1. Identify the mechanisms of the enhanced greenhouse effect.

2. Identify how carbon dioxide plays a key role in the greenhouse effect.

3. Identify how surface albedo plays a key role in the greenhouse effect.

4. Identify where the carbon dioxide (CO₂) is coming from.

5. Identify how the mechanism for the greenhouse effect disproportionally affects certain communities.

6. Define climate justice and identify communities who are disproportionately affected by climate change.

7. Recognize white roofs as a science-based strategy for adapting to urban heat in a warming climate.

8. Reflect on how chemistry concepts are needed to discuss climate justice with a community member during an interview.

I use this activity in a non-science majors course called "Everyday Chemistry" taught at a community college, with a class size of 24 students. The course is full in-person, such that there are no online components and students are in a classroom together for all class sessions. The course includes a weekly laboratory session and students majoring in any discipline at my college can take this course to earn laboratory credit toward their degree. The activity involves two hours of class time during which students watch a documentary, listen to a lecture, work in groups to discuss a scientific article, and share the results of an interview they conducted with a member of their community. Outside of class time, students need about an hour of time to conduct the interview. I use the activity during a climate change module about electromagnetic radiation taught as part of the course during Week 7 of an 11-week-long quarter. Prior to this activity, students completed a laboratory experiment focused on Lewis structures and the electromagnetic spectrum focused on understanding the relationship between the wavelength and color of a photon as well as drawing Lewis structures and molecular shape. Students work in groups throughout the quarter, so they are comfortable working together and having discussions in class prior to this activity. I used the Canvas learning management system (LMS) to administer an online quiz to students at the end of the activity, but if an online LMS is not available then the quiz can be given in person.

About two hours of class time is needed to implement this activity with a class size of about 24 students. I spread the two hours over two different class sessions, separated by about one week to give students time to conduct an interview with a community member. The activity involves about one hour of work outside of class for students to complete the interview with a community member.

Instructor Class Preparation: Check links to the online open-access textbook (if using) and the documentary (Using Ice to Battle India's Heat) to make sure both are still active and accessible. Print out two assignment sheets (see Steps 3 and 4 below) to distribute to students during class time or if not printing upload both assignments to your LMS or other website so that students can access them electronically during class. Prepare a lecture on climate science (see Step 2 below) using a PowerPoint presentation or other type of presentation of your choice.

Step 1: Climate Justice Case Study of Urban Heat in India's Slums (30 minutes). Prior to class, I encourage students to read Sections 7.1 through 7.11 of the Open Access text Climate and the Environment available on Chemistry LibreTexts, but it is not necessary that they read this prior to coming to class. I begin class by briefly explaining the concept of albedo and how that applies to white roofs as a solution to climate change-induced increases in urban heat, which is important to understanding a 15-minute-long documentary that I show next called Using Ice to Battle India's Heat made as part of the BBC's Life at 50C. This BBC mini-documentary series focuses on extreme heat (specifically 50 degrees Celsius or 122 degrees Farenheit) and how people experiencing these temperatures in certain places around the world are struggling daily to adapt and survive. The Life at 50C video I show is about a woman living in the slums of Ahmedabad, India who struggles to get her grandson to fall asleep in their one-room house due to the heat. She tries painting her roof white, which lowers the temperature of their indoor living space by about 4 degrees Celcius (7 degrees Farenheit). After she paints her roof, her grandson is able to sleep. This video is highly relevant to the topic we will soon cover in class, electromagnetic radiation, as it is focused on how white surfaces reflect more sunlight than darker surfaces (i.e., the roofs before they were painted white). After this video, we have a short class discussion during which I ask students a series of questions to review what happened in the BBC documentary: Why would you use white to paint the roof? What is it about the color white that would make the house cool? What does this have to do with how sunlight interacts with the white paint? This leads into a discussion of albedo. After I introduce the concept of albedo, I write a definition of climate justice on the board from Yale Climate Connections (2020): Climate justice "acknowledges that climate change can have disproportionately harmful social, economic, and public health impacts on disinvested populations. Advocates for climate justice are striving to have these inequities addressed head-on through long-term mitigation and adaptation strategies." The documentary highlights climate justice issues focused on how people living in the Global South (e.g., in Ahmedabad, India) compared to the Global North (e.g., Reading List: Global North v. Global South in Climate Change) as well as women (e.g., The White Roofs cooling Women's Homes in Indian Slums) are disproportionately affected by climate change. After this case study, I quickly let students know about a similar project in the United States called White Roof Project, which is based in a city in the United States (New York City) that has similar urban heat island issues as the U.S. city where our college is located (Portland, Oregon). I do this to make this climate solution of white roofs more local and relatable for my students, who are living in Portland, Oregon in the United States. I do not spend much class time on this. Instead, I spend a minute or two describing the project and then give them the link to the White Roof Project website in case they want to look into this more.

Step 2: Lecture on Carbon Dioxide and the Greenhouse Effect (30 minutes). Following the climate justice case study, I explain chemistry concepts relevant to understanding the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum, including properties of waves (wavelength, frequency, energy), the different types of waves on the EM spectrum, and how the absorption and reflection of visible light results in our seeing different colors. I then describe the air in the atmosphere as a mixture of five gases (N₂, O₂, Argon, H₂O vapor, and CO₂) and explain how CO₂ specifically causes the temperature of Earth to be habitable. I contrast Earth's temperatures with those of Venus, which has a lot more CO₂ in its atmosphere. Then I describe the three different wavelengths of the EM spectrum that reach Earth's atmosphere and in what percentages: ultraviolet (UV) radiation (8%), visible light (39%), and infrared (IR) radiation (53%). I then explain how much of each of these types of radiation is reflected, absorbed, and emitted back into space by the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. I explain how IR radiation interacts differently with greenhouse gases (H₂O, CO₂, O₃, CH₄) compared to other gases in the atmosphere that do not trap heat (N₂, O₂, Ar) and how the extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel burning are trapping even more heat (called the enhanced greenhouse effect). After presenting the basics of climate science, I explain why it is difficult to study the impact of human activities on the Earth's climate (e.g., Earth's climate experiences natural variability and this needs to be distinguished from human-caused changes, scientists cannot perform experiments on the Earth's climate due to the time and space scales involved) and different ways the scientists study climate (e.g., atmospheric CO₂ concentrations from hundreds of years ago embedded in Antarctic ice, more recent measurements in atmospheric air at different places around the world such as the famous Mauna Loa data set in Hawaii, use of isotopes to estimate Earth's temperature 100,000s of years ago). I also show a picture of the Earth's carbon cycle to explain the different processes that add (e.g., respiration, deforestation, burning fossil fuels) and remove (e.g., photosynthesis, dissolution in ocean water) carbon to and from the atmosphere, respectfully, as well as the different reservoirs on Earth where carbon is stored (rocks, ocean, biomass, atmosphere). I cover the concept of albedo, where I use the India white roof case study (see Step 1) to explain how white surfaces reflect more and absorb less EM radiation.

Step 3: Climate Justice in a Scientific Article (30 minutes). I ask students to work in groups of no more than four students to collectively and collaboratively read a 2020 open-access article available on the United States National Institute of Health (NIH) online database called Combating Climate Change-induced Heat Stress: Assessing Cool Roofs and Its Impact on the Indoor Ambient Temperature of the Households in the Urban Slums of Ahmedabad, which is centered on data collected in the slums of Ahmedabad, India (see "Climate Justice Scientific Literature.docx" file for the instructions to students and the assignment that goes with this article). This is the same city where the grandmother and grandson in the BBC's Using Ice to Battle India's Heat documentary live and painted their roof white (see Step 1 above). The scientific study measures the performance of cool roofs (including using white paint) compared to typical roofs made of tin, asbestos/cement sheet, and concrete by measuring indoor air temperatures and humidity as well as conducting a survey to indicate socioeconomic status and perceptions related to roofing and health. As the students read the article, they answer a series of questions that ask them to observe what journal it is published in and who published it in order to evaluate whether a source of information is valid or not. I also ask them to describe the organization of the scientific paper into different sections and what information is contained in each section so that they can build their literacy around reading scientific papers. I then ask them to define climate justice, identify the communities in the article who are disproportionately affected by climate change, and describe the problems that the communities described in the article are facing. Students work on the assignment in groups, but each individual student writes the answer to each question and turns in their own sheet for a grade at the end of the class session. At the end of this class session, I assign Step 4 (below) to students, and they have one week to complete Step 4.

Climate Justice Scientific Literature.odt ( 7kB Jul23 26)

Step 4: Interviewing Community Members About Climate Justice and Urban Heat (1 hour outside of class, 30 minutes in class). Each student conducts an interview with a community member of their choice, asking that person to define climate justice, whether they are aware that some communities that are more affected by climate change than others, and whether they've noticed that some areas feel hotter than others during summer heat waves and who lives in these areas (see "Interview Assignment.docx" file below). After they conduct their interview, students come to class to share the outcome of their interviews. All students turn in the assignment sheet with both the interviewee's response to each question and their own response to two reflection questions that ask them what chemistry concepts learned in the class came up during their interview and whether they felt knowledgeable enough to answer them. Before students hand in their assignment sheets, two or three students share the results of their interview with the whole class by reading their interviewee's responses to the class. My hope is that, by asking some students to share answers to interview questions during class, students will see that the problem of urban heat and climate justice is not just a problem experienced by one city but is a widespread and pervasive problem in a lot of cities.

Interview Assignment.docx (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 16kB Oct8 26)

A challenge that I have faced is helping students understand how the science and chemistry of climate change affects people. Without starting with a climate justice case study that humanizes science, before lecturing on any of the chemistry and other scientific facts, students struggle to see on their own that there are consequences of rising global temperatures for people. The BBC's Using Ice to Battle India's Heat documentary that I show students in this activity helps make evident to students that the science of climate change and the enhanced greenhouse effect that they are learning about in my chemistry courses has consequences for people.

There is a lot of science vocabulary that students have to learn to understand the science of climate change (e.g., albedo, enhanced greenhouse effect and temperature). Making explicit connections for students between the vocabulary they are learning, and the issues presented in the climate justice case study about white roofs in an urban slum in India enhances the connections between science and the consequences of science for people. During my lecture about the chemistry of climate science (Step 2 in "Teaching Description and Materials" section), I refer back to the issues presented in the video as much as possible as I present new science vocabulary during the lecture. This helps to humanize climate science when students see connections between the technical aspects such as vocabulary and real issues in the world that people are facing as a result of climate change. The climate justice case study becomes students' prior knowledge and provides an "anchor" that students can relate to that I can keep coming back to during the climate science lecture.

The first time I used this activity in my course, students became very quiet and seemed a bit shocked when I introduced the concept of climate justice and then asked them how they felt about it. I used this activity in Week 7 of an 11-week-long quarter, and it was both the first time I introduced a social justice topic in the chemistry course and the first time I opened the classroom up for discussion of the chemistry content alongside a social (climate) justice case study. Prior to this activity, students' activity in the class consisted primarily of listening to my chemistry lectures and participating in laboratory activities. They were not accustomed to class discussions. Although I did tell students the week before (Week 6) that we would learn about chemistry and climate justice the next week (Week 7), I recommend giving students notice even earlier in the quarter that there will be a unit late in the course during which we will have a discussion about climate justice and how it relates to chemistry. By doing this, students will be anticipating the topic rather than feeling surprised at something totally different happening in the course seven weeks into the quarter. If you teach chemistry primarily through lecturing, I also recommend having a few small class discussions about chemistry topics to warm students up to having discussions in your chemistry course. For example, one way to handle class discussions in a way that gets students talking is to first pose a question to students and ask them to discuss in small groups first. Then, ask each group to share the highlights of their discussion. Talking in small groups is often more comfortable for students compared to speaking in front of the entire class during a class discussion. Even before posing questions about climate justice, a small ice-breaker activity can also get students feeling comfortable talking to each other and speaking up in class. Both giving students notice about a climate justice topic in the course later in the quarter and giving them practice with class discussions will lead to a more interactive experience with this activity for students. I think the students did like the discussion, and they wanted more, as they asked me during Week 8 if we could have more class discussions when we started to cover chemistry topics related to water.

1. Identify the mechanisms of the enhanced greenhouse effect.
2. Identify how carbon dioxide plays a key role in the greenhouse effect.
3. Identify how surface albedo plays a key role in the greenhouse effect.
4. Identify where carbon dioxide (CO₂) is coming from.
5. Identify how the mechanism for the greenhouse effect disproportionally affects certain communities.

I assess the first five learning goals using an online quiz that I give students at the end of the unit on climate change (see "Quiz Questions.docx" file below), which is about a week and a half after I start the climate change unit. I create the online multiple choice quiz using Canvas and students take the quiz in Canvas, where it is automatically graded based on correct answers that I select when I set up the quiz. I assess Learning Goal 1 using Questions 1, 2, and 11 (see the "Quiz Questions.docx" file); Learning Goal 2 using Questions 11, 12, and 14; Learning Goal 3 using Question 13; Learning Goal 4 using Question 14; and Learning Goal 5 using Question 9 and 15.

Quiz Questions.odt ( 6kB Oct8 26)

6. Define climate justice and identify communities who are disproportionately affected by climate change.

I assess this learning goal using student's responses to Questions 3 and 4 found in the "Climate Justice Scientific Literature.docx" assignment (see Step 3 in "Description and Teaching Materials" section). Students work on the assignment in groups during class time, but each individual student writes the answer to each question and turns in their own sheet for a grade at the end of the class session. I grade student's responses based on whether they align with the definition of climate justice that I wrote on the board in class (see Step 1 in "Description and Teaching Materials" section) and correctly identify communities who are disproportionately affected from the BBC documentary (Step 1) and/or the scientific article they read (Step 3). Answers are either very good (highest score), good, moderate, or poor (lowest score) based on these criteria and the amount of detail that they provide for each answer.

7. Recognize white roofs as a science-based strategy for adapting to urban heat in a warming climate.

I assess this learning goal twice during this activity. The first time is an informal assessment of the class as a whole that occurs during the classroom discussion that follows the BBC documentary that I show at the beginning of this activity (see Step 1 in the Description and Teaching Materials section). I listen to students' responses to my questions during class about why people would use white to paint their roof and how the color white would make indoor house temperatures cooler based on how sunlight interacts with the white paint. I provide formative feedback to students' based on their responses so that I can help them understand the concept of albedo. The second assessment of this learning goal is more formal and is in the form of a multiple-choice question on the online Canvas quiz (see "Quiz Questions.docx" file above under Learning Goals 1 through 5) that I assign students at the end of the climate science unit of this course. I use Question 8 on this quiz to assess Learning Goal 7 a second time.

8. Reflect on how chemistry concepts are needed to discuss climate justice with a community member during an interview.

I assess this learning goal using students' individual responses to the two reflection questions that they answer for the Interview Assignment (see Step 4 in the Description and Teaching Materials section). There is no one definite or correct answer to these questions. However, I grade student responses based on whether they correctly used the chemistry concepts in the context of the climate justice issue of extreme urban heat, which they discussed with the community member that they interviewed. Answers are either very good (highest score), good, moderate, or poor (lowest score) based on these criteria and the amount of detail that they provide for each answer.

Chemistry LibreTexts. Climate and the Environment, Chapter 7.

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) News. 2022. Using Ice to Battle India's Heat, BBC's Life at 50 degree Celcius series

Simmons, D. 2020. What is climate justice?: Yale Climate Connections.

Desnavi, D. 2024. Reading List: Global North v. Global South in Climate Change, The Analysis.

Vandana, K. 2023. The white roofs cooling women's homes in Indian slums, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) News

White Roof Project. 2012. White Roof Project, New York City, United States of America.

Vellingiri, S. et al. 2020. Combating Climate Change-induced Heat Stress: Assessing Cool Roofs and Its Impact on the Indoor Ambient Temperature of the Households in the Urban Slums of Ahmedabad, Indian J Occup Environ Med, 24(1):25–29. doi: 10.4103/ijoem.IJOEM_120_19