This conversation is part of a larger lesson on developing technologies to reduce planet-warming pollution. The lesson was created by Kravitz, an assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University, his colleague Paul Goddard, and Kirstin Milks, DeWayne Murphy’s science teacher at Bloomington High School South in Bloomington, Indiana.
As heat waves and extreme weather become more common, Milks wants to give her students the information and creative freedom to imagine big ideas for a better climate future.
“Climate change is really the story of these young people’s lives,” Milks says. “Our students need to not only learn about the difficult and problematic aspects of this issue, the issues we hear about in the media, but also see how change can happen. They need to feel like they understand and can actually make a difference in our shared future.”
Milks teaches his students the basic facts about human-caused climate change: The burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) is the primary cause of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide warms the planet, leading to more frequent droughts, hurricanes, floods and heat waves.
According to Kravitz, “the only permanent solution to stop this phenomenon is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.”
Scientists already know some technologies that could help. Solar and wind power combined with big batteries are helping the world transition away from oil, coal and gas.
But Kravitz believes the world isn’t changing fast enough. That’s why he and other scientists are studying strategies to temporarily alter the Earth’s climate to reduce the effects of climate change. This is called climate engineering or geoengineering.
Climate engineering covers a wide range of strategies, such as reflecting sunlight back into space and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But these strategies can also pose significant risks, such as disrupting rainfall patterns and impacting global crops. In the meantime, there is little regulation about how these technologies can be used.
“The people who are going to vote to find out whether to [pursue climate engineering]“High school students, or even people who are leading the charge, are in classrooms right now,” Kravitz says. “If they don’t know what this is about, that’s a real problem. That’s why we developed this lesson.”
Milks says she’s not trying to persuade students to embrace climate engineering — rather, she wants to give them the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about it, if and when the time comes.
Students come up with crazy ideas, like covering the desert in glitter
Creativity is at the heart of this lesson, Milks says. After learning the basics of climate engineering, students are asked to “come up with original and interesting ideas” to slow global warming.
At first, no idea is particularly outlandish, says Goddard, an assistant research scientist at Indiana University who helped develop the lesson.
“As we progress through the lessons, we add more details, more constraints to their designs,” Goddard says.
In the first round of brainstorming, students came up with ideas for a solar-powered helicopter, artificial trees that store rainwater to help fight wildfires, and many ways to reflect light back into the atmosphere, such as covering the desert in shiny glitter.
Next, students are asked to think about the limitations and potential risks of their ideas. Consider the example of glitter in the desert:
“How are we going to make sure the glitter doesn’t get eaten by the stone pocket mouse…or snakes and such?” Milks asks.
The student suggests making the glitter big and smooth enough so that it won’t be eaten by or harm animals.
For their final assignment, students present their concepts, including their anticipated benefits and risks, to Kravitz, Goddard and other scientists.
High school freshman Campbell Brown comes up with the idea of a flying air filter that sucks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turns it into a harmless byproduct.
“It will reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the air,” she explains in her presentation. “The risk is that it won’t work the way I want it to.”
Kravitz is impressed.
“You want to know something? It works,” he told Brown. “The waste product you get is essentially baking soda. So yes, it works, but it’s not feasible to scale it up right now because it’s too expensive.”
Fostering climate optimism
Brown is excited that her idea is something scientists are currently studying, especially because she didn’t know much about climate change before this lesson.
She was saddened to learn how humans have contributed to climate change and its effects on the planet, but she says she leaves the lesson with a new sense of hope.
“Because instead of leaving something broken on our shoulders, it’s this generation that helps us. So we all help each other and we fix what we’ve caused,” she says.
Emerald Yee, a senior in Milks’ class, has been concerned about climate change for some time. A family member has a chronic illness that is made worse by heat.
“So for me, I’m mainly concerned about [their] “Climate change and global warming safety,” Yee says. She says the lesson gave her the tools to “really think about climate change and how we can change it and make it better not just for our generation, but for younger generations, our younger siblings, or even our children and grandchildren.”
For Kravitz, encouraging climate optimism is a key part of this lesson. And he says hearing students’ ideas for solutions always makes him feel good.
“The great thing about seeing all these ideas come out of the classroom is that it’s not I can not do it. It is we can do it“Humans, when they come together, can achieve incredible things. And that’s what gives me hope.”
