Understand How Climate Change Affects Others

• In this activity, students will learn how factors such as location, wealth, gender, age, ethnicity, or being a member of a minority group can make people more vulnerable to climate change.
• Students will read an article about how climate change affects people disproportionately and then do a role-play activity that demonstrates how some people will experience harsher effects of climate change than others.

Positives

• The teacher's guide provides step-by-step instructions for the role-play activity. 
• This activity will help students understand that some people are more vulnerable than others.

Additional Prerequisites

• In preparation for the activity, teachers need to print and cut out the role cards in advance.
• Students should have time to read their character cards and think about the factors that increase a person's vulnerability to climate change, which are listed on the handout.
• Students may need help deciphering their character's gender since some of the role cards do not say whether the character is male or female.

Differentiation

• Students could work in small groups to come up with a list of solutions to protect vulnerable populations.
• This lesson could be used in an economics or civics course to illustrate how economic policies such as tax laws could reduce poverty and promote equality.
• Other resources on this topic include this video on who is responsible for climate change, this activity on poverty and access to clean water, and this Carbon Brief video that shows which countries are responsible for the most carbon emissions.