World made by hand

Categories: s1 and s2, Geography General, Atmosphere

While browsing one of my favourite websites tonight, I saw mention of a book called 'World made by Hand' by James Howard Kunstler. The book is futuristic, and paints a worst case scenario of what the world would be like with no oil, rapid climate change, worldwide disease and resource wars. This sounds nightmarish, but the book also has a soft centre. A world of no traffic, people living off their own land, rivers full of fish... I wonder what students would make of this. I wonder what your imagination would lead you to if you were asked to envisage such a future. What would you miss? Would your world be a better or worse place? There is scope for some fantastic extended writing exercises here. I could wait and use this idea with s2 during Environmental Issues, but there seems to me to be a good link for s1. Today we started picking at the idea of Brazil as a rich or poor country. During this, we also looked at Brazil's enormous resources and some of the issues in exploiting them. This could certainly be extended to a worldwide level and then brought back to Brazil and how one person in one country can have an impact.