Empowering Global Citizens

2. Students will use systems thinking to make connections between
human choices, natural phenomena, and the environment.

Overview
The purpose of this unit is to help students think through the future and
about where current trends could lead.

Activity E.2.1

Onyx and Crake

Students begin reading (and continue reading throughout this unit) Oryx
and Cm/ee, by Margaret Attwood. This book about a fictional future will
help the students to think creatively about what the future could look like.

Activity 13122

What Are the Issues?

Students come to class with articles and ideas about the most pressing and
interesting issues in environmentalism. They evaluate the articles in terms
of the information they learned in their analysis of the world as it is (activity
E. 1.1) and during their reading of Silent Spring (activity 13.1.2). Combining
the three knowledge sources, the students identify environmental risks such
as freshwater scarcity, desertification and erosion, extreme weather, climate
change, energy choices, biodiversity loss, and more. The class discusses these
issues and tries to create linkages between them, perhaps by drawing flow—
charts that show, for example, how drought, erosion, and biodiversity loss
are interrelated.

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