Climate “Survival Kit”

Overview

Your final project is to work in groups to design a Climate Change "Survival Kit" that helps others navigate the anxiety, grief, anger, or despair that can arise in the face of our climate crisis. The final product can take whatever form your group deems appropriate: it could be a website or handbook with suggested resources; a proposal for a retreat or therapy group; a public service video; a letter of apology to future generations, or a plea to be delivered via time-machine to people in the PAST; a collection of poems, images, quotes or other materials that activists turn to for comfort or inspiration when they feel overwhelmed by our reality. Really, this project can take any form you wish, so BE CREATIVE. See this sample project from last year. 

Purpose

The purpose of this assignment is to review, reflect upon, and organize some of the elements you found most helpful this quarter, and then arrange them in a format that can be shared with others! The Climate Change Survival Kit also gives students an opportunity to expand their powers of moral imagination so they have the creativity to reimagine and transform social relations and political situations instead of retreating into paralysis and cynicism.

Guidelines & Suggestions

1.    All projects must include a 1-2 page cover letter explaining what your project is, its purpose, its intended audience or users, and your group's rationale for designing the Climate Survival Kit in the particular way you did.

2.    The content in your Climate Survival Kit can be based solely on materials covered in class. However, you are also welcome to draw on other resources, if you wish.

3.    Projects must reflect some of the concepts, theory and knowledge developed within this class.

4.    Keep in mind that different people experience our environmental crisis in different ways. If, for example, you design a "handbook" with resources and tips for managing emotional responses to climate change, you might include different sections that recommend resources for different people or conditions. Perhaps your handbook would recommend "Reading A" to a student who's depressed from learning about extinction, while a frontline community -- whose very survival and way of life is threatened by those same extinctions and habitat loss -- would be offered "Resource B." Or perhaps a climate scientist might benefit from "Resource C," while a citizen living in a community of climate-deniers would benefit from "Activity D."