Energy, Climate, Environment

Introduction and Rationale

It is my fundamental belief as a teacher that I am duty bound to make my instruction applicable to tangible, important, and emergent issues in the communities which our students are part of. As a teacher of mathematics, I have been continuously challenged to make the content of study more accessible to students by providing significant context to their studies of algebra and geometry. Of all contexts available, no issues are more pertinent, to the well being of the current and future generations of students, than those of environmental impacts of human action. If we are not preparing students to apply mathematics in defining and solving real problems in their environment, we might as well not trouble them with the effort to learn the skill sets of algebra or higher mathematics.

Perhaps this point could be put more simply with the question: What are we trying to accomplish as teachers of mathematics? The obvious answer is that we are trying to guide our students in learning mathematic concepts and skills. Yet we are all too often disappointed in the outcomes of our efforts as reflected in the achievement of our students. On the many, many occasions when students ask, "Why do I have to learn this?" we should resist the urge to take a defensive or authoritarian attitude. Our students' learning and our own sanity will be much better served by authoritative responses that neither avoid nor artificially pacify our students' questions. In fact, what we should be doing is asking our own form of the question, "Why do I have to teach this?"

This flies in the face of conventional mathematics instruction, which tells us that math is an absolute staple of academia. However, while the esoteric appreciation of the pure form is something that those of us who teach it can enjoy, it is not a valid approach to teaching the majority of our students. Our intent might best be focused on more immediately improve the lives of our students and the communities of which they are members, than on enforcing an aesthetic of mathematics. And, at our given time in history there is no greater exigency than the environmental impact of human actions. This is the most legitimate context we have available for the type of strong problem solving skills that can be developed in mathematics study. But, recognizing this is only a start.

It is invaluable to encourage students to ask, "What is, and has been, the impact of human energy use and industrialism on the natural world?" The connections that exist, between how we live and the state of the world in which we live, are vast and can quickly become overwhelming. However, for our students today, avoiding thinking about the ecological state of their world is much like procrastinating over completing a homework assignment - the longer it goes untouched, the more likely it is that there will be too little time to do anything about it.

This is cause for both pause and action in how we should proceed. In our capacity as teachers, the enablement of others to use the skills that we teach takes precedence over running out into the world to solve every problem by employing these skills ourselves. Whether or not our students become scientists, industrialists, economists, or policy makers who solve the world's problems, it is to us to educate them for any of these potentials as best we are able. We will be better able when we provide them the perspective to articulate and attack problems - which are exemplified best, and at a high-level of rigor, by environmental concerns.

To implement environmental contexts in mathematics curricula does not require that we become experts in the field of environmental science. Indeed, as a comparatively new field of study, which requires multidisciplinary knowledge and research, there are relatively few experts on the subject in the world. ¹ There is such a high degree of knowledge necessary to navigate any one of the sub-specialized areas of research that synthesizing them altogether is still a process-in-development for even the most knowledgeable researchers. What is required is that we have a general acceptance of the scientifically grounded reality of environmental impacts, cumulatively called "climate change," and that we familiarize ourselves with some of the complexities of what, thus far, I've referred to as environmental issues in a very general way.

My lack of specificity, on the one hand, is a conscientious choice and, on the other hand, it is out of necessity. That is to say, it is necessary to be a bit general in order to broach the subject. What we may now commonly refer to as climate change requires some abstraction if I am going to write about it in a paper that is somewhat less than the size of a telephone book.

To fully understand environmental issues, which no one "fully" does, goes beyond having a mental image of melting polar ice caps. Although this is a legitimate part of the overall picture, it is far too simplistic to represent what is truly an enormous, variable, and still increasing catalog of issues. It is an important objective for us, before we set objectives for our students, to tackle a broad notion of what climate change means.

What Climate Change Means

A search query on Google generates forty six million three hundred thousand hits, even when "climate change" is entered in quotation marks, which force the search to only find the exact phrase. ² While this is currently outshined by the two hundred sixteen million hits for "michael jackson," it still represents an enormous amount of data.

Besides being vast, climate change has remained a politically contentious issue for longer than a rational length of time. To get past this contention, let me start by saying that, if a teacher is conflicted about the politics or supposed debate on climate change, there are several options open to her or him: explore some of the multitude of reportage in the popular media based on correlations and causation; read some of the overwhelming academic papers that verify human actions as a perpetuating influence on climate change - the best of which may be the coordinated research findings of respected, independent scientists contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007 ³; directly consult scientific experts who are open to sharing their findings; or, if you are either truly skeptical until more obvious effects of climate change become part of our everyday lives or find yourself politically polarized on the issue, there is always the option to go on in denial.

In actuality, even if we exhaust the research in order to satisfy our skepticism, retirement will arrive before we will be able to make up our minds. There is so great a spectrum of knowledge, with more continuously being developed, that no one can take it all in over any short period of time. However the knowledge monumentally points to the industry of humanity as a primary catalyst for climate change. The reasons why this has been so thoroughly resisted in political debate is open to any number of accusations - from ignorance to malicious corporate conspiracy - a topic beyond my scope here. All confrontational jibes aside, and to invoke President Obama's diplomatic manner of speech, "Look… the point is not to argue whether climate change is somebody-in-particular's fault, the point is to consider the realities of it and find solutions that will provide a better future for all of us."

To consider the realities, briefly, a note on usage of the term "climate change" is appropriate. We have lived with the term "global warming" for a significant amount of time, but we will likely hear it less often in the future. The warming of oceanic surface temperatures, overall average temperatures, and a myriad of warmer temperature consequences are a big part of the climate change puzzle. However, other consequences arising directly from human activities and energy use, as opposed to coming about via global warming, are also hugely important issues in the realm of environmental and human health. These include water pollution from industrial effluence, soil degradation and erosion from homogenous mega-farming, and species loss from human encroachment - among many other issues. There are also issues that arise as chimeras, monstrous combinations, of environmental impacts - some of which are relatively well understood and some of which are not yet fathomed. Air pollution, to which I will give some attention later, is an example of climate change that results directly from the spreading of airborne particulate matter in fossil fuel exhaust and is indirectly exacerbated by the effects that warming air temperatures have on urban weather patterns. ⁴ Furthermore, even those consequences resulting from the rise in average temperatures do not always "feel" like "warming."

The earth's average global temperature has risen by 1.13 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the industrial revolution. ⁵ A strong analogy can be made for why this is so important, and why it might lead to such serious consequences, by considering an elevation of about one degree in internal temperature for a human being. With a rise of 1.13 degrees in body temperature, a person would be at, on average, 99.73 degrees, nearly 100. This also serves as an analogy for the variance in environmental outcomes. The symptoms range from flush dry skin to skin drenched with sweat, from severe thirst to an inability to eat or drink comfortably, from unbearable warmth to painful chills, from restlessness to exhaustion - all, seemingly different, symptoms of an overheated system or fever.

The power of altering the terminology away from "warming" is quite serious. In a positive sense, the word "change" is more inclusive of the other grave concerns, not necessarily directly related to warming, which we should also be giving our attention to. "Change" also more accurately represents the effects that many people will observe as a result of the rise of average global temperatures (which will actually mean cooling temperatures in some regions and which is certain to mean erratic changes in many regions). In a negative sense, taking away the ominous note that is rung by "warming" may also take away exigency from popular perception of the issue. ⁶ By any other name, the problems - of human health, population and sustainability of our ecological and economical existences - are still as serious. The goals I propose are meant, through a regular and sustained practice, to help students build the math skills to solve them.