Environmental Awareness and Sustainability Course

Learn how the atmosphere, held by gravity, stores heat, protects life from radiation, and distributes water. Explore the troposphere, stratosphere with the ozone layer absorbing UV radiation, mesosphere, and thermosphere.

Define climate change as changes in average weather patterns over decades. Recognize global warming as rising temperatures and distinguish climate from weather, noting natural and human drivers.

Climate change is real, with worldwide warming shown by temperature anomalies from 1880 to 2018, and greenhouse gases trap heat, leaving Earth about 60 degrees Fahrenheit warmer.

Explore how climate change drives temperature increases, shifts precipitation patterns, and hydrology changes, leading to more extreme heat, forest fires, floods, and droughts, with regional warming variations.

Climate change shifts geographic ranges and phenology, altering blooming, migration, and reproduction, while heatwaves and extreme events threaten habitats and food webs.

Explore how climate change affects human health, agriculture, equity, and national security through rising temperatures, droughts, and disease vectors, leading to heat illness and food insecurity.

Climate change reshapes the built environment by stressing transportation networks, energy and water systems, with heat waves, floods, and droughts threatening infrastructure and interconnections.

Explore mitigation and adaptation strategies to reduce carbon footprint through energy efficiency, renewable energy like wind, solar, hydro, nuclear power, and carbon sinks.

Explore mitigation and adaptation in action by reducing carbon footprint through energy efficiency and renewable energy. Consider artificial capture and sequestration and the cost implications of a carbon tax.

Explore mitigation through policy using market-based tools like cap and trade and carbon taxes. Learn how caps set emission limits, distribute permits, and how taxes price emissions without trading.

Explore adaptation as preparing for climate impacts by managing hazards, exposure, and vulnerability. Learn practical actions—reduce hazards, minimize exposure, and plan recovery—illustrated by heat mitigation through shade and flood barriers.

Explore how to manage vulnerability by addressing health care access, finances, and job stability. Diversify livelihoods and secure backups, such as water storage, fuel, or insurance, to reduce climate-related risks.