Pachamama Key Question What is Pachamama Starter Task

Pachamama. Key Question. What is Pachamama? Starter Task. What was your best Christmas present? What was so good about it? Why would you not deliberately destroy it?

Pachamama. DLOs. • To have shown understanding of Pachamama. • To have written about what makes places in the world special. • To have shown knowledge and understanding of the damage we do to the planet. • To have evaluated how ‘green’ we are and reflected on what can be done to make the world special again.

A Wonderful World.

Disappearing Nature. Things to do. Think about where you live or a place that you have visited. Write down answers to the following questions. 1. Where is it? 2. What is there that is special or beautiful about that place? 3. What do you think Pachamama would think if we let some creatures die out? Explain your answer with examples.

Pachamama. Things to do. 1. Note down some of the things we do to damage the earth. You can do this by writing a list, drawing a spider diagram or with illustrations of your examples. 2. Explain what social, political and economic problems human cause for the earth. 3. Complete the ‘Green Test’.

The Green Test. • Answer the following twenty questions with (a) – always; (b) – very often; (c) sometimes; (d) – not often; or (e) – never. • Have you ever… 1. separated the rubbish into organic/inorganic, paper/plastic etc? 2. taken you paper, glass etc for recycling? 3. left lights on after you have left the room in your house? 4. organised a youth environmental group in your area or school? 5. tried to tell people in your neighbourhood about eco-issues? 6. allowed your dog to poo in public and not pick it up? 7. watched a parent use dangerous chemicals on the soil and not said anything? 8. burned rubbish in your garden on a sunny day? 9. got your parent to drive you less than a kilometre to a friends or to school? 10. done clean-ups on lakes or rivers? 11. built suitable homes for wild animals in your garden or local park? 12. joined Greenpeace, WWF or another eco-friendly organisation? 13. planted trees, plants or flowers in your community? 14. campaigned against cruelty to animals or hunting? 15. organised an environmental meeting at school or in your community? 16. been on a demonstration about an environmental issue? 17. lobbied your local council, written letters etc, on an environmental issue? 18. used your bicycle or your legs instead of the car? 19. persuaded your parents to improve insulation in your home? 20. got your parents to buy low-energy light bulbs or high efficiency appliances?

The Green Test Scores. • For questions 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 • For questions 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 • • • a = 0; b = 2; c = 3; d = 4; e = 5. a = 5; b = 4; c = 3; d = 2; e = 0.

The Green Test Results. • 80 -100; you are so green, people might think you’re coming down with something! But congratulations! You are clearly living very lightly on the planet. Keep up the good work and keep it up. • 60 -79; Not bad. Probably room for improvement in your personal life and there’s sure to be more you could do in your community. • 40 -59; Many of us will probably fall into this category. We are all basically lazy! It’s time to get your hands dirty. Turn that TV off, get off the couch, get out and do something! • 20 -39; You are close to being a problem to your planet and your community. The environment is clearly not a priority for you. Think about the consequences of your actions – a dead planet! • 0 -19; you are shaping up to be a planetary vandal! you need to constantly think green, wear green, paint your face green to remind yourself of the importance of protecting the planet!

Respond and Reflect. Review your score for your Green Test. What does it mean? Write down the results. What could you do better; Write down (or do a spider diagram) as many ways as you can think of to clean up the world and make the earth a special place again.

Stark – Ben Elton. • ‘The world does not know the half, the quarter even , of the trouble it is in. All your wildest fears, your worst predictions about the state of the world it’s already happened ten times over. Words cannot describe the vandalism that has been done to this planet’. • ‘There are virtually no forests left, the ozone layer is gone, soon there will be no polar ice-caps. Coupled with this every single thing on this planet has been subjected, to a greater or lesser extent to toxification – nothing on the earth can be said to be clean. Not one drop of water, not one gulp of air, not one mouthful of food. It is all irreversibly filthy. Without the forests, deserts will very soon take over the majority of land above sea-level which won’t be much because once the ice has melted all low lying land will be submerged under a filthy sea’. • ‘The poisoning of the soil through chemical imbalance and intense over-farming is set to make almost all agriculture impossible worldwide. When that happens billions of people are going to turn on each other in a starving fury. If it hasn’t already died of skin cancer or toxic shock, the human race will commit bloody self-murder’. • ‘Oh come on, surely something can be done’. ‘Something could have been done a long time ago, but we didn’t do it, did we? ’ ‘Whose we? ’ ‘well everybody of course!’ ‘ If we had acted earlier, when it first got obvious that we were really messing up home sweet home, then maybe it would have been ok, but we didn’t do it did we? We opted for instant profit and comfort. ’

Stark - Vanishing Point. • ‘I have received information that vanishing point is upon us. Personally I wouldn’t eat that crabmeat sandwich. I am reliably informed that the long feared TTO has occurred in a food layer stretching from micro-organisms right up to simple animals. ’ • ‘What is TTO and why can’t I eat my sandwich? ’ TTO is Total Toxic Overload – it is the point at which a species becomes so poisoned by toxic waste it becomes a liability to the food chain. Each creature is poisoned by its diet and then it becomes the poisoned diet of a superior creature all they way up to the top of the food chain – man. We eat just about everything so we end up eating the accumulated pollution of all other species. We can assume that within a single season, all animal food on earth will be poisoned and entirely inedible. This combined with the world crop failures which are now a regular feature of our greenhouse summers means…’ ‘it is really all over’. • ‘There can be no doubt about it, there is virtually nothing left to eat on earth. We have polluted all of it. ’

Respond and Reflect. After reading the extracts from Ben Elton’s book Stark answer the following questions; What does ‘Total Toxic Overload’ mean? Do you think the planet will ever actually get to this point?