You may have already read Ruth's blog this morning on COP21 and, of course, you will see it mentioned in many news broadcasts over the coming days.

Teachers of A Level Economics will know that pollution and, particularly global warming created by greenhouse emissions, is the single biggest example of negative externalities that a student can use. Pollution and global warming is a common theme, particularly in AS exams as the only real way of dealing with the problem is full government intervention just as is occurring this week (with a perfect opportunity to discuss government failure at the same time!).

The reason why it so important, in terms of attempting to keep global warming at the internationally recognized 2 degrees above the natural temperature can be viewed in the video below.

I also thought that this was an ideal opportunity to re-iterate my frequent piece of advice for teachers about looking for ways of discussing and using quantitative methods in your classes at every opportunity given that 15% of marks are for use of such skills (20% for the full A level). The resource below is a quick exercise in just that - working out the mean, median and mode from some statistics regarding the 10 largest emitters of greenhouse gases. The exercise is very quick but does give teachers a chance to discuss externalities and then check a decent understanding of the mathematical terminilogy.

Click here to download the activity sheet 'Global Climate Change Summit.doc'.