Blog # 6: Quick Research

For this blog, students will spend some time researching and summarizing information related to their third essay. Each of the topics below matches the topics for the third essay.

Topic One

1. For students who choose topic one, they will research more about climate debt and "reparations" for Jews and potential reparations for slaves. While students should discover some basic information about the subjects using Wikipedia and other such sources, they should pick one source on climate debt that they want to relate to their readers. In their blog, students should spend some time explaining any connections they see between climate debt and reparations, and introduce their sources whenever necessary. Then, they should write a brief paragraph explaining whether or not Zeitoun's detention could qualify as a climate debt, and why.

Topic Two

2. For students arguing about the future of climate change, they should spend some time researching about climate debt, too. Who is making the arguments about climate debt? Is anyone arguing against it? What are the best parts of the climate debt arguments that these groups are making? What are the parts of their arguments that you believe need more thought? Why?

Topic Three

3. For students research NDAA and Zeitoun, they should spend some time researching NDAA. What is it? Who passed it? Who wrote it? Why was it passed? Who opposes NDAA? Why do they oppose it? After summarizing what information they're able to find, they should write a paragraph that discusses any connections between NDAA and what Zeitoun experienced. What was similar? Is anything different?

Assignment Three Revised

Please click on the link under "Pages" to see the new topic.

Extra Credit Opportunity

What

Next week Tuesday, November 27th the Pulitzer prize awarded film "Slavery By Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II" by Douglas A. Blackmon will be presented in E-242 at 10:30am.  The film will be followed by a discussion led by Professor Victor Rosa and Global Conversations founder Jeffery Kazembe Batts. As we approach the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, I encourage all LaGuardians to learn more about America's true history!

Blog

Students should blog about the film: what it was about, what they learned, and how it might connect to the issues in our class. 

Exclusive: Less fortunate in U.S. hit hardest by extreme weather - report

By Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON | Fri Nov 16, 2012 7:24am EST

(Reuters) - U.S. droughts, floods and heat waves likely fueled by climate change in the last two years hit the people who can afford it the least - the poor and middle class, a report published on Friday said.

In affected areas of U.S. states hit by five or more extreme weather events in the last two years, the median annual household income was a bit over $48,000, or 7 percent below the national median, according to the report by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the White House.

Floods hit lower-income households particularly hard. Families in areas hit by the largest floods this year and last, many near the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, earned an average of 14 percent less than the U.S. median, said the report called "Heavy Weather: How Climate Destruction Harms Middle and Lower Income Americans."

"These findings reflect a cruel phenomenon sometimes called 'the climate gap' — the concept that climate change has a disproportionate and unequal impact on society's less fortunate," said the report, which tapped U.S. data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Census and other agencies.
Droughts and heat waves hit households that earned an average of $49,300, about 5 percent less than the U.S. median annual income, sometimes hurting the people least able to afford air conditioners or the electricity to run them, it said.

Scientists say it is difficult if not impossible to pin individual storms entirely on climate change. But conditions caused by global warming, including higher ocean temperatures and rising seas, can make storms stronger and floods worse.

Even with the Northeast still cleaning up after Superstorm Sandy that killed at least 120 people, damaged billions of dollars worth of property, and brought new focus on climate change, wide-ranging action by Congress to tackle global warming will be an uphill battle.

FOCUS ON ECONOMY AND JOBS

President Barack Obama told a news conference on Wednesday it was unclear what Democrats or Republicans are prepared to do to fight climate change.

"If the message is somehow, we're going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don't think anybody's gonna go for that," he said. "I won't go for that."

Still, Daniel Weiss, an author of the report, was optimistic Obama could take action at federal agencies to cut carbon emissions and help people protect themselves.

"As Obama himself has said, presidents have to do more than one thing at a time. That applies here," Weiss said.

The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, should finalize proposed rules on carbon reduction standards for new power plants this year, he said. The rules were staunchly opposed by some coal-burning utilities that say the rule would effectively kill any new coal-fired power plant, because it requires them to invest in unproven technology to capture carbon and store it underground.

The EPA should also propose and finalize such standards for existing power plants, the source of about a third of all U.S. greenhouse gas pollution, Weiss said. He recognized that is a higher hurdle.
But he took heart in Obama saying on Wednesday that he plans conversations with scientists, engineers and elected officials to find out about making short-term progress in reducing emissions, and he would work in coming months and years on building bipartisan support for tackling climate change.

The report also recommended that the government fully fund the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to provide people with resources to pay for cooling and heating during extreme weather events, at a cost of about $5 billion a year.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Grade Checklist

Grade Checklist (ENG 101)

Essays (30%)

1 ____

2 ____

3 ____

Blogs (20%)

In-class (5%)

Peer Review Response __

Important to know __

Zeitoun and Kathy __

Framed Quotation __

Twitter Response ___

Future blogs (TBA)

Assigned (15%)

Blog #1 __

Blog # 2__

Revised Blog (#3)  __

Lower 9^th Ward Research (#4) __

Blog Comments (#5) __

Blog # 6 __ (TBA)

Blog #7 __ (TBA)

Extra Credit

Hurricane Sandy ___

English Orientation ___

Twitter (10%)

Out of class Tweets (___ /16)

Participation (10%)

Volunteers __

Offers discussion when called upon __

Brings text __

Listens to others __

Texts in class __

Reading Quizzes (10%)

6 quizzes, 70 points (through 11/26)

x/70 ___

Midterm (10%)

x/100 ___

Final In-class Writing (10%)

x/100 ___

Assignment Three is up!

Look to the right, or click here.

Trip to Boston? Transfer Options!

The latest addition to HSAC’s Transfer Initiative includes a group trip to visit colleges and universities in Boston.  Thanks to the support of the Student Government Association, we may be able to take up to 30 students on a subsidized group field trip organized by HSAC to expose LaGuardia students to transfer options, and to research these options to share with other LaGuardia students.  This opportunity is open to all LaGuardia students.

Your students are invited to learn more this initiative here:  https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxnlWiiyzLRZSmFXWFVEU3ZmbkU
The application form can be downloaded here: http://www.laguardiahonors.com/#!boston/c1xo
The application deadline is Dec. 21.