Getting Started

We recommend that you record this program on video tape. MCET will broadcast Hey, It's Your Backyard!, via satellite at 1:00 PM, May 7, 2000 and rebroadcast May 9, 2000 at 2:00 PM, May 15, 2000 at 8:30 AM, and May 24 at 11:00 AM. Please refer to the cover sheet supplied in this packet or contact MCET at 1-800-556-4376 for information on how to receive the broadcast or acquire the video tape.

Classroom Discussions

Can your Students answer the questions correctly and help Horace in the shopping experience?

We also recommend taping the program so you can preview it and note places to pause the tape to allow for discussion. The tape features the light-hearted adventures of Horace who during the course of a day is faced with many choices that reflect the decisions we make everyday. The students can share in Horace's adventure by making decisions that face Horace in the videotape. Students can discuss the consequences and effects of Horace's actions as well as propose solutions. At one point students can also test their knowledge about environmental issues by playing along with Horace during a question and answer scene.

Background Information

Do High School students need to be concerned about the environment? Certainly yes! After all, they are inheriting the present condition of our planet. On what kind of planet will they grow old and raise their children?

On New Year's day, January 1, 2000 some people believed the world would end. The world didn't end but it does have a problem; over 6 billion people entered the new millennium. The population of the earth is increasing at an alarming rate. Between 1980 and 2000 the earth's population increased by 1.5 billion people. The US Census Bureau predicts that the world's population by the year 2025 will exceed 10 billion people. What effect do all of these people have on our planet?

• Abundant energy use, fueled by the prosperity of industrialized nations, is a major source of stress on the environment. According to the World Resource Institute, energy created by burning coal, oil and natural gas produces carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for about half of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Nitrogen oxides and Sulfur dioxide also created by burning fossil fuels are the precursors of acid rain. Together these emissions harm wildlife and wildlife habitat, lakes rivers, soils, crops, materials and buildings.
• The extraction of coal, oil, and gas causes environmental damage. Oil spills from tankers and offshore drilling platforms pollute coastal and marine environments. Mining can destroy or displace farmland and wildlife habitats, pollute groundwater and change groundwater characteristics and flow patterns. The solid wastes left over from mining are a source of air and water pollution. According to the EPA in 1998, the cost of environmental damage from fossil fuel use has been estimated at $100 billion per year in the United States alone.
• The amount of waste the average U.S. residence produces in a year is well over 1,600 pounds according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The waste results in over 3,500 landfills, many of which contain chemicals, oils, solvents and toxic metals that may dissolve and leak into the surrounding soil and groundwater. Landfills also take up considerable space that is becoming increasingly harder to find. The waste also results in the building of incinerators that produce smoke, gases and fumes. Burning mixed wastes produces harmful chemicals in the smoke, and the ashes that are left behind also contain toxic metals and must be put into a landfill.
• The world is experiencing the greatest episode of species extinction since the the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The species are dissappearing as a direct result of human influences. "Of all the global problems that confront us, this is the one that is moving the most rapidly and the one that will have the most serious consequences. And, unlike other global ecological problems, it is completely irreversible." Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Gardens and Home Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). Everyday habitat destruction extinguishes roughly one species every hour, or maybe even one every minute. The Book of Extinction Rates edited by John Lawton and Robert May (Oxford University Press, 1995).
• Our natural resource demand rises with an increasing population. Unfortunately as resources become scarce poorer nations suffer. According to the World Resource Institute about 13-18 million people die each year due to starvation and everyday about 25,000 people die as the result of using unclean water.

The world's population is increasing at an alarming rate and so is our need for its natural resources. We are already experiencing a time when many third world countries are without clean water, adequate nutrition and other resources we take for granted. Young people and adults need to start reducing our resource demand, which as the program Hey, It's Your Backyard illustrates, means changing some of our everyday habits. Young people also need to be aware that they will soon be taking on responsibilities as adults in our society and will ultimately be responsible for the well-being of our planet in the future.

This Web site has been created for the
MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences
and the National Institute of Health Sciences

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