates for local action by preparing and publishing letters, reports, videos, booklets, etc. about local environmental or development education projects.
• investigate alternate lifestyles, such as that of Canada's indigenous peoples, with a view to finding aspects that harmonize with nature.
• discover the complexity of Canada's political and economic involvement in international issues.