Topic Guide

Assessing a Country’s Role as a Global Citizen

In this activity you will form groups and conduct research into a country’s role as a global citizen, and report back to your lab section in the form of a presentation. At the end of this activity you will find suggestions for the format of the presentation. You will use the data you investigate as evidence for your statements. Please use these suggestions and the “How to make a class presentation” (Resource 1) as guidelines for your presentation.

Resources:

World Wide Web

What is a “good citizen,” especially when applied to an entire country? We can make an analogy to a person as a citizen. A good citizen is one who interacts with others in a way that is beneficial rather than destructive. It is someone who contributes to society, who cleans up after him/herself, and who takes only his/her share of the community’s resources. In the context of a country, a “good citizen” could be held to the same standards. We share the world’s oceans and its atmosphere. Pollution of these common resources affects every other country in the globe. Of course, there are other ways to be a bad citizen, like starting wars and helping others start wars. In this study, you will attempt to make a definition of what a good makes a good global citizen and how your country measures up in that regard.

After completing this investigation you should be able to:

1. Make a definition of what characteristics define a good global citizen.
2. Find and analyze data about a specific country to determine its global citizen status.
3. Determine the trends in concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 150 years, paying special attention to the last ten years or so.
4. Relate human population density and carbon emissions data to global climate change

5. Determine the relationship of global carbon emissions and economic growth in the recent past

6. Understand the basics of carbon emission policy, specifically that of the Kyoto Summit.

You can go straight into exploring the data, but if you need more background information about the carbon cycle and carbon emissions policy, please review the websites that provide background information (found after the data section).

Data:

Now you will access the Internet through a browser, either Internet Explorer or Netscape.

Go to the web site:

Go to the United States Census World population site.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/world.html

Look at the link for “World POPClock Projection.” This is the estimated human population right now.

Approximately how much is world population changing each month for the one-year period listed on this web site?

Under graphs, look at the link for “World population: 1950 to 2050.”

What is the general trend of world population and estimated world population from 1950 to 2050? Cite the data. What can you say about the curve? If this trend continues could the human race be in trouble eventually?

Look at the link for “World population growth rates: 1950 to 2050.”

What does this graph tell us? Cite the data.

http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/07.htm

This graph shows global atmospheric concentration of CO2 (in parts per million) for the years 1870-2000. What is the general trend of the global atmospheric concentration of CO2 between the years 1870-2000?

http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/990727a.html

This graph shows global carbon emissions (in billion of tons) for the years 1950-1998. What is the general trend of global carbon emissions between the years 1950-1998? The raw data is found in the table below the graph.

What is the relationship between the two previous graphs?

Use what you learned from your earlier investigation about population of humans during these same time periods. The global economy has been growing, and in the last few years the amount of global carbon emissions has slowed (some scientists claim it has even decreased).

http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/990727b.html

This site depicts the carbon intensity of the world economy. What does this graphic tell us? Cite the data. The raw data is found in the table below the graph.

More data sites

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/environm.html

Climate change data, forecasts and analysis

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/environm.html#Data

International carbon dioxide emissions from the consumption and flaring of fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas, and coal) data

http://ferret.wrc.noaa.gov/cmc/main.pl?cookieCheck=1

Global carbon emissions data. There is a tutorial in the lab manual about using the ferret database. Click on “CDIAC NDP058: annual CO2 emissions” and then click on “get data”

http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/figures/co2trend_global.gif

Carbon dioxide trends and growth rates

http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccgg/index.html

Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory

Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases Group

Background information:

Here are a number of good web sites that contain information about the carbon cycle and carbon emissions policy. You may need to look at several of these sites in order to answer the guidance questions below.

http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/990727.html

Worldwide carbon emissions.

http://www.science.org.au/nova/054/054key.htm

The buying and selling of "allowances" to emit CO2 and its equivalents.

http://www.carboncyclescience.gov/

U.S. Global Change Research Program’s carbon cycle

http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/pub/carbon/ghg/

Exchanges of Greenhouse Gases, Water Vapor, and Heat at the Earth's Surface

http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/archives/carbonarchives.htm

Archives: Carbon Cycle Science on-line journal

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/gasex2/

GasEx 2001: The Equatorial Pacific Air-Sea CO2 Exchange Experiment

Policy:

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted by consensus at the third session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-3) in December 1997. A main goal was reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Developed countries committed to reducing the emissions of six key greenhouse gases by at least 5% by the five-year period 2008-2012.

CIESIN is a Columbia University organization that publishes data relating to sustainability and environmental performance of countries. It is a site worth exploring. Try: http://www.ciesin.org/

You may also want to access this through the course web links, which point to several interesting locations in the CIESIN site.

Issues

• Many developing countries have resisted formal commitments, even voluntary ones, that would put an upper limit on their emissions, stating their per-capita emissions were still low compared to those of developed countries.
• Under the Protocol, an international "emissions trading" management team will allow developed countries that reduce their emissions beyond the agreed target to sell the excess emissions credits to others. Just how many credit a country can buy or sell is a hotly debated area.
• Another issue from Kyoto is that of credit for carbon "sinks," specifically forests, which by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere help to reduce net emissions. How to measure their contribution is difficult.
• Developed countries are balking about the economic costs of cutting emissions over the next decade.

http://www.worldwatch.org/alerts/010716.html

The hard numbers on climate change-Policy information

More background type information about Policy

http://www.cop4.org/infomed/cop4kit/cop4kite.html

Presentation Framework

Your presentation should include a brief overview explaining the carbon cycle and carbon emissions policy. You should then choose several topics to investigate using the data. Your presentation should include interesting findings from your investigations, backed up with data.

You may choose from the following list of topics, or investigate a topic of your own. The topics in the list are examples of investigations that could be made using the data available at the URL’s listed above.

data driven topics:

· Trends and variations in global human population growth

· Trends and variations in global carbon emissions

· Human population density and carbon emissions

· Economic growth and carbon emissions

overview type topics:

· What is the carbon cycle

· Carbon sources and sinks

· The Kyoto Protocol’s policy on carbon emissions and what nations are meeting their agreed levels and what nations are not.

· Why reducing carbon emissions is not simple

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