Team Members: Sam Ihns, Samra Lakew, Robert Vunabandi
The data says that the United States is the country with the highest CO2 emissions per capita in the world. We want to tell this story because today’s children will be the group most impacted by the effects of climate change and should be able to advocate for themselves.
This sketch was designed for an intended audience of junior high students. We decided to focus on junior high school students because they are far enough in their educational journey to have been exposed to charts and different types of data visualization. At this age, they are also familiar with the concept of climate change but are still young enough to be forming their own opinions about the subject. Our aim was to use the World Bank global CO2 emissions data to contextualize the issue of carbon emissions in a way that provides children with enough information to empower them to learn more and take action but not so much that they feel overwhelmed or scared.
Inspired by this recent and popular comic explaining coronavirus to children, we chose to use a comic-strip inspired format for this piece.
Future improvements
In the next iteration of this sketch, there are a number of improvements we could make to build a richer, more compelling story that would effectively meet the goal of educating and empower kids to take on the issues of climate change.
- Add suggestions on where the kids can go to learn more
- Provide examples of other children who are making a difference in this space, including Greta Thunberg, Leah Namugerwa, and Autumn Peltier.
- Share ideas for how kids can reduce their family, school, or community carbon footprint.