DBQ Sources: Climate Solutions
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS1Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Credit: “DBQSources: Climate Solutions”, OER Project, https://www.oerproject.com/Directions: Analyze these sources about tree planting, nuclear energy, or plant-based meat as a solution and gather evidence to support your argument.•Jump to tree-planting sources•Jump to nuclear energy sources•Jump to plant-based meat sources
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS2Tree PlantingDocument 1Source:Climate Interactive. “Trillion Trees: Calculating the Mitigation Potential in the En-Roads Simulator.” August 2023.
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS3Document 2Source:Guterres, António. “Secretary-General’s Address at Columbian University: ‘The State of the Planet.’” United Nations. December 2, 2020.One of our best allies is nature itself. Drastically reducing deforestation and systemically restoring forests and other ecosystems is the single largest nature-based opportunity for climate mitigation. Indeed, nature-based solutions could provide one third of the net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The World Economic Forum has estimated that business opportunities across nature could create 191 million jobs by 2030. Document3Source: Jordan, Rob. “When Planting Trees Threatens the Forest.” Stanford News. June 22, 2020.There is no question that forests have an outsized role to play in efforts to slow global biodiversity loss and combat climate change by sequestering carbon as biomass. So it makes sense that tree-planting as a solution has gained traction in recent years with ambitious commitments, such as the Bonn Challenge, which seeks to restore an area of forest more than eight times the size of California by 2030, and Trillion Trees, which seeks to plant as many trees as its name implies.A closer look reveals faults in the optimistic plans. For example, nearly 80 percent of commitments to the Bonn Challenge involve planting monoculture tree plantations or a limited mix of trees that produce products such as fruit and rubber rather than restoring natural forests. Plantations typically have significantly less potential for carbon sequestration, habitat creation and erosion control than natural forests. The potential benefit dwindles further if planted trees replace natural forests, grasslandsor savannahs—ecosystems that have evolved to support unique, local biodiversity.
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS4Document 4Source: Melillo, Jerry. “Forests and Climate Change.” MIT Climate Portal, October 2021.Forests cover about 30% of the Earth’s land surface. As forests grow, their trees take in carbon from the air and store it in wood, plant matter, and under the soil. If not for forests, much of this carbon would remain in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important greenhouse gas driving climate change.Each year since 2000, forests are estimated to have removed an average of 2 billion metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere. This “carbon sink function” of forests is slowing climate change by reducing the rate at which CO2, mainly from fossil fuel burning, builds up in the atmosphere. Careful forest management can therefore be an important strategy to help address climate change in the future. Healthy forests also provide a host of other benefits, from clean water to habitat for plants and animals that can live nowhere else.
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS5Nuclear EnergyDocument 1Source:Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado. “Nuclear Energy” OurWorldinData. https://ourworldindata.org/nuclear-energy. 2020
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS6Document 2Source:Nuclear Power and Secure Energy Transitions, IEA. https://www.iea.org/reports/nuclear-power-and-secure-energy-transitions. 2022.Nuclear energy can help make the energy sector's journey away from unabated fossil fuels faster and more secure. Amid today’s global energy crisis, reducing reliance on imported fossil fuels has become the top energy security priority. No less important isthe climate crisis: reaching net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by mid-century requires a rapid and complete decarbonisation of electricity generation and heat production. Nuclear energy, with its 413 gigawatts (GW) of capacity operating in 32 countries, contributes to both goals by avoiding 1.5 gigatonnes (Gt) of global emissions and 180 billion cubic metres (bcm) of global gas demand a year. While wind and solar PV are expected to lead the push to replace fossil fuels, they need to be complemented bydispatchable resources. As today’s second largest source of low emissions power after hydropower, and with its dispatchability and growth potential, nuclear –in countries where it is accepted –can help ensure secure, diverse low emissions electricity systems. Document 3Source:McKinzie, Matthew.“NRDC Analysis: Nuclear Energy and a Safer Climate Future,” National Resources Defense Council. 2017.Our plan shows increased renewable energy deployment more than makes up for the lost low-carbon benefit of nuclear generation. We are also skeptical of the role of what is called “advanced nuclear” for generating the electricity to run our homes and businesses in the time frame to mid-century—acknowledging that other researchers have projected a significant contribution from advanced nuclear in their modeling of 80% carbon reduction by 2050. We believe that a crucial challenge for advanced nuclear is that no working prototypes of such reactor designs exist or are firmly planned, and thus deployment at scale is generally uncertain but highly unlikely in the first half of this century.NRDC is not opposed in principle to nuclear power, and acknowledges its beneficial low-carbon attributes in a warming world. However, we take seriously the significant safety, global security, environmental, and economic
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS7risks that use of this technology imposes on society. They include: environmental harms from uranium mining; safety and security of nuclear plant operations; nuclear weapons proliferation impacts; and spent fuel disposal. Nuclearpower is also uneconomical compared to alternate forms of low-carbon electricity generation—even without considering those risks. Faced today with the enormous potential to scale up energy efficiency and renewable energy on a stronger electric grid, NRDC’s analysis concludes we can meet our U.S. climate goals even with a much-reduced nuclear fleet.Document 4Source:Jacobson, Mark Z.7 reasons why nuclear energy is not the answer to solve climate change. One Earth, April 20, 2024. https://www.oneearth.org/the-7-reasons-why-nuclear-energy-is-not-the-answer-to-solve-climate-change/To recap, new nuclear power costs about 5 times more than onshore wind power per kWh (between 2.3 to 7.4 times depending upon location and integration issues). Nuclear takes 5 to 17 years longer between planning and operation and produces on average 23 times the emissions per unit electricity generated (between 9 to 37 times depending upon plant size and construction schedule). In addition, it creates risk and cost associated with weapons proliferation, meltdown, mining lung cancer, and waste risks.
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS8Plant-Based MeatDocument 1Source:“Environmental impacts of food.” OurWorldinData. https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food. 2022.
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS9Document 2Source:Pratt, Katie.“UK research: Plant-based meat alternatives growing but not enough to impact beef industry.”University of Kentucky. https://news.ca.uky.edu/article/uk-research-plant-based-meat-alternatives-growing-not-enough-impact-beef-industry. 2022.Plant-based meat alternatives are an emerging industry, growing more than 200% since 2020. University of Kentucky agricultural economists are studying consumer demand for these products and how it could impact the meat industry, specifically beef. Plant-based meat alternatives taste, smell and look similar to red meat, but they are made of plants including peas, potatoes and soybeans. They are designed to appeal to meat eaters. In 2018, the industry had $10 billion in global sales, and economists project the industry to top $30 billion in sales by 2026. In a paper recently published by Applied Economics Perspectives and Policy, UK’s Shuoli Zhao and Yuqing Zheng found that consumers are trying plant-based meat alternatives but not at a rate that would replace current demand for beef. Their study found that only a small percentage of consumers have tried plant-based meat alternatives. While plant-based meat alternatives were intended to serve as a substitute for beef, the researchers found that consumers were often purchasing plant-based meat alternatives alongside beef and pork and instead used the plant-based meat alternatives as a substitute for chicken, turkey, and fish. “The demand is not currently there yet for plant-based meat alternatives to replace a portion of beef sales,” said Zhao, assistant professor in the UK College of Agriculture, Food and Environment. “Even though the market has grown, plant-based meat alternatives only make up 0.5% of the fresh meat market share,” said Zheng, UK associate professor. Due to their high processing, plant-based meat alternatives often cost more than many other meat options and are currently priced similar to Angus beef. The researchers also found that consumers were more likely to try plant-based meat alternatives if theywere on sale.
CLIMATE PROJECT/ LESSON 4.2ACTIVITY DBQ SOURCES: CLIMATE SOLUTIONS10Document 3Source:Ritchie, Hannah.“The World Needs Processed Food,” Wired Magazine. https://www.wired.com/story/processed-food-health-meat-substitute-environment. November 23, 2022.To have a chance of meeting our global climate targets, ending deforestation, and protecting the world’s wildlife, we need to eat much less meat. Both plant foods and meat substitutes have a much lower carbon footprint, use much less land, and cause less water pollution than meat. The environmental toll can be 10 to 100 times lower than that of beef or lamb.Meat substitutes are our best shot at feeding the world without destroying it. The backlash to these products is counterproductive. And the blanket dismissal of such foods as “ultra-processed” isn’t helping. Most are defined as ultra-processed based on themethods used to produce them. But if we list the reasons UPFs are bad for our health, meat substitutes have almost none of those qualities. They are generally not high in calories—most are lower than meat. They have less saturated fat, almost no added sugars, and are higher in fiber.What they do have are additives. Impossible Foods adds them to give its burgers a juicy, meat-like texture. Many companies add binding agents and preservatives to extend their products’ shelf lives. People get freaked out by lists of ingredients they don’trecognize. But the notion that how pronounceable something is can determine whether we should eat it is not scientifically sound. You can probably pronounce “lead” and “mercury,” but I don’t recommend seasoning your dinner with them.We shouldn’t be eating them all the time, but as part of a diverse diet, there is little to suggest meat substitutes are bad for our health. In fact, some can be a nutritional plus.