Questions from Kantonsschule Alpenquai 5La

Most people are angry about climate change because increased temperature result into droughts,floods,tropical storms and hurricanes that will kill people. That's what they say:

Developed countries are responsible for 75% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today, excluding those from tropical deforestation. These nations have the most financial resources and the greatest technological capacity to cut their emissions.

Climate Change is affecting all countries, but Least Developed Countries and other vulnerable developing countries are expected to be hit earliest and hardest. Africa will be particularly affected in terms of food security, sustainable water supply and extreme weather phenomena such as floods, droughts and threats of desertification. Economies and livelihoods of an increasing number of communities, countries and sub-regions in Africa continue to decline ue to desert encroachment partly emanating from climate change and locally generated land degradation processes.

We have managed to get an article from Tanzania Daily News paper of Tuesday May 19, 2009. The is article titled "Two-degree rise ever more likely,scientists warn". It talks about the increase emission of CO2 into the atmosphere by human activities where scientists are calling for phasing out of fossill fuels because humans are pumping so much carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere that the 2-degree C climate baloon willl burst, new studies are showing that.

The direct problems that have been mentioned in the article include water shortages, food shortages and coastal floodings that will affect billions of people worlwide.

The article proposed on massive investment in adaptation strategies such as improving water supply and storage as well as protecting low-lying settlements from rising seas as solutions for mitigating impacts of climate change.

Climate change articles and reports are given a top priority in Tanzania as there is an avarage of one article about climate change every month that appears on Tanzania news papers.

The headline that caught my eye and impressed us is "Two-degree rise ever more likely, scientists warn" as it talks about new studies that show the continue rising of global temperature.

An article we would like to give on climate change article would be "Do we need to close industries to fight climate change?"

I think the feeling of responsibility comes in climate change because as human beings we are held responsible for causing climate change from activities like deforestation and environmental pollution.

People are hopefull that in the future the climate will improve and the world will be safe, education about climate change and environmental conservation will be given to all people.

There will be no difference if all people are educated about climate change.

The emotion we feel strongly connected to climate change is anger, we are very angry to people in our society that destroy the environment by cutting down trees, but we are ready and willing to help these people in our society to protect the environment.

We would like to tell the industrilized countries to reduce their CO2 emissions to the atmosphere help poor countries in fighting climate change impacts.

There is still lot to do. We have lots of plans as a HotStuffChillOutMemberClass. We want to become active. Can the fluttering of a butterfly's wing really change our world? We think it can.

Because of HotStuffChillOut we have began drafting Climate change magazine that will be given to students and schools participating in the project. The magazine will be in English and Swahili languages to enable every young man get a chance to read and understand about climate change. We want this magazine to be available in libraries and secondary school libraries so that people know about climate change and the project we are doing.

I will let you know our progress and we will see if you can help us in editing the English version and the printing. We have not yet decided the title of the Magazine but we would like the title to be in Swahili word that relates to climate change or environmental conservation.

We know that the class in Dharamsala is also working on a magazine so we could do that together. The class in Kenya is drawing a cartoon for a magazine. It would be great if you would read our magazine one day.

We take part on Saturday when we have no class at all. We are in the middle of exams and we don't have much time but it is a good experience to learn what you guys in Switzerland have to say about climate change. We learn a lot about climate change. What is your project? What do you do to reduce CO2 levels? On the website www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index/themen/21/03/blank/blank/01.html

we found the following numbers: Switzerland's footprint is nearly four times larger than its biocapacity

It currently measures 5.0 global hectares (gha) per capita. Our country's biocapacity, however, is a mere 1.3 global hectares per capita. The main cause of this large footprint is the energy consumption : Energy accounts for three-fourths of the ecological footprint, making it the most significant factor overall. Moreover, the energy footprint has also grown more rapidly over the last few decades than any other factor. Use of cropland, forest and prairies is another major factor, accounting for 22% of the total footprint.

Switzerland lives at the cost of other world regions or future generations

Our country's ecological footprint has exceeded its biocapacity for several decades now. The only way to maintain this unsustainable lifestyle is either to drastically overexploit our own natural resources or to import natural resources from other countries.

Mankind consumes the Earth’s natural resources faster than the Earth’s regenerative capacity

The world’s per-capita biocapacity is 0.6 gha less than its per-capita footprint. Switzerland’s per capita footprint is about the same as the EU-15 average. North America and Western Europe consume up to five times more than world’s available biocapacity of 2.1 gha. The countries of Southeast Asia and Africa, in contrast, use up much less biocapacity per capita.

We want to teach other people about it. Will you do something together with us? Let's come up with some ideas.

We would educate all people about forest management and importance of trees and disdavantages of cutting trees. We will then tell the people trees are important because they are source of rain,source of medicines(herbs) and help to break and stop strong winds.

We will also tell people to mitigate the problems by overcoming before direct impact occurs.

The past tells us that there were more trees than now because in the past people were not cutting trees like we do, and so they were no droughts as they are happening now. In the past people were walking on foot and not using cars and so there was no production of CO2.

The kind of life we would like to lead will be a simple life like living in a hut,walking on foot and riding a bike in longer distances.

No we are not free to choose the prospect of our life because we are still students and still living with our parents.

(no answer yet)

We are concerned about climate change. There is not that much how we can reduce the CO2 we produce because we don't produce a lot. Still we try to do what we can. Even in Dar-es-Salaam, the commercial capital, only 6% of the population own a car. Only a minority of both urban and rural roads are surfaced. Here in Tanzania climate change has a greater impact than it has in Switzerland. A recent NASA report revealed that rainfall in eastern Africa has fallen by 15% since 1980 and has predicted that it will continue to decrease by the same amount every 25 years or so. As a result, some of the areas traditionally used by the Maasai people to graze their cattle have already become desert. How can we expect others to change their lifestyle so radically if we are not prepared to make major sacrifices ourselves?

Cooking is a problem around here. We burn biomass to cook with. This sounds good but it produces black carbon. That's where we could do something: Black carbon is produced largely by diesel vehicles and the burning of biomass, including in cookstoves in developing countries like Africa. Black carbon is very dangereous for our climate. Available technology such as diesel particulate filters for vehicles and cleaner- burning biomass and solar cookstoves can significantly reduce black carbon emissions.

Yes

It is a very important topic. We hope that in December in Copenhagen the world will decide to help us. Climate Change is affecting all countries, but Least Developed Countries and other vulnerable developing countries are expected to be hit earliest and hardest. Africa will be particularly affected in terms of food security, sustainable water supply and extreme weather phenomena such as floods, droughts and threats of desertification. Economies and livelihoods of an increasing number of communities, countries and sub-regions in Africa continue to decline ue to desert encroachment partly emanating from climate change and locally generated land degradation processes.

It is cold and you (still) have a lot of snow (-:

We like Bagamoyo beaches because Bagamoyo beaches are cool and quite place clean with white sand and when visiting Bagamoyo beaches we can see see and land breeze.

In Bagamoyo beaches there are different lifestlyes such as fishing, family outing where parents bring their kids to swim and lots of foreign tourists that come to visit Bagamoyo, a former slave market found about 30 kilometres from Dar es Salaam city. The place is beautiful and amazing!

The famous person in our country is Dr. Asha Rose Migiro United Nations Under Secretary General, she is a very strong woman and the first woman to be seleted as UN Under Secretary General. She has been Minister of Foreign Affiars in Tanzania for more that two years. We are impressed by Mrs. Migiro because she is our role model and has insipered Tanzania women that they can do better then Men.

In Dar es Salam people help each other to keep their environment clean and safe, this happens during rain season especially in December where various people in their neighrboorhoods help one another to clean and open drainage system that are flooded with water during rain season.

Solidarity and climate protection means coming together to protect the climate and environment. This is important because some people cut down trees for their own use, so if we are not working together we can not protect the climate and environment.

The beach is where we go to....

Yes - and a lot! Do you know Mount Kilimandjaro?

We hope that they do a good job in Copenhagen.

We don't use a lot of water. What do you do?

We help to clean up the beach in Dar es Salaam.