Carbon Prices and Climate Change

• This lesson plan about carbon pricing, cap-and-trade, and carbon taxes includes a podcast, an article, and several challenges using the En-ROADS climate simulator.
• Students will learn about this government-level solution and will try out a variety of real-world scenarios to see their effect on concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere. 

Positives

• The podcast features an engaging interview with MIT professor of economics Christopher Knittel.
  
• The wrap-up discussion questions are thought-provoking and require students to use critical thinking skills.

Additional Prerequisites

• The guide includes teacher pages and student pages. A PDF of just the student pages is also available near the bottom of the educator guide description page.
• Teachers should take some time to become familiar with the En-ROADS climate simulator before using it in the lesson.

Differentiation

• Civics, social studies, or geography classes could examine carbon tax and cap-and-trade models that are being used in different parts of the world and think about which models might work in the United States.
• Psychology or sociology classes could discuss barriers to carbon pricing using the following questions:
  • Do humans respond more to penalties, rewards, or a combination of the two?
  • Why would money motivate people more than the prospect of stopping climate change?
  • Is it possible that carbon pricing might make people feel like they are doing more to help the Earth than they actually are?
• Other resources on this topic include this video on carbon taxes, this report on confronting carbon inequality, and this article on how individuals can lower their carbon emissions.

This resource addresses the listed standards. To fully meet standards, search for more related resources.