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References
GROWING TOMORROW’S NATURAL RESOURCE LEADERS. (2008). Parks & Recreation, 43(2), 74-78
Bibliography
“GROWING TOMORROW’S NATURAL RESOURCE LEADERS.” Parks & Recreation 43, no. 2 (February 2008): 74-78. GreenFILE, EBSCOhost (accessed November 2, 2013).
References
Arvai, J. L., Campbell, V. A., Baird, A., & Rivers, L. (2004). Teaching Students to Make Better Decisions About the Environment: Lessons From the Decision Sciences. Journal Of Environmental Education, 36(1), 33-44.
Bibliography
Arvai, Joseph L., et al. “Teaching Students to Make Better Decisions About the Environment: Lessons From the Decision Sciences.” Journal Of Environmental Education 36, no. 1 (Fall2004 2004): 33-44. GreenFILE, EBSCOhost (accessed November 2, 2013).
References
Stock, J. A. (2008). GROWING GREEN KIDS. Parks & Recreation, 43(4), 64-68.
Bibliography
Stock, Judith A. “GROWING GREEN KIDS.” Parks & Recreation 43, no. 4 (April 2008): 64-68. GreenFILE, EBSCOhost (accessed November 2, 2013).
References
Taylor, D. A. (2007). Growing Green Roofs, City by City. Environmental Health Perspectives, 115(6), A306-A311.
Bibliography
Taylor, David A. “Growing Green Roofs, City by City.” Environmental Health Perspectives 115, no. 6 (June 2007): A306-A311. GreenFILE, EBSCOhost (accessed November 2, 2013).
References
Vázquez, J. (2008). GROWING UP GREEN. Bioscience, 58(9), 884-886. doi:10.1641/B580918
Bibliography
Vázquez, José. “GROWING UP GREEN.” Bioscience 58, no. 9 (October 2008): 884-886. GreenFILE, EBSCOhost (accessed November 2, 2013).
green
KidsGroWy a year-round environmental
education prograniy teaches students in
Baltimore how to become engaged in
their own neighborhoods.
7 4 P A R K S < S ' R E C R E A T I O N F E B R U A R Y Z O O
CARING FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT
GROWING TOMORROVU’S
NATURAL RESOURCE
I
n the 1960s, President Kennedy
made a plea to America’s youth
to choose lives in service to their
country. Thousands responded
to his call to action by entering
the natural resources field. Many chose
careers as wildlife biologists or environ-
mental activists or volunteered to run
neighborhood clean-up projects.
Today, many of those conservation-
ists are ready to retire, leaving a gaping
hole in the workforce dedicated to pre-
serving and protecting our environ-
ment. But a youth recreation program
in Baltimore is creating a new wave of
natural resource stewards through a
unique environmental education pro-
gram known as KidsGrow.
KidsGrow is a year-round environ-
mental education program that teaches
urban elementary-school youth in Bal-
timore to appreciate the environment
and become activists in their own
neighborhoods.
According to Monica Logan, Kids-
Grow program manager, “We are creat-
ing natural resource leaders and en-
couraging people of color to enter those
fields,” an important element to include
in a profession that has attracted pre-
dominantly white males in the past.
Although the program currently
involves children in second through
fifth grades, through the learning path
Logan calls the “Green Career Ladder,”
the program’s goal is to include middle-
and high-school-age students so that
they may one day choose careers in the
environmental .science and resource
management fields. Older youth are
given training and summer jobs in park
forestry and maintenance at Baltimore’s
most visible public parks. The project
provides economically disadvantaged
youth with the chance to develop useful
career skills that will lead to professions
related to forestry.
The environmental education pro-
gram, which currently enrolls approxi-
mately 340 elementary-school students,
targets inner-city youth from five
lower-income communities and teaches
them about stewardship and taking care
of the earth. “Fourteen years ago, when
the program began, this was a very
innovative project,” Logan says. “It was
so new, so phenomenal.”
Children learn through after-school
classroom activities and explore Balti-
more’s extensive local parks and water-
sheds, tree nurseries, gardens, and cul-
tural assets. Students learn the impor-
tance of activism through hands-on
projects such as tree plantings, greening
projects, stream monitoring, and neigh-
borhood clean-ups.
Every Day Is Earth Day
Since 1994, students have planted street
trees, established organic gardens,
learned to fish, made maple syrup from
city trees, started recycling projects, and
helped clean up their neighborhoods.
At that time, the program was run out
of several recreation centers around the
city, but has since become more focused
and curriculum driven.
Now KidsGrow is an established part
ofthe curriculum at Franklin Square
Elementary School in Bahimore and
P A R K S < ^ R E C R E A T I O N F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8 7 5
i
READERS REACT
Immediate feedback from
members of the P&R Readers
Panel
With the pressure on educators
nationwide to prepare kids for math
and reading tests, it can be difficult
to convince schools to make room
for environmental education—
whether during the school day or
after school. This program highlights
one successful technique: integrat-
ing lessons into the school curricu-
ium. Regardless of the approach, it
is vital to build allies within the
school system, both at individual
schools and with the central admin-
istration.
David Rivel
Executive Director, City Parks
Foundation, New York City
The Baltimore KidsGrow program
has many elements that a positive
program should have: cooperation,
private funding support, citizen
involvement, and an enthusiastic
staff creating a worthwhile curricu-
lum. Since it has been in place for
the past 11 years, it would be inter-
esting to track some of the past par-
ticipants to see if they do, in fact,
enter the field of parks, recreation,
or environmental sciences.
Dianne Hoover, CPRP
Director, Bakersfield Recreation
& Parks, Bakersfield, Calif.
The integration of environmental
protertion issues into the heart of
parks and recreation programming
is vital for us all. I highly recom-
mend that agencies across the
nation put this article to use in their
prospective “environments” to nur-
ture social conscience and program
diversity.
Andrew Garrison
Health and Weilness
Administrator, Bernalilh County
Parks and Recreation,
Albuquerque, NM
Don’t miss NRPA’s National Summit on
Environmental Stewardship, May 4-7, in Portland, Ore.
KidsGrow teaches children the importance of hands-on activism through
greening projects and neighborhood clean-ups.
involves four teachers there as well as
staff from the Parks & People Founda-
tion, the organization that launched the
program. “It has a more academic focus
because of our involvement in the
schools,” Logan says.
A large part ofthe curriculum for
KidsGrow was designed by the Balti-
more Ecosystem Study, a National Sci-
ence Foundation-funded project of the
Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Each
year’s curriculum is unique and incor-
porates modules focused on a central
theme that spans the entire program
year.
The partnership with the school gives
the program an academic focus that
also includes a reading program, the
“100-Book Challenge,” which encour-
ages students to read up to 100 books.
Homework assistance is also given
every day, since the program runs from
the time school lets out at 2:30 until 6
p.m.
The Parks & People Foundation is in
itself unique. KidsCrow is just one of
many programs run by the foundation,
an organization founded by four-term
Baltimore Mayor William Donald
Schaefer in 1984 to address the prob-
lems of the city’s aging urban recreation
and parks system. The foundation was
formed to raise funds and develop new
programs in a way that would lessen the
burdens on the Baltimore city govern-
ment.
“The foundation was started because
its founders wanted a think tank that
would come up with innovative pro-
grams, and they also wanted the ability,
as a nonprofit, to raise funds,” Logan
says.
The KidsGrow Environmental Edu-
cation Program is sponsored in part-
nership with the Family League of Bal-
timore City, private foundations, and
the Baltimore City Pubhc School sys-
tem.
“A lot of what I do is grant writing
and fundraising,” Logan says. “One
major funder’s grant to us requires a 90
percent attendance rate. This is chal-
lenging and it forces you to focus on
what kids want and what will keep
them involved in the program.”
Visiting Nature’s Classroom
Much of what keeps the children com-
7 6 P A R K S ( 5 ‘ R E C R E A T I O N F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8
ing back for more are the unique field
trips that allow them to experience
places outside their day-to-day, inner-
city surroundings. “What I ve found is
it’s important to give kids lots of differ-
ent things to do,” Logan says. “It makes
it a challenge for them.”
“The older children,” says Jackie Car-
rera, executive director of the Parks &
People Foundation, “tend to like the
advocacy component of the program,
whiie the younger children are excited
to learn the facts. (But] they all like to
be a part of something positive.”
When learning about the importance
of clean water, a trip to the Chesapeake
Bay was organized. “We took the stu-
dents sailing. It was the first time on the
water for many of the kids. They were
so excited,” Logan says.
During the summer program, partic-
ipants often go camping. Other trips
include visits to the National Aquarium,
zoos, nature centers, and museums—
places, Logan says, “our kids probably
wouldn’t be able to go to otherwise.”
Foundation staff is constantly on the
lookout for unique ways to incorporate
environmental education into students’
learning experiences.
They even found a way to add an
arts-enrichment element to the pro-
gram. One project tasked the children
with creating mosaic trees out of
stained glass. The session was taught by
a former Parks & People Foundation
employee who now works for the U.S.
Forest Service and is involved in urban
art programs in Baltimore.
The KidsGrow program was recog-
nized in 2004 for its outstanding efforts
in teaching children about the environ-
ment. For the past five years, students
have worked in partnership with the
National Aquarium to restore Chesa-
peake Bay tidal wetlands.
Children learned about the life cycle
of plants and their importance to the
estuarine ecosystem by growing wet-
land grasses at school in a special wet-
land plant nursery. The project culmi-
nated with the students planting the
grasses along the Chesapeake Bay
shoreline.
The project earned the students an
award from Coastal America, a partner-
ship of federal agencies, state and local
governments, and private organiza-
tions. President Bush signed a citation
commending the students, stating,
“Your contributions have enhanced
coastal ecosystems and helped maintain
the beauty of our country for future
generations.”
The children recently worked with
the Baltimore City Uepartmciit of Pub-
lic Works and other community acti-
vists on a project that removed several
acres of asphalt from their school yards
and replaced them with green space
that can serve as outdoor classrooms. At
Franklin Square Elementary School, the
kids have created a serene “reading cir-
cle,” where they planted trees and flow-
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P A R K S ^ ‘ R E C R E A T I O N F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8 7 7
staff members are constantly searching for ways to incorporate
environmental education into learning experiences.
ers in the back of the school. Other gar- 8f People seven years ago and holds a
den projects and tree plantings hy the
students have made the school a pret-
tier place in which to learn.
Logan, who began working at Parks
master’s degree in social work, under-
stands well the value of the KidsGrow
program. “I see the impact we’re having
on kids,” she says.
“The environment they come from is
challenging. Our program gives the kids
a safe place to come to where they are
with positive adults; something they
may not have at home. These kids from
‘the concrete jungles’ might have never
been exposed to the experiences they
have through KidsGrow.”
TJiis article was excerpted from the
NRPA Cyhrary puhlicntiotj Parks and
Youth Development: Understanding the
Role of Public Parks and Recreation.
NRPA members can access the publica-
tion, and other resources from tJie NRPA
Cybrary, for free online at www.nrpa.
org/cybrary. Questions? Please e-mail
cybrary@nrpa.org or edit@nrpa.org.
Learn more about the KidsGrow pro-
gram, and read an exclusive Q&A with
Monica Logan and Jackie Carrera, by
visiting P&R Now, our official magazine
biog, at rirpablog.typepad.com/prnow.
Application Deadline
May 1, 2008
Visit
Visit www.nrpa.org/directors
Dr, contact dprice(3inrpa.org or call
7 8 P A R K S ( 5 ‘ R E C R E A T I O N F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8
Teaching Students to Make Better
Decisions About the Environment:
Lessons From the Decision Sciences
Joseph L. Arvai, Victoria E. A. Campbell, Anne Baird, and Louie Rivers
ABSTRACT: One of the fundamental goals of environmental education (EE) is to equip students
with the skills to make more thoughtful decisions about environmental issues. Many examples of
environmental and science education curricula work to address this goal by providing students with
up-to-date information about a myriad of environmental issues from a variety of scientific disci-
plines. As noted by previous researchers in EE, an emphasis on scientific information, however, does
not help to overcome many of the barriers to improved decision making. To help students become
better environmental decision makers, educators must also work to incorporate lessons about deci-
sion making in conventional EE curricula. This article provides an overview of findings from the
decision sciences and behavioral decision research to highlight some of the most common impedi-
ments to high-quality decision making. The authors end with suggestions for curriculum develop-
ment that might help to improve students’ decision-making skills regarding environmental issues.
KEY WORDS: environmental education (EE), curriculum, decision making
ne of the central goals of environmental education (EE) is to equip students with the skills
necessary in making informed, thoughtful, and generally “better” decisions about a myr-
iad of environmental issues. Both the Belgrade Charter (UNESCO/UNEP, 1976) and theO
Joseph L. Arvai is a professor in the School of Natural Resources at The Ohio State University, Columbus,
and is one of the principal investigators at Decision Research in Eugene, Oregon; Victoria E. A. Campbell
is an instructor in the Biology Program at Columbus State College; Anne Baird is an extension agent for
environmental programs at The Ohio State University; and Louie Rivers is a research associate in the
School of Natural Resources at The Ohio State University. Authors’ Note. The preparation of this manu-
script was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Ohio Sea Grant (under
Project No. E/TER-2) to The Ohio State University. Any opinions, findings, or conclusions expressed here
are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of either agency.
FALL 2004, VOL. 36, NO. 1 33
REPORTS & RESEARCH
Tbilisi Declaration (UNESCO/UNEP, 1978), for example, make sweeping proclamations about the
importance of providing students with both the knowledge and skills to help solve and prevent envi-
ronmental problems. More recently, the North American Association for Environmental Education
(NAAEE, 2000) presented “four strands” for environmental education, which focused on teaching
students skills for critical thinking and for posing and answering questions about complex environ-
mental problems. Similarly, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Education
and Training Partnership (EETAP) has offered the opinion that, to foster improved environmental
literacy, students must be taught the skills and information required for making thoughtful decisions
that pose consequences for environmental quality.1
How do we achieve this goal of facilitating more thoughtful decisions? One strategy involves
improving students’ technical knowledge base (e.g., in biology, ecology, chemistry) as a means of
creating favorable attitudes toward the promotion of better environmental quality (Ramsey &
Rickson, 1976). As many researchers have pointed out, however, focusing on enhancing technical
knowledge without also teaching problem-solving skills will lead to substantial shortcomings with
respect to promoting thoughtful decisions (e.g., see Hungerford, Peyton, & Wilke, 1980). An
obvious solution, therefore, is to include in curricula elements that address the need for knowledge
about both natural systems and “action” (i.e., decision-making) skills (Simmons, 1991). Yet, as
Hungerford and Volk (1990) point out, focusing on the role of human judgments and behavior
(in addition to enhancing technical knowledge) in the context of the environment makes instruc-
tional planning extremely difficult. In many cases, the added difficulty acts as a deterrent to these
integrated curricula and provides de facto reinforcement for the model that enhanced knowledge
leads to better decisions.
One suggested strategy for overcoming this difficulty is to teach students the skills to critically
analyze environmental issues (e.g., how to articulate research questions, obtain information from
primary and secondary sources, and interpret data). At the end of such an exercise, students work
on the development of “issue-resolution action plans” and then “decide whether they want to actu-
ally implement the plan of action” (Hungerford & Volk, 1990, p. 16). We view such an approach
as laudable. We would take this suggestion a step further, however, and add that just as students
must learn skills for critical analysis, so too must they learn skills for decision making (which
includes developing alternative courses of action and making decisions about implementation).
Learning these decision-making skills involves two steps: First, students (and in many cases, teach-
ers) must be taught to recognize common obstacles to thoughtful (or high-quality) decision
making. Second, they must acquire skills to overcome them. These obstacles and skills are the
focus of this article.
Common Obstacles to Improved Decision Making
Work over the past 5 decades in the area of behavioral decision research (e.g., see Kahneman,
Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Kahneman & Tversky, 2000; Plous, 1993; Simon, 1956; Slovic,
Lichtenstein, & Fischhoff, 1977; Tversky & Kahneman, 1981) has demonstrated that poor decisions
do not come just from a lack of information on which to base judgments. Research in this area
(informed to a large degree by studies in psychology) suggests that, in addition to obvious problems
related to the quality of information, low quality decisions have been characterized by (a) a high
degree of plasticity in judgment (Slovic, 1995) depending on how information is presented (e.g.,
framing effects), and (b) a reliance by decision makers on a series of heuristics that routinely lead to
the introduction of systematic biases in decision making (Kahneman, et al., 1982).
34 THE JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
FALL 2004, VOL. 36, NO. 1 35
Framing Effects
One obstacle to high-quality decision making that has been widely studied is the effect of framing
(e.g., see Arvai & Mascarenhas, 2000; Fagley & Miller, 1990; Frisch, 1993; Gregory, Lichtenstein,
& MacGregor, 1993; Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). A decision frame is determined by how a deci-
sion maker comes to conceptualize a decision problem in light of how information about it is pre-
sented. As such, the decision frame is determined by how the decision maker defines the decision
problem as well as the values, norms, and habits that the decision maker brings to bear upon trying
to address it (Kahneman & Tversky, 2000). In other words, the degree to which the values and norms
of a well-intentioned decision maker are engaged in a given decision depends on how information
about the problem is presented and then contextualized.
In what is perhaps the best-known example of a framing effect, Tversky and Kahneman (1981)
posed the following scenario to two randomly selected groups of student respondents:
Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is
expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been pro-
posed (p. 453).
In the first group, the respondents were asked to select one of the following alternatives: (a)
Program A, which would save exactly 200 people, or (b) Program B, for which there was exactly a
1/3 probability that 600 people would be saved, and a 2/3 probability that none of the 600 would
be saved. In the second group, the respondents were asked to select one of the following: (a) Program
C, for which exactly 400 people would die, or (b) Program D, for which there was exactly a 1/3 prob-
ability that nobody would die, and a 2/3 probability that 600 people would die.
In the first group, the majority of respondents (72%) preferred Program A, whereas in the sec-
ond group, the majority of respondents (78%) preferred Program D. One should note that
Program A = Program C and that Program B = Program D. The only difference lay in how the
decision problem was framed: Programs A and B in terms of lives saved, and Programs C and D
in terms of lives lost. Similar results have been reported in other cases involving environmental
issues (see Gregory, Lichtenstein, & MacGregor [1993] for a more recent study of framing effects
involving environmental clean-ups framed as either “restorations” or “improvements”).
These studies highlight the manner in which alternative frames of the same problem activate dif-
ferent decision-making strategies. In one case, choices involving alternatives framed in terms of gains
(i.e., lives saved, habitat restored) are motivated by risk aversion. In the other, choices involving the
same options framed in terms of losses are driven by risk taking. Hence, on the one hand, for the
alternatives presented to the first group, framed in terms of gains, the respondents preferred the risk-
averse option and tended to select Program A—a sure-bet or risk-averse strategy for saving lives. On
the other hand, the alternatives presented to respondents in the second group—framed in terms of
losses—incite risk-taking behavior to minimize the loss of life.
Heuristics and Biases
In addition to the plasticity of judgment based on how information is framed, decision quality is
also highly dependent on how individuals instinctively approach decisions. In a wide variety of deci-
sion contexts, people tend to rely heavily on a series of heuristic principles that reduce complex judg-
ment tasks to simpler operations (Kahneman et al., 1982; Mellers, Schwartz, & Cooke, 1998). The
advantage of heuristics is that they may reduce the amount of time and level of effort required to
make decisions without—for many routine decisions—compromising the quality of the choice (i.e.,
yielding close approximations to optimal answers suggested by normative models). Unfortunately,
the use of heuristics may also lead to systematic biases, especially in the context of unfamiliar or com-
plex judgments (Plous, 1993).
The availability heuristic, for example, is applied when a decision maker evaluates an alternative or
makes a judgment about an event (regardless of the number of previous occurrences or, in many
cases, its context) based on the ease with which related instances or occurrences can be brought to
mind (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974; Worthen, Baker, Hutchens, & Nicodemus, 2002). For exam-
ple, students may conclude that the incidence of shark attacks on humans is on the rise based on the
widespread media attention that attacks received during the summers of 2001 and 2002. Similarly,
students may assign higher probabilities to the threat of accidents at nuclear power plants based on
their association of nuclear power with Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. The problem with the avail-
ability heuristic is that some events—such as the examples provided here—are easier to recall not
because they are highly probable (a function of the number of incidents, or more probable when
compared with a fixed reference point in the case of shark attacks), but because they may have
occurred recently or been made salient by focused media attention (which is often a function of the
affective context of the event—see hereinafter).
Similarly, the representativeness heuristic is used by people to estimate the probabilities of events
by the degree to which a person thinks that an event in question, Event X, is representative of—
or resembles—another, Event Y. For example, a common misapplication by decision makers of
the representativeness heuristic leading to a systematic bias is in the estimation of probabilities for
highly detailed scenarios (Kahneman et al., 1982). For example, consider if a student were asked
which of two events was more likely: (a) a leak in a pipe at a chemical plant resulting in ground-
water contamination; or (b) a leak in a pipe, allowed to corrode because of worker negligence, at
a chemical plant and resulting in groundwater contamination. Previous reviews of representative-
ness (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Plous, 1993) demonstrate that the latter, more detailed scenario seems
more plausible to most people who are to evaluate such a statement and, hence, it is routinely
assigned a higher probability of occurring. But, because combined—or conjunctive—
probabilities are the product of a multiplicative (as opposed to an additive) operation, the latter
case is actually less likely than the former.
A third potentially biased heuristic is anchoring with insufficient adjustment. Suppose that a group
of students are asked if the number of species that might go extinct in the coming year is more or
less than 5, and they agree that the answer is more.2 When they are then asked to estimate how
many will go extinct, they may agree that 50 species sounds reasonable. When another group of stu-
dents is asked if the number of extinctions as a result of global climate change will be more or less
than 5,000, they agree that the answer is less. When asked for a specific numerical judgment, they
might reply that, in their opinion, 350 species might go extinct. The differences in the judgments
provided by the two groups can be explained in terms of judgments that are anchored on an initial
reference point (5 and 5,000 species in this example) and insufficiently adjusted down or up
(Kahneman et al., 1982).
The magnitude of the effect induced by anchoring without sufficient adjustment tends to be
largest when decision makers are confronted with problems that have received little past thought
(e.g., new concepts taught in a science class). Clearly, anchoring with insufficient adjustment plays
a significant role in influencing judgments that require the evaluation or incorporation of quanti-
tative scientific data (as was the case with the previous example). It is also manifested when deci-
sion makers are asked to think about important concerns that can be influenced by an impending
choice. In many cases, people’s judgments are more heavily influenced by the factors that first
36 THE JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
FALL 2004, VOL. 36, NO. 1 37
come to mind, while they minimize those that become apparent later in the decision-making
process. In the case of many environmental decisions, for example, decisionmakers routinely focus
on the financial costs associated with an endeavor and on projected environmental benefits (e.g.,
more fish, more habitat). Other classes of benefits (e.g., cultural values, ecological services such as
the removal of CO
2
from the atmosphere) and costs (e.g., lost recreation value) often become
apparent later on in the process but are seldom incorporated in a final evaluation of alternative
courses of action (Arvai & Gregory, 2003; Arvai, Gregory, & McDaniels, 2001; Farina, Arce, &
Novo, 2002).
A fourth potentially biased heuristic involves an overreliance on affective judgments. Briefly, affect
is defined as a feeling-state that people experience, such as arousal (e.g., happiness, sadness) or the
level of valence people associate with a stimulus (e.g., goodness, badness). To foster a greater aware-
ness of environmental problems, previous work in environmental education has emphasized the need
to address both the affective and cognitive needs of students (Heimlich, 1992; Hungerford & Volk,
1990). The results of research in judgment and decision making echo this need (e.g., see Damasio,
1994). However, recent studies have begun to focus on how an affect heuristic may, in many cases,
overwhelm more thoughtful (cognitive) analysis of problems (Finucane, Alhakami, Slovic, &
Johnson, 2000; Slovic, 2000).
For example, consider a scenario in which students are asked to make a decision about how to allo-
cate resources to environmental clean-up efforts across three different contaminated sites: (a) a
decommissioned nuclear weapons facility, (b) a warehouse that once stored fertilizers used in agri-
culture, and (c) the remnants of an irrigation tunneling project designed to alleviate water shortages
for local farms. One might expect that the nuclear weapons facility would precipitate a strongly neg-
ative affective response regardless of the actual quantitative risks posed by the site. Based on a use of
the affect heuristic, one might also expect students (unaided by a structured decision process designed
to help de-bias) to allocate most clean-up resources to the site that incited these strongly negative feel-
ings (i.e., the nuclear weapons facility), with relatively smaller amounts of funding allocated to the
other two lower affect sites. This is precisely the result that was observed with a group of participants
in a study from the area surrounding the University of Oregon (Arvai & Gregory, 2003). Despite the
fact that each of the three sites posed varying degrees of risk and that the nuclear weapons facility did
not pose the highest risk across all of the dimensions (e.g., the fertilizer depot posed the highest risk
to human health), the results from the study suggested that individual judgments were more strongly
guided by affect than by an in-depth evaluation of the risks posed by the different sources of the
contamination.
It is worth noting that problem framing as well as the four heuristics described heretofore mani-
fest themselves in individual as well as group judgments. This is important because of recent atten-
tion devoted to encouraging deliberative work by students in small groups (Basili & Sanford, 1991;
Cohen, 1994; Lundeberg & Moch, 1995). The potential problems do not end here; more concerns
can be raised by a number of biased decision-making approaches unique to work in groups. Perhaps
the best example of a group dynamic that leads to low-quality decisions is groupthink (Janis, 1982).
There are a number of common symptoms of groupthink, some of which include pressure to con-
form directed at a group member who dissents from the majority view, self-censorship of an indi-
vidual’s departure from an apparent group consensus, and a false sense of unanimity. Another com-
mon manifestation of the groupthink bias involves groups anchoring on a single attribute of a deci-
sion rather than paying the necessary attention to the diverse array of other considerations that are
equally if not more important (Arvai et al., 2001). Similar to groupthink, conformity describes the
tendency of certain members of a group to abandon their beliefs or opinions (regardless of how tightly
held these beliefs are) and conform, sometimes reluctantly, with the majority view (Asch, 1956;
Horrobin, 1990).
Overcoming Obstacles: Decision-Making Skills as Curriculum Content
The preceding discussion demonstrates that to help students make higher-quality decisions, EE
efforts must go beyond simply presenting students with detailed information about a given problem;
students must also be taught the skills that will help them apply the information during decision
making (Simmons, 1991). Although supplementing class activities with curriculum content
informed by the decision sciences is seldom associated with lessons about the environment, it would
almost certainly help students to develop both an awareness of the common psychological traps that
can bias decisions as well as specific skills for incorporating learned information (in the form of per-
sonal values and technical information) that can be applied to making thoughtful, high-quality
judgments.
Previous writing in EE (e.g., Hansen, 1996) has emphasized the generation of cognitive dissonance
as a means of encouraging more thoughtful decisions. Several recent research efforts and publications
in the decision sciences (Arvai et al., 2001; Gregory, Arvai, & McDaniels, 2001; Hammond, Keeney,
& Raiffa, 1999; Keeney, 1992) provide a variety of other guiding principles that have been shown to
result in considerable improvements in people’s decision-making skills (i.e., overcoming plasticity in
judgment, debiasing) in the context of environmental issues. Many of these guiding principles of
decision making, in addition to lessons informed by simple common sense, can be added to formal
and informal environmental education curricula in the form of a few relatively straightforward and
engaging activities.
Common-Sense Approaches
In addition to enhancing students’ knowledge of science, curricula aimed at improving decision-
making skills should both include common-sense lessons that alert students to psychological traps in
judgment and teach the necessary skills to help overcome them. For example, alerting students to the
presence of the representativeness and availability biases, as well as the skills to help avoid them, could
be promoted with some integration of disciplines.
In the case of representativeness, lessons about environmental issues can be coupled with lessons
in mathematics to give students a deeper understanding of probability and a broader information
base that could be used to inform more thoughtful decision making. Along these lines, consider the
case of coin tosses: the probability of getting the sequence head-head-head-head is 0.0625 (p = .54).
Now, on which side is the coin likely to land upon a fifth toss? Most students would rely on the rep-
resentativeness heuristic and suggest tails, assuming that the four-in-a-row run of heads is bound to
end. The consequence of this judgment is an inflated probability, p, assigned to a coin toss that would
result in tails (i.e., p
tails
> .5), when in fact p does not change (i.e., p
tails
= p
heads
= .5). Similar lessons
may be applied to probability in an environmental context (e.g., should a proposed 10th costly habi-
tat restoration project proceed after nine consecutive successful projects when p
failure
= .1?).
Similarly, studies of environmental issues can be coupled with lessons in history and social sci-
ence to help students to overcome the availability bias. Here, in exploring preferences about envi-
ronmental management options, students should be encouraged to explore and incorporate the
history and social implications of the issue they are facing. Take, for example, a decision about
expanding (or even maintaining the current level of ) nuclear power generation in the United
States. In response to the argument that the answer ought to be “no” based on the idea that the
38 THE JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
FALL 2004, VOL. 36, NO. 1 39
risks are too high—a view bolstered by affective cues and media depictions of recent accidents
(e.g., Chernobyl)—students should be asked to conduct research to estimate the ratio of normal
operating days at a facility to days with a major malfunction. The objective of such an exercise,
which investigates the history of nuclear power generation, would be to overcome the availability
bias by highlighting the fact that there are many more days of normal operation (by several orders
of magnitude) than there are days with malfunctions. Yet, thinking about these “normal” days is
not as instinctive as is recalling the relatively few high-profile failures, mainly because of students’
reliance on the availability heuristic.
Teaching a Structured Decision Approach
Although these common-sense approaches may be helpful in certain decision contexts, many envi-
ronmental problems are of sufficient complexity that the aforementioned strategies may be of limited
value in helping to lead to more thoughtful decisions. For these complex problems, educators may
work with students to improve their decision-making skills by teaching them a sequence of deliberate
steps that together comprise a high-quality decision process.
The need for teaching such an approach is well known to decision scientists: People generally lack
the ability to instinctively define their full range of concerns for understanding what is required when
asked to make complex tradeoffs, such as those common to decisions about the environment. The
consequence is that people end up making choices that, at best, only partially address the full range
of their concerns because they fail to understand tradeoffs involving conflicting dimensions of value
(Bohnenblust & Slovic, 1998). A typical structured decision process should directly engage students
in the following steps (Hammond et al., 1999):
• Define the specific decision that has to be made,
• Identify “what matters” in the form of the decision maker’s values expressed as objectives in the
context of the impending decision and create a set of appealing and purposeful alternatives from
them, and
• Employ the relevant technical information to characterize the consequences of the alternatives
and carry out an in-depth evaluation of the tradeoffs that they entail.
Defining the Decision
Any curriculum that endeavors to improve students’ decision-making capabilities should highlight the
importance of carefully thinking about different frames of the same decision problem (Hungerford &
Volk, 1990). To illustrate this facet of a structured approach, consider the concept of sustainable devel-
opment. In brief, sustainable development describes the use of natural resources by humans to ensure
continued social development at a rate that does not exceed the resources’ ability to replenish themselves.
This concept is viewed by many people—students and adults alike—as abstract or, at best, tractable only
at a higher level (e.g., government agency) of decision making. The goal of teaching students to take time
to carefully define a decision problem is to help them distinguish between what Dawes (1988) labeled
“decision thinking” and “automatic thinking.” Decision thinking involves defining a problem (e.g., non-
sustainable development) in a way that opens it to a more thoughtful consideration of objectives and,
later, the creation of alternative courses of action from which to choose. Automatic thinking, in contrast,
occurs in situations in which there has been an incomplete assessment of the problem as a result of an
overreliance on heuristics such as availability, representativeness, or affect.
For example, perhaps the most obvious way to frame problems associated with sustainable devel-
opment is to focus on natural resources; many resources are being used at a rate that far exceeds their
rate of replacement (e.g., timber, oil). Because this aspect of the problem is readily available, a focus
on conservation strategies that involve resource-specific alternatives (e.g., limiting development, pro-
moting higher fuel efficiency) naturally follow. However, problems with sustainability may also be
framed in terms of their effects on the developing world—for example, implementing a sustainable
approach to fisheries management may disrupt the food supply to local communities and limit their
contributions to the international trade of fish (Clarke, 2002). Considering other decision frames
helps to overcome an overreliance on availability heuristic and hence restrictions on creativity, with
respect to identifying alternatives for addressing a given problem—sustainability, in this case.
Identifying Objectives and Creating Alternatives
The second step in a structured decision approach is to think carefully about objectives that are
important in the context of creating and evaluating alternatives for a decision. As noted by
Hungerford et al. (1980), one aspect of this process focuses on helping students to clarify their val-
ues (e.g., the importance of biodiversity), which can be expressed, for the purpose of decision mak-
ing, as objectives (e.g., taking actions that promote biodiversity). A second aspect is to teach students
to distinguish between means and ends objectives. Much like carefully defining a decision problem,
distinguishing between means and ends allows for greater creativity in identifying alternatives for
evaluation in decision making. For example, a common approach to managing fisheries is to restrict
commercial and recreational angling. Whereas various fishing restrictions are means objectives, the
ends objective is to rehabilitate the populations of certain species. Focusing on the ends objective
helps to avoid anchoring on a single course of action by making other alternatives besides fishing
restrictions (e.g., habitat rehabilitation, manual restocking techniques, restricting development
around spawning channels) more apparent.
Differentiating means and ends is a straightforward process that involves first asking students to think
of all the things they’d like to see achieved with a decision, followed by the simple question: Why is that
important? If the answer is that something is important for its own sake, then it is an ends objective. If
not (i.e., if something is important because it leads to something else, which is also important), then it
is a means objective (Gregory & Keeney, 2002). For example, in the case of teaching students about glo-
bal climate change, one of the central concepts is limiting the burning of fossil fuels because it leads to
the emission of greenhouse gases and contributes to atmospheric warming. One of the possible ways to
reduce these greenhouse gas emissions is to limit the use of conventional automobiles and encourage the
widespread use of hybrid or electric automobiles. Yet, if asked why taking this action is important, stu-
dents might reply that hybrid cars would reduce CO
2
emissions and slow the rate of global warming and
improve the health of citizens. In this example, reducing the rate of global warming and improving the
health of citizens are ends objectives important in their own right, whereas reducing atmospheric CO
2
concentrations and investing in electric cars are means of achieving these ends.
This process of thinking carefully about means and ends objectives is an activity ideally suited to
work in groups. Because the goal of considering the objectives of a decision is to help students con-
sider, in detail, all of the relevant—and sometimes conflicting—aspects of a decision problem, apply-
ing the collective thinking of a group to such a task works to alleviate anchoring (this time on objec-
tives) by broadening the list of objectives that are relevant in a given decision context. Being sensi-
tive to social influences on decisionmaking, one should undertake these deliberative processes using
a “think-pair-share” approach, with students first brainstorming a list of objectives on their own and
then convening to discuss them in small, supervised groups and in the rest of their class as a means
of overcoming the groupthink and conformity biases.
40 THE JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
FALL 2004, VOL. 36, NO. 1 41
Finally, a comprehensive understanding of means and ends objectives readily lends itself to the
process of creating novel and purposeful alternatives. Using the example of climate change and the
ends objective of slowing the rate of atmospheric warming, two means objectives are to reduce CO
2
emissions and take fuller advantage of the earth’s CO
2
storage capacity. Both of these means objec-
tives lend themselves to a wide variety of specific alternatives—or combinations of alternatives—that
might help to achieve the ends objective for the decision (e.g., alternatives aimed at reducing indus-
trial emissions, more strict regulations for automobile emissions, alternative fuels, sequestering CO
2
in the deep ocean, hydroelectric power generation instead of burning coal).
Characterizing Consequences and Addressing Tradeoffs
The next step in teaching a structured decision approach is to highlight to students the importance
of carefully evaluating all of the available alternatives with respect to the degree to which they meet a
broad set of identified ends objectives—both cultural and ecological (Hungerford et al., 1980). These
careful evaluations entail measuring—or at minimum anticipating—the degree to which a stated alter-
native achieves the given objectives (Keeney, 1992). Clearly, this process requires careful consideration
of exactly which measures will be used in evaluating alternatives. For example, consider an exercise in
which students are asked to design a new national park. One of the possible and rather straightfor-
ward ends objectives may be to improve the quality of habitat for migratory birds. One alternative for
achieving this objective is to rehabilitate or restore the habitat. But how would decision makers meas-
ure the achievement of this alternative with respect to meeting the stated objective? One way might
be to count the number of different species of birds that visit these areas during their winter migra-
tions. Another way may be to count the number of birds from a certain rare species. A third option
may be to measure some important habitat characteristic such as food availability. The point here is
that the measures that are ultimately chosen provide critical information that will help guide the trade-
offs made by decision makers when choosing among alternative courses of action.
In our view, encouraging thoughtful tradeoffs when evaluating and selecting among different alter-
natives is the most important step in teaching students a structured decision approach. A failure to
address tradeoffs may lead to the selection of alternatives that only partially address a decision maker’s
objectives (Bohnenblust & Slovic, 1998). Similarly, people often end up rejecting otherwise strong
alternatives because they are not representative of ones that seem workable. For instance, a decision
maker may not agree with a single dimension because he or she neglects to place the single dimen-
sion in a larger context. To illustrate these problems, recall the climate change example. Two of the
ends objectives were to improve the health of citizens and to slow the rate of atmospheric warming.
Some means of achieving these objectives include investing in alternative fuels, investing in hybrid
or electric automobile technology, or developing technologies to capture excess CO
2
from the atmos-
phere. The two alternatives that receive the most attention—electric automobiles and alternative
fuels—seem like viable options. Yet upon closer inspection, electric automobiles using existing tech-
nologies, or those that will be available in the near future, may indeed limit CO
2
emissions but would
conflict with the other ends objective (improving citizens’ health) because of the large amounts of
toxic lead contained in batteries (Lave, Hendrickson, & McMichael, 1995). In this way, other
options, such as alternative fuels (e.g., hydrogen for fuel cells) and CO
2
sequestration, may very well
supplant readily available, but perhaps less effective, alternatives (e.g., electric automobiles).
Likewise, paying attention to identifying which means objectives are more or less important in a
decision can help students to overcome a reliance on the affect heuristic. Evidence for this latter point
comes from an experiment conducted by Arvai and Gregory (2003) in which participants were asked
to allocate a total of $30 million to environmental clean-up efforts at three different contaminated
sites. Participants who did not make use of the aforementioned structured decision approach allo-
cated the most clean-up funds to the site for which they provided the highest affect rating, with rel-
atively smaller amounts of money allocated to the other two lower affect sites. In contrast, partici-
pants who were first asked to rank a series of ends objectives related to the contaminated sites (e.g.,
minimizing negative environmental effects, improving human health, increasing property values)
from most important to least important—that is, making tradeoffs across multiple objectives—
showed no relationship between the size of their allocations and affect. Instead, the size of the allo-
cations of participants who were explicitly instructed to make tradeoffs increased proportionally with
the priority they assigned to addressing key attributes of the contamination.
Conclusion
As this article demonstrates, there are a number of common impediments to thoughtful decision mak-
ing about environmental issues that are difficult to overcome by simply emphasizing technical informa-
tion about problems and opportunities for deliberation. In our view, the most effective way to help stu-
dents become better decision makers and overcome their impediments is to make them aware of the
many decision traps that they might face and teach them a sensible, structured decision-making process.
As we noted in the introduction, our goal here is to provide an introduction to the types of issues
that are important to consider, if indeed one objective of EE is to help students make better deci-
sions. For practical reasons, however, we could not address all of the relevant concepts from the deci-
sion sciences that would be useful in the context of environmental education. For those who might
seek more information, several sources are available to environmental educators interested in foster-
ing more informed deliberations and teaching skills for decision making in their students. The
Psychology of Judgment and Decision-Making by Plous (1993) deals with common traps and biases in
decision making (complete with a self-test to demonstrate these traps and biases to the reader). Smart
Choices: A Practical Guide to Making Better Decisions by Hammond et al. (1999) is also an excellent
source of information on other common psychological traps and the structured decision making
approach discussed in this article. A variety of other journal articles discuss these concepts in an envi-
ronmental context as well as summarize controlled experiments with decision makers that highlight
the usefulness of structured decision-making approaches (e.g., Arvai & Gregory, 2003; Arvai et al.,
2001; Gregory, 2000).
As environmental issues become more complex and challenging and the need to act becomes more
urgent, students—many of whom will soon rise to assume positions of responsibility and authority
in society—require more than an appreciation for this complexity and urgency that is typically facil-
itated through typical curriculum content. They also require an appreciation for the complexities of
decision making and must learn the skills that can help them to make higher-quality choices. Along
these lines, teaching the theory and skills to address this requirement must, in our view, receive
prominent placement in curricula.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Dedicated to the memory of Dr. Neil A. Campbell.
NOTES
1. Information about EETAP’s goal of fostering environmental literacy can be found on the Web at http://www.eetap.org/
html/environmental_literacy.php
2. Current estimates suggest that the extinction rate may be as high as 130,000 species per year (Lawton & May, 1995).
42 THE JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
FALL 2004, VOL. 36, NO. 1 43
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44 THE JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION
A 306 VOLUME 115 | NUMBER 6 | June 2007 • Environmental Health Per
s
pective
s
Environews Spheres of Influence
Spheres of Influence | Growing Green Roofs, City by City
G
reen roofs — rooftops that are partially or
completely covered with vegetation growing
in soil medium over a waterproof mem-
brane—have gained momentum over the past six years as
building owners recognize their advantages over conven-
tional roofing in terms of better energy efficiency and
reduced rain runoff. Now local governments are exploring
incentives for moving the practice into the mainstream.
A look at cities that are leading the country in green roof
coverage reveals a growing range of policy tools.
Millennium Park atop Chicago’s City Hall covers 24.5 acres. The public park
includes numerous fountains, sculptures, and botanical garden spaces, as well
as performance facilities, restaurants, and a skating rink.
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Capital Growth
Alexi Boado, low-impact development
coordinator for Washington, DC’s District
D e p a r t m e n t o f t h e E n v i r o n m e n t
(DDOE), says the city began seriously
examining green roofs for stormwater con-
trol five years ago, when the DC Water
and Sewer Authority provided $300,000
for green roof development as part of a
court-ordered settlement. Those funds,
managed by the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay
Foundation, seeded a program of incentive
grants that encouraged eight builders to
choose green roofs over other traditional
devices as their primary stormwater con-
trol device (stormwater control plans are
required for any new construction or rede-
velopment of more than 5,000 square feet
in the District). Builders also have a proce-
dural incentive: designs that include a
green roof in the stormwater control plan
receive expedited processing.
To build local engineering design and
green construction capacity and catalyze
interest in green roofs, the DDOE is work-
ing with the USDA Natural Resources
Conservation Service to offer almost
$800,000 in complete design-and-build ser-
vices for select public and commercial prop-
erties. This program is slated to begin in the
summer of 2007. In addition, as part of a
cash grants program, DDOE and its sister
agencies are in the process of installing green
roofs on three new community recreation
centers, two public schools, and one housing
development. Previous grants have subsi-
dized some of the first green roofs in the
District, as well as the implementation of
many other innovative stormwater control
practices such as rain gardens and permeable
surfaces. The District allotted about
$500,000 in 2007 to innovative stormwater
control grants in addition to the Natural
Resources Conservation Service partnership.
Dawn Gifford, program coordinator of
the nonprofit DC Greenworks, has seen a
shift in green roof installations from mainly
commercial buildings to a mix of commer-
cial and residential. DC Greenworks has
dedicated itself to installing green roofs
throughout the city; a high-profile demo
model they installed at 1425 K Street NW in
2004 has drawn more than 3,000 visitors
and inspired similar projects across the met-
ropolitan area.
Doug Siglin, director of federal affairs for
the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, explains
the public policy perspective behind the
interest in green roofs: one problem in the
Anacostia River, which runs through
Washington, DC, and in the bay generally,
is too much erosion, with silt increasing
water turbidity. Most erosion comes from
stormwater runoff; green roofs help moder-
ate that blast of runoff from precipitation
events, and therefore help local governments
A 308 VOLUME 115 | NUMBER 6 | June 2007 • Environmental Health Perspectives
Spheres of Influence | Growing Green Roofs, City by City
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The Ballard Library in Seattle incorporates solar panels into its green roof design. Energy generated from these panels is fed back in
to the city’s power grid. The curved roof create six microclimate conditions, each a separate exposure with differing water retention
properties, based on slope and orientation.
deal with rainwater by detaining, retaining,
and absorbing it where it first hits.
Chicago officials see another public
health benefit in moderating the city’s “heat
island” effect (defined as urban and suburban
areas having temperatures up to 10°F higher
than nearby rural sites). Heat islands spike
energy demands, air pollution levels, and
heat-related illnesses such as heat exhaustion
and heat stroke. With climate change, says
Sadhu Johnston, the city’s commissioner for
the environment, Chicago can expect hotter
and drier summers—conditions that the heat
island effect will only exacerbate.
Johnston says green roofs can help avert
heat wave–related deaths, citing studies that
show lower temperatures on green roofs
compared with traditional roofs, and reduced
air-conditioning use in buildings with green
roofs. According to the 2004 Green Roof Test
Plot 2003 End of Year Project Summary
Report by environmental engineering firm
MWH, which is posted on the City of
Chicago website, the mean temperature of
green roof areas in the heat of the day
(between 12:30 and 4:30 pm) was up to
31% cooler than other roof types.
Salad Days of Incentives
Chicago mayor Richard Daley, Jr., installed a
green roof on City Hall after returning from a
1999 visit to Europe, where he saw one in
action. “That [installation] really sparked peo-
ple’s imagination,” says Johnston. The city
also offered grants and stormwater credits (a
reduction in city fees for stormwater manage-
ment) to prospective green roof owners to
jumpstart the practice. Today Chicago leads
the country in green roofs, with 300 buildings
comprising some 3 million square feet of
green roofing, says Johnston. Most such roofs
are on commercial buildings (including
Target and McDonald’s) but many are on
civic buildings and smaller stores.
Incentives also evolved in Portland,
Oregon. Tom Liptan, an environmental
specialist with the city Bureau of Environ-
mental Services, says about 20 years ago
the city added a floor area ratio (FAR)
b o n u s t o i t s b u i l d i n g c o d e w h e r e b y
builders could get permission to build
extra square footage (either up or out) by
employing favored practices. In the 1990s
Liptan realized that European-style green
roofs might help Portland with stormwater
control. He put a green roof on his garage
in 1996 and measured rain runoff for two
years. Eventually, the city adjusted its FAR
bonus to include green roofs as a favored
practice. One builder who installed 4,000
square feet of green roof, for example,
received permission to build an extra
12,000 square feet of building density; the
builder was able to add six condo units,
then selling for $395,000 each. “They
spent sixty thousand dollars to get two
Environmental Health Perspectives • VOLUME 115 | NUMBER 6 | June 2007 A 309
Spheres of Influence | Growing Green Roofs, City by City
(left) Stormwater flows from the green roof at Sanitation District No. 1 in Fort Wright, Kentucky, into a naturalized wetland, then a
retention basin, a detention basin, step pools, and finally into Banklick Creek. (right) One of Washington, DC’s first green roofs was
installed at 1425 K Street NW.
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Spheres of Influence | Growing Green Roofs, City by City
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million dollars’ worth of additional sellable
property,” says Liptan.
Chicago likewise gives a density bonus
for green roofs in its central business district,
which permits developers to increase the
number of units allowed on a piece of prop-
erty. The city also offers an “express lane” for
the permit process. Johnston says with a
green roof in the design, “you get a dedicated
team of reviewers, and you get a permit in
thirty days” as compared to the typical 90 to
100 days. Plus, the city waives the develop-
er’s fee for processing the building permit
application.
Inducements include sticks as well as car-
rots. Chicago requires any developer who
receives city assistance (for example, to reha-
bilitate a brownfield) to include a green roof.
Builders have reservations about that
approach, since green roofs have a higher ini-
tial cost. Stuart Match Suna, cofounder of
production company Silvercup Studios,
which installed a green roof on its building
in Long Island City, New York, is leery of
regulatory mandates. “I would be reluctant
to require them,” he told the September
2006 issue Metropolis magazine. “That
would make New York City that much more
expensive [to rent or own property in].”
Mary Margaret Hiller, marketing and com-
munications director for Washington,
DC–based developer Akridge, adds, “There
is a premium to pay for a green roof, so I
think it’s up to the developer whether they
feel a green roof is necessary.”
But builders also note growing client
interest. “If you want to be a player, you
have to be up on these technologies,” says
Hiller. Akridge, for example, has gone from
having no green roof designs several years
ago to managing three green-roofed proper-
ties now and developing designs for three
more, including one property that will be
completed next year.
Tools for the Trade
After years of clarifying green roof prac-
tices and benefits for builders, nonprofit
groups and associations are helping gov-
ernments explore the economics and poli-
cies affecting the technology, sometimes
with industry funding. In New York City,
Earth Pledge, an industry association of
green builders, has worked with city offi-
cials to oversee design and construction of
seven roof projects on condos and apart-
ment buildings in the Bronx, Brooklyn,
and Harlem, according to executive direc-
tor Leslie Hoffman. “There is recognition
that multifamily residential is a very inter-
esting opportunity for green roofs,” she
says, estimating that close to half of Earth
Pledge’s green roof projects are on apart-
ment buildings.
In February 2007, Earth Pledge and the
nonprofit Green Roofs for Healthy Cities
received a $300,000 grant from the Home
Two views of the Louisa, a Portland, Oregon, residential high-rise with 242 apartments and ground-floor retail. Other green features of
the building include high-efficiency glazing, low-toxicity building materials and finishes, and locally sourced construction materials.
Environmental Health Perspectives • VOLUME 115 | NUMBER 6 | June 2007 A 311
Spheres of Influence | Growing Green Roofs, City by City
Depot Foundation to foster green infrastruc-
ture in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Atlanta,
and other cities. “We’re focused on develop-
ing smart tools [for policy makers and
developers],” says Hoffman. These include
models that show planners how much water a
green roof at a given location is likely to cap-
ture, and GIS-based models that show how a
larger-scale shift to green roofs would affect
stormwater outflow at the watershed level.
There is no national inventory of green
roof policies, but in April 2007 Green Roofs
for Healthy Cities launched the Green Roofs
Tree of Knowledge, a database on research
and policy related to green roof infrastruc-
ture. At a regional level, in March 2007 the
Washington, DC–based nonprofit group
RESOLV prepared a report, Public Funding
Incentives for Private Residential and
Commercial Watershed Protection Projects, for
officials in Montgomery County, Maryland.
The report reviewed the region’s rules and
incentives, highlighting case studies nation-
wide, with the aim of improving watershed
health. The report summary stresses targeting
priority sub-watershed areas, voluntary action
by property owners, and public education.
Boado says the EPA is doing a similar study.
Raising the Roof
For everyone, the state of green roof imple-
mentation is in a learning phase. “Most of
the solutions we’ve come up with are home-
grown,” Johnston says of Chicago’s policies.
“Most we haven’t seen used in this country
before.”
The EPA cites green roofs as one option
for ameliorating the heat island effect.
Hoffman suggests that the EPA could incor-
porate green roofs into incentives for cities to
comply with the Clean Water Act. For
example, by developing a green roof plan, a
city might gain a postponement against fed-
eral compliance requirements. Such an
option would likely be seen as an opportuni-
ty rather than a regulatory burden.
This would keep the push for green roofs
at the city level, where rivalries keep advance-
ments bubbling. “Chicago is the leading
competition for us—friendly competition,”
Portland’s Liptan says. Washington’s Boado
confirms this sporting element. “Chicago has
thrown down the gauntlet,” he says. “We’re
the nation’s capital, and we want to be the
greenest city in America.”
Siglin says that relatively small subsidies
can nudge developers. “It’s a good policy les-
son for governments,” he says: with a few
grants and educational outreach, governments
can foster a practice that reduces the public
costs of managing runoff and water pollution
abatement. As a policy tool, then, green roofs
show unexpected potential. “That,” says
Siglin, “helps the taxpayer in many ways.”
David A. Taylor
The green roof on the Phillips Eco-Enterprise Center in Minneapolis, stocked with native plants, educates visitors about the dimin-
ishing local bedrock bluff prairie ecosystem. The roof also offers a pleasing view to passengers on the nearby elevated train.
green
“Green” programs and facilities delivered by public
park and recreation agencies are influencing the next
wave of environmentally conscious citizens.
By Judith A. Stock ,
Baltimore’s Family Fishing Fun program
introduces kids-and their parents-to the
natural world.
6 4 P A R K S ^ R E C R E A T I O N A P R I L 2 0 0
CARING FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT
GROWING
GREEN KIDS
W
hen Club Chameleon
took its first group of
kids on an overnight
wilderness adventure,
in 2003, the intention
was to impact as many young people
as possible.
Today, the program, offered by the
Newmarket Recreation agency in New
Hampshire, reaches 215 children, ages
10-16, and has received designation by
NRPA as one of 20 pilot agencies for
the 2007 Teens Outside program, spon-
sored in partnership v^th the Outdoor
Foundation.
Once a month, Club Chameleon
runs a different outdoor weekend ex-
perience for 20 teens and 10 staff. What
keeps these kids coming back for more?
The friends they make and the sense
that the club belongs to them—which
it does.
One of the most successfiil things the
organization did, says Anneliese Fisher,
Club Chameleon director, is partner
with the University of New Hampshire
and its students to lead some of the
wilderness adventure trips. The stu-
dents receive college credits, and the
children are richer for the experience.
“As the program has grown, 45 of
the students have become mentors to
the group’s kids,” says Fisher. “They’ve
donated bikes and kayaks for the chil-
dren, too. We are very tied to our uni-
versity community.”
Funding for the nonprofit Club
Chameleon comes from grants and cor-
porate donations, says Fisher, “so the
parents don’t have to pay a dime. That
makes us a level playing field. The town
is low-to-moderate income, and there
are lots of kids who wouldn’t have the
opportunity to participate otherwise.”
Although the town of Newmarket is
located 20 minutes away from the coast,
three-quarters ofthe children who
attend Club Chameleon have never had
the opportunity to stand at the ocean’s
shore. For some of these kids, going
hiking in the White Mountains, 45 min-
utes away, was another first.
“When we stood on top of the
mountain, the look on their faces was
amazement,” Fisher says. “They didn’t
even know what was in their own back-
yard. Through our program, they are
being given a greater appreciation of
their surroundings.”
The perfect opportunity for teaching
stewardship principles to young chil-
dren is immersing them in nature. And
these kids are card-carrying members
of the “Leave No Trace” national pro-
gram that seeks to minimize the indi-
vidual impact on the natural environ-
ment. The kids don’t trash the streams
or break branches from the trees, and
they easily police themselves and one
another. The skills they learn can be
used throughout their lives.
Fisher says the kids work hard to-
gether as a team and as they do, their
self-esteem and self-confidence grow.
The club is all about support to help
them get through their teenage years.
“At our community center, the kids
constantly come in to see us,” says
Fisher. “Sometimes, I see their report
cards before their parents do.”
Club members. Fisher says, feel a
family-like connection and take care
of each other. One day at school, for
instance, a bully confronted a club
member. Immediately, three fellow club
members stepped in to stop the bully-
ing and vralked the accosted member
home.
The club kids call Fisher “Mama
Bear” because they know she will pro-
tect them. A firm believer in the
Richard Louv book Last Child in the
Woods, which argues that children are
becoming increasingly disconnected
from nature, she agrees that children
today don’t play outside like kids used
to and, consequently, their imaginations
aren’t being challenged.
Paying it forward. Club Chameleon
involves a significant community serv-
ice component. Club kids engage in
projects such as mentoring younger
children or providing community
service at town festivals. They’ve even
adopted a 175-acre farm in Maine,
where they removed old, rusted farm
equipment and built a chicken coop.
“Our teens don’t test us,” says Fisher.
“They know what is being given to
them, the expectations involved, and
that if they don’t live up to those ex-
pectations, there is no more camping
for them.”
Last weekend, on a skiing expedition.
Fisher was told by the women handing
out ski rentals that every one of the 20
kids said, “please” and “thank you”
when receiving his or her equipment.
“These kids,” says Fisher “know they are
changing the way people look at teens.”
In Baltimore:
Hook, Line, and Sinker
Bob Wall, division chief of youth and
adult sports at the Baltimore City De-
partment of Recreation and Parks, has
P A R K S R E C R E A T I O N A P R I L 2 0 0 8
Peter Bergeron, 14, climbs at Pawtuckaway State Park in Raymond, N.H.,
as part of Club Chameleon and NRPA’s Teens Outside program.
run the agency’s Family Fishing Fun
program for the past six years.
As an anchor agency in tbe Take Me
Fishing^”^ initiative, a national strategy
of NRPA and the Recreational Boating
and Fishing Foundation (RBFF) aimed
at introducing and growing participa-
tion in boating and fishing, Wall has
been able to increase the reach of the
fishing program and make it available
to Baltimore families on Tuesday
evenings during the months of May,
June, September, and October. Families
meet at the Patterson Park Boat Lake,
where participants are furnished with a
rod, reel, and bait, and spend two hours
fishing in this catch-and-release park
program. Some families bring a picnic
dinner, using the tables scattered
around the lake.
“This program has been really suc-
cessful,” says Wall. “We talk to the kids
about how to keep the environment
clean, and we have [them] pick up any
trash lying around.”
The summer fishing program targets
kids ages 3 and older. All 46 recreation
centers throughout the city offer the
opportunity to schedule a fisbing trip
at Patterson Park Boat Lake, which is
located on three acres in the heart of
Baltimore.
“During this program, we partner
with the Audubon Society and take two
groups of children from different cen-
ters, 15 kids in each group,” explains
Wall. “We take one group, and the
Audubon volunteers take the other.
We take our kids fishing, and the other
group goes bird-watching or does an
environmentally related arts and crafts
program.”
Patterson Park, where the lake is
located, is one of the oldest parks in
Baltimore, encompassing 155 acres. It
was designed as a smaller version of
New York’s Central Park.
After offering the fishing program for
five years, it became obvious to park
officials that if the program were to go
forward at Patterson Park Boat Lake,
the facility would need some serious
attention, perhaps even a facelift. Sixty
percent of the lake had become choked
off with cattails and lily pads, and sedi-
ment badly needed to be removed from
the bottom. To keep young children
from falling into deep water, the shore-
line had to be altered to meet safety
requirements.
“Last year we had about 3,500 kids
come through tbe program, ages 3 to
teens,” says Wall. Much of the increase
can be attributed to Baltimore’s anchor
agency status with NRPA and RBFF,
through which it received grant funding
to expand community fishing pro-
grams.
The principles of a successful, engag-
ing stewardship program for children
include organization, community
involvement, and partnerships.
As is the case with many programs.
Wall cautions against trying to go it
alone. Instead, he says, consider devel-
oping support groups. For the Balti-
more fishing program, having the 800-
member Friends of Patterson Park as an
ally is a tremendous bonus.
Program leaders have found another
friend in Tochterman’s Tackle Shop, a
small, 95-year-old, family-owned fish-
ing tackle shop near the park that’s
been quite generous across the years.
“We have never paid for any bait, and
that is a whole lot of worms and night
crawlers,” says Wall.
“Our town has an initiative to make
Baltimore greener,” says Wall. “We are
planting an enormous amount of trees
to regain our canopy. Aesthetically, if
the eye sees trees and not just buildings,
it will be a more pleasing sight. And,
66 P A R K S E C R E A T I O N A P R I L 2 0 0 8
since the park is only two miles from
the city center and the famed harbor
area of Baltimore, the city’s enhance-
ment would benefit the park.”
In the end, the most important fea-
ture of the fishing program is that the
kids who attend “will teach their chil-
dren to be greener and more environ-
mentally friendly,” says Wall. “The
greener the kids, the better off everyone
will be. There will be a lot more job
opportunities for people who under-
stand the environment”
Wall gauges the fishing program’s
success by the number of smiles he
sees—and by the number of kids who
come back. “We always keep 40 fishing
rods on hand, but I know a kid is really
interested when he brings his own fish-
ing rod,” says Wall. “Get them hooked
on fishing and that will keep them away
from all the bad influences.”
Growing Lifelong Stewards
“It’s our mission to instill a sense of
stewardship in our community so that
throughout the children’s lifetime, they
can make good environmental deci-
sions,” says Katie Shaw, nature center
manager for Walker Nature Education
Center in Reston, Va. “Those are the
things I hope they take away with them.
That, and a great desire to learn about
nature.”
The center’s director for 17 years,
Shaw says kids find out quickly from
their programs that nature puts every-
one involved on equal footing. “You
don’t have to be the smartest or the
fastest,” she says. “You can just be you.”
Shaw likes the fact that the nature
center introduces children to the envi-
ronment at an early age, when they are
most impressionable, explaining, “We
start our lS-month-olds out in our
Babies in the Woods program,” where
participants are exposed to sensory
experiences in a series of one-hour pro-
grams that let them hear, see, touch,
and smell their surroundings. “We have
learning stations and, as often as possi-
ble, in good weather, we take them out
on the trail,” says Shaw.
The core programs include Nature
With a sense of stewardship in the community, children will make a lifetime’s worth
of good environmental decisions.
Tots, geared toward 3- to 5-year-olds
who can come to the nature center’s
camp during the summer, and field
trips for elementary school children in
the spring and fall. “With our teens, we
do the work-learn experience, and, as
they move toward adulthood, we offer
summer jobs for teens and internships
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P A R K S R E C R E A T I O N A P R I L 2 0 0 8
A camper explores aquatic life in a Reston, Va., stream.
with college students,” she says.
All ofthe center’s programs take
place trailside within the facility’s 72-
acre site, and are built around a four-
stage model that includes awareness,
appreciation, knowledge, and action.
Shaw advises taking advantage ofthe
teachable moments by presenting pro-
grams that supplement the auditory,
visual, and tactile experience. “This is
the key” she suggests. “When you get
auditory, visual, and tactile in one pro-
gram, this is when you know your
important message will be retained.”
In measuring a program’s success,
Shaw uses two methods, one formal
and the other informal. She first sug-
gests getting written evaluations from
staff, teachers, and parents. To illustrate
the informal method, Shaw relates a
coincidental meeting with a parent in
the grocery store: “The parent told me
their kid went into biology in college
because ofthe camp program.”
With a strong stewardship program,
says Shaw, “you make the right envi-
ronmental choices. You hear all the
time that everyone makes a difference,
but when it comes to the environment,
it really is true. It’s about the legacy we
leave behind.”
NRPA: Where the Kids Are Outdoors
SaJd
Sajai Wise Kids *̂̂ Outdoors
It’s a fact: Children today are spending
less time outdoors engaged In sponta-
neous play, NRPA and the Sajai”^” Founda-
tion are partnering to reconnect kids with
the natural environment. This exciting new
program will have them exploring nature
outside their door while it teaches them
about the importance of eating right and
being physically active. Each session
engages kids in outdoor adventure mis-
sions guided by trained recreation staff,
and is sure to get them excited about
their natural surroundings.
For more information, visit
www.nrpa.org/wisekids.
OUTDOOR
INDUSTRY
F O U N D A T I O N
Teens Outside
Teens Outside is a program that introduces
youth ages 11 -17 to outdoor recreation
through sustained, season-long experi-
ences in hiking, camping, climbing, biking,
paddling, and other activities with the
goal of fostering a new generation of out-
door enthusiasts. Through an NRPA part-
nership with the Outdoor Foundation, the
program was piloted in 2007 with 20 park
and recreation agencies across the coun-
try. By the end of the year, the Teens Out-
side program had succeeded in involving
more than 3,560 teens and 250 mentors
in outdoor experiences. NRPA and the
Outdoor Foundation are working to fine-
tune and expand the program to include
additional agencies, and intend to incorpo-
rate a community and environmental
stewardship pillar.
For more information, visit
www.nrpa.org/teensoutside.
Take Me Fishing^”
NRPA and the Recreational Boating and
Fishing Foundation (RBFF) are partnering
to get kids outdoors through boating and
fishing. The Take Me Fishing^”^ initiative
aims to give hectic families an opportunity
to reconnect in an outdoor setting, teach
youth new life skills, and incorporate fish-
ing and boating as part of a healthy life-
style. In its two years, this initiative has
reached more than 300 park and recre-
ation agencies, engaging some 90,000
youth ages 6-11. NRPA and RBFF have
a strong commitment to initiatives that
focus on youth and the outdoors, foster
future anglers, and provide education
on environmental conservation. The 2008
program is set to launch in the coming
months.
Look for more information at
www.nrpa.org/fishing.
68 P A R K S R E C R E A T I O N A P R I L 2 0 0 8
Fall Focus on Books
GROWING UP GREEN
A Clean Sky: The Global Warming Story. Robyn C. Friend and Judith Love Cohen. Cascade Pass, Marina del Rey, CA,
2007. 48 pp., illus. $13.95 (ISBN 9781880599822 cloth).
The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming. Laurie David and Cambria Gordon. Scholastic, New York, 2007.
128 pp., illus. $15.99 (ISBN 9780439024945 paper).
The Forever Forest: Kids Save a Tropical Treasure. Kristin Joy Pratt-Serafini and Rachel Crandell. Dawn Publications,
Nevada City, CA, 2008. 32 pp., illus. $16.95 (ISBN 9781584691013 doth).
How We Know What We Know about Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming. Lynne
Cherry and Gary Braasch. Dawn Publications, Nevada City, CA, 2008.66 pp., illus. $17.95 (ISBN 9781584691037 cloth).
One Well: The Story of Water on Earth. Rochelle Strauss. Kids Can Press, Tonawanda, NY, 2007. 32 pp., illus. $17.95
(ISBN 9781553379546 cloth).
The Sky’s Not Falling! Why It’s OK to Chill about Global Warming. Holly Fretyvell. World Ahead Publishing, Los
Angeles, 2007. 128 pp., illus. $10.99 (ISBN 9780976726944 paper).
Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion. Loree Griffin Burns. Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
2007. 64 pp., illus. $18.00 (ISBN 9780618581313 cloth).
E nvironmental conservation andglobal warming are two of the
hottest topics in science today, and
among the hottest resources for chil-
dren are the following new titles,
which target various age groups but
have a common goal of developing
environmental consciousness in our
kids. These books range from providing
a basic understanding of environmental
issues to showcasing a specific aspect of
our environment that needs focused
consideration. The books are meant to.
stir awareness by using the full gamut
of motivational techniques, from soft
cliché to hard statistic. Their goal is to
fuel motivation, some by suggesting
tried and true conservation practices,
and others by leaning more heavily on
scientific evidence and the evaluation
of it. And with one exception, they serve
as seeds for planting the idea of growing
up “green.”
Water conservation
The idea of water as a valuable resource
and the related issues of water access,
pollution, and depletion are thought-
fully discussed in One Well: The Story of
Water on Earth (ages 9 to 14). Author
Rochelle Strauss, an environmental
education consultant based in Toronto,
focuses the reader on the importance
of water conservation by using the anal-
ogy of one global well. Renowned artist
If we want our future citizens to make well-
informed decisions about issues related to
the environment, then we need to ensure that
. scientifically accurate, nonbiased sources of
information are available to them.
Rosemary Woods illustrates in rich
detail the concept of water as the strand
of life that connects everything on Earth.
The book is filled with facts and per-
centages, but the statistics are paired
with easy-to-understand descriptions
of tangible objects that readers can wrap
their heads around. Toward the end of
the book are notes to parents and teach-
ers; this is a well-written section that
provides helpful ideas, not strident
ultimatums, for water conservation.
Once children learn about the multiple
roles of water in sustaining life, they
will be more inclined to view this
resource as worthy of protection.
Furthermore, once they are imbued with
a global sense of community, they may
be more inclined to view themselves
as having their own responsible roles.
Ocean pollution
The ultimate reservoir of Earth’s water
is the ocean, and ocean pollution is the
cornerstone of Tracking Trash: Flotsam,
Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion
(ages 10 to 14). The collaborative efforts
of three scientists to “track trash”
through their understanding of wave
dynamics, ecological interactions, and
biodégradation make the book part
data analysis and part detective story.
Readers gain insight into climate pat-
terns and the variability, of ocean cur-
rents, which can lead to better pollution
prevention techniques and easier
cleanup efforts.
First-time author Loree Griffin Burns
also discusses an important aspect of
ocean pollution: plastics. Her description
of the ubiquitous contamination of
ocean water with plastic materials, and
the resulting threat to marine life, con-
stitutes a valuable lesson in responsible
management of trash. Through the use
of scientific supporting evidence, the
book further illustrates how damaging
the use of plastics can be to the environ-
ment. Burns traces the effects of pol-
luted ocean waters and shows how these
ultimately lead to changes in our cli-
mate and to serious consequences for
marine biodiversity. The glossary is
helpful since several technical terms are
used, and a list of other books and Web
resources is also included at the end of
the book.
884 BioScience • October 2008 / Vol. 58 No. 9 www. biosciencemag.org
Fall Focus on Books
Rainforests and species protection
The concept of conservation is often
demonstrated through efforts that begin
locally, but children may also be inspired
to participate in conservation efforts by
reading about an exotic place in Costa
Rica called the Children’s Eternal Rain-
forest. This 54,000-acre reserve is the
backdrop to the story of The Forever
Forest: Kids Save a Tropical Treasure (ages
5 to 11). Well known children’s author
Kristin Joy Pratt-Serafini collaborated
with author and rainforest conserva-
tionist Rachel Crandell to highlight the
significance of the rainforest ecosystem
and to send an effective message that
the determined actions of children all
over the world can be relevant to even
large-scale preservation projects. The
story is well crafted, full of information,
and beautifully enhanced by illustra-
tions. Readers learn that the rainforest
provides the habitat for numerous
species that face extinction as their food
webs are disrupted and forest area is
reduced by logging and other intrusive
human activities. Species protection
through reforestation is paramount, and
by explaining the importance of these
unique tropical forest dwellers in their
habitat, the authors are promoting
environmental awareness at a young
age, which Pratt-Serafini states is “the key
to preserving our world.”
Large-scale conservation efforts, such
as protecting an ecosystem as wide as the
ocean or as complex as the rainforest, are
under way throughout the world. Edu-
cational outreach programs for children
are excellent ways to emphasize the
important work that volunteers do and
to develop children’s commitment to
protect natural habitats.
Global warming
Growing environmental concern has
recently spiked as a result of our grad-
ual understanding and acknowledgment
of global warming. The term itself has
become part of the lexicon in both
scientific and political arenas. Major
socioeconomic decisions affecting not
just the United States but the world have
already been made, and will increas-
ingly be made, on the basis of judg-
ments about global warming. The topic
is rife with controversy. Nonetheless, an
introduction to global warming for chil-
dren can take a direct and scientific
approach. A Clean Sky: The Clobal
Warming Story (ages 9 to 12) does just
that. It is an appealing 48-page primer
on global warming that young readers
will enjoy. The book provides an objec-
tive understanding of a complex issue
without adopting political overtones.
Robyn C. Eriend and Judith Love Cohen
Although the issues of global warming and
conservation may always be subject to
interpretation and political bias, these topic’s in
children’s literature should be presented as
objectively as any piece of scientific information.
I
(an aerospace engineer) are accom-
plished writers of children’s books on a
variety of empowering subjects. Their
approach to global warming is to discuss
it from a can-do perspective: first ex-
plain the nature of the problem— how
does global warming take place over
time?—and then offer some possible
solutions to fix it. Eor example, the
term “greenhouse gases” is adequately
defined along with the need to curb
emissions, then terminology such as
“carbon capture” and “geological stor-
age” is introduced as alternative meth-
ods for reducing greenhouse gases. The
result is a book that is both rational and
engaging—optimism served objectively.
Documented evidence
of climate change
Another approach to understanding
global warming is to learn about the
work being done by an international
selection of scientists. Evidence-based
knowledge of global climate change is
the focus of the book How We Know
What We Know about Our Changing
Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore
Clobal Warming (ages 10 to 14). Studies
by more than 40 biologists, as well as
student researchers, are documented
in this collection of evidence that
climate change is real, and that plants
and animals are reacting to it. Through
clear descriptions of actual scientific
studies, a young reader absorbs clues
that are symptoms of global warming—
rainforest deforestation, rising sea levels,
and changing carbon dioxide levels, to
name a few. Lynne Cherry, an accom-
plished writer of environmental books,
and photojournalist Gary Braasch
teamed up to write this book, which not
only presents a convincing argument,
although its advocacy is subtle, but also
illustrates the collaborative spirit of
scientific research that is required to
further our understanding of the long-
ranging effects of global warming.
Science, after all, is about asking
questions, exploring problems, and
searching for adequate answers that
cannot always be found in a classroom
or textbook. This book encourages
scientific curiosity and takes a multi-
disciplinary approach to learning about
our environment. Additional resources
are plentiful. Instead of waving the
banner of environmental consciousness.
How We Know demonstrates ways to
take active roles in the community to
solve a problem that affects all of us.
Activism
In comparison. The Down-to-Earth
Cuide to Clobal Warming (ages 9 to 12)
highlights the importance of environ-
mental awareness and describes ways
for young readers to become engaged in
conservation efforts. The premise is
that peer-reviewed studies have already
identified solutions to global warming;
therefore, the task at hand is to become
an environmental activist to learn how
to combat this very serious problem.
The book can be somewhat misleading
in its use of quotes from celebrity role
models. Although it is important to pro-
vide our children with incentives for
becoming concerned about environ-
mental issues, this book is less a guide
than it is a call-to-action. Coauthors
Laurie David and Cambria Gordon are
environmental activists (and David is
also the producer of An Inconvenient
Truth, among other documentaries).
Parents may well want their children to
become similarly engaged in environ-
mental activism, but this book blurs the
distinction between becoming better
informed and becoming an advocate.
www. biosciencemag. org October 20081 Vol. 58 No. 9 • BioScience 885
Fall Focus on Books
Medía bias
While most scientists and environmen-
tal activists argue that global warming is
taking place at an accelerating pace, a few
others claim that the warming trend
observed over the past decades is part of
a cycle between cooling and warming
periods. From this perspective, another
issue emerges: media bias. The Sky’s Not
Falling! Why It’s OK to Chill about Global
Warming (ages 9 to 14) is offered as an
alternative “to the overwhelming num-
ber of liberal kids’ books on the market,”
according to the press release from the
publisher. Holly Fretwell, a faculty mem-
ber at Montana State University, cen-
tered her book around the thesis that
media concern with climate change is
exaggerated. Fretwell states that “with-
out greenhouse gases the earth would
be a very cold place to live.” This is true
but seems misleading, given that the
concern arises because concentrations
of such gases are rapidly increasing. Her
arguments are not very convincing when
she claims that warmer temperatures
could mean “better food growth per
acre.” No references are cited with this
claim. Fretwell also considers biofuels
to be an unrealistic option as energy
alternatives. They may be too costly to
taxpayers since “ethanol is not as efficient
at producing energy as fossil fuels” and
“the costs to society may be greater than
the benefits.” Fretwell’s “solution” is eco-
nomic growth (perhaps at the expense
of more fossil fuels), and she encourages
us not to fall under the restrictions of the
Kyoto Protocol. Clearly, the child is not
the target audience at this point.
Lessons for learning
Environmental issues will continue to
hold center stage in our scientific, socio-
economic, and political milieu. If we
want our future citizens to make well-
informed decisions about issues related
to the environment, then we need to
ensure that scientifically accurate, non-
biased sources of information are avail-
able to them. Although the issues of
global warming and conservation may
always be subject to interpretation and
political bias, these topics in children’s
literature should be presented as objec-
tively as any piece of scientific informa-
tion. Given the vulnerability of young
readers as consumers of information
(scientific and otherwise), children’s
books about environmental awareness
should promote a clear understanding
of these issues, thereby offering our
next generation the opportunity not
only to learn about science but also to
apply scientific information to real-life
problems.
JOSÉ VÁZQUEZ
José Vázquez (e-mail: jrv2@nyu.edu)
teaches science in the Liberal Studies
Program at New York University.
doi:10.1641/B580918
Include this information when citing this material.
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886 BioScience • October 2008 / Vol. 58 No. 9 www. biosciencemag. org
