Climate Change for Beginners

The For Beginners series is the place to start for curious minds who want to tackle life’s big ideas. It tackles the sorts of subjects that people can study in secondary school and university, that some educators think are too grown up or difficult to talk about with younger kids. We think they’re wrong! 

Climate change is having an enormous impact on the world around us - it has become a Climate Crisis. This book uses simple language and vivid illustrations to explain complex questions clearly. How does the climate work? What are we doing to change it? What can we do differently to avoid the worst outcomes? Why do we all find change so hard? The Climate Crisis is a troubling and sensitive topic, especially for children, so the book includes vital tips on how to set realistic goals and not get overwhelmed by bad news.

Contents:

What is the climate?
What is the crisis?
How important is the crisis?

Chapter 1: The basics
What is the greenhouse effect? What are fossil fuels, and why do we love burning them so much?

Chapter 2: How sure are we?
Are we really, really sure that the crisis is happening? Could some people be exaggerating? Meet the IPCC - an international team that studies the crisis and provides us with the most reliable information about it.

Chapter 3: What do we do?
The crisis is big and daunting, but we know what we need to do. There's a VERY long list of changes we need to make: how we grow and eat our food; how we move around; how we get all the power we use to run our machines; how we stay warm - and keep things cold. Almost every part of how we live will have to change, in big and small ways.

Chapter 4: What's stopping us?
If we know what we need to do, why aren't we already making those changes? Some of it is about getting big groups of people to agree on which changes are the most important, and some of it is to do with what's going on in our brains.

Chapter 5: What can I do?
One person can't fix the crisis alone. But there are a lot of things that individual people CAN do, no matter how old or young, or how much power they have.

What happens next?

Glossary
Index
Acknowledgments