Environmental games for children

But the game feels more timely now as renewable energy is on an upward climb. For instance, the U. By , wind energy could meet 30 percent of all electricity demand in the country. Even though it's not as cool as a solar panel in space. Windfall prepares you for that future because setting up wind farms requires a lot of skills. Try to design one with this virtual game. You have to keep a lot of factors in mind when you opt for a small, medium, or large windmill.

Some old Flash games can still surprise you. Play Oil God from Persuasive Games turns you into a James Bondian villain, but with the master plan of educating you on how the politics of oil works around the world. You are the oil tycoon who wields massive power.

With nine nations submitting to your diktats, you control the strings of power that drive oil economies in these countries. The game wants to teach you the complex relationship between gas prices, geopolitics, and oil profits.

Just consider e-waste. Doesn't your mind boggle when you read that recycling one million laptops could save the same amount of energy as that used by 3, American homes in a year? That's what the EPA said in a report. And that's why recycling has to be a small solution to the bigger problem. The Recycle City game can sensitize children early to the need for reusing waste.

Play the game to see how everyday decisions can reduce waste , energy, and even help you save money at home, at work, and around the neighborhood. Lifeboat to Mars , as the name says, is about the Red Planet. But it is also a clean slate that teaches kids about the origins of an ecosystem and how evolutionary biology can transform a rock into a living globe.

In this biology simulation game, kids are tasked with piloting a spaceship with a cargo of microbes and a variety of plants and animals needed to start an ecosystem. The PBS game has different missions and obstacles that involves a lot of trial and error. Like many games, this too will sharpen your child's decision-making skills. If you're interested in the origins of life on Earth, visit these websites based on the theory of evolution to explore the subject further. Control the city pollution and give citizens a healthier urban life.

The smart devices market for air quality monitoring devices is a direct nod to urban pollution. For our children, it will be a fact of life unless we start doing something about it today. Play it online or download the simulator. You may not be in charge of your city's environment, but you are at the controls in this virtual world of Smog City 2.

Control the levels of pollution in the city by customizing its environment in different ways. The game demonstrates how ten different types of controls across three categories can create a clean city or a toxic dump.

Learn how birds migrate and the effect of human pollution on their migratory patterns. The Mission Migration game lays bare the threat of human activity on the migration of birds. The game also tries to highlight the role of our positive environmental choices on successful bird migration. Are people unhappy or upset if they had to compromise their beliefs or values? The world uses an enormous amount of wood pulp to make paper—an estimated 4 billion trees are cut each year for paper.

Printing a Sunday edition of the New York Times requires acres of forest. The pulp and paper industry is a big contributor to the problem of deforestation and is partly to blame for the endangerment of some species that live in the forests.

The life cycle of paper is damaging to the environment from beginning to end. Pulp mills contribute to air, water and land pollution. Even paper recycling can be a source of pollution due to the sludge produced during de-inking—thus the need for soy-based inks.

Recycling causes 35 per cent less water pollution and 74 per cent less air pollution than making new paper. As paper decomposes in the ground it produces methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. Sustainable timber has the lowest embodied energy energy used in its processing, production and transport, from tree to consumer use of any mainstream building material, and far less than for steel, concrete or aluminum.

This is mainly because timber requires only minimal processing compared to other materials. How timber is logged does have environmental impacts.

Clearcutting can increase the harmful impact of wind and rain on local ecosystems; destroy valuable wildlife habitat; and cause soil to become dry and overheated, which may in turn increase the risk of fire or interfere with seedling growth. The US Forest Service projects that demand for forest products will reach 25 billion cubic feet annually by the , up from nearly 18 billion in , due mainly to population growth. Large plant eating mammals historically have been and still are a natural resident of most forest regions of the world.

However, the mix of species and their concentrations have been changed by humans which in turn has changed the forests too. Impacts have resulted from use of forests for livestock grazing, deliberate introduction of game species for hunting, and removal of top predators e.

Widely spaced, fire-tolerant trees with swaths of grass between them have been replaced by dense stands of fire-sensitive and disease susceptible species or riparian forests with flat dry wastelands. Studies have shown livestock alter ecosystem processes in a number of ways. Grazing cattle reduces herbaceous plants that outcompete tree seedlings, thus increasing tree density, greater vulnerability to insects and pathogens, and reduction of frequent surface fires resulting in more intense wildfires.

Poorly managed grazing damages forest soils and stream banks, and contaminates waterways with fecal waste. Grazing also negatively affects biodiversity. High quality charcoal is mostly pure carbon, called char, made by cooking wood in a low oxygen environment, a process that can take days and burns off volatile compounds such as water, methane, hydrogen, and tar—which are either allowed to escape as gases and other volatiles in the smoke, or can be recaptured, condensed, and converted to useful byproducts.

Charcoal is used in the manufacture of carbon disulfide, carbon tetrachloride, sodium cyanide, and other industrial chemicals. Extensive amounts are converted to activated carbons. Its greatest use is for home and outdoor cooking. Charcoal production was once thought to be a major contributor to deforestation, but research has shown it most frequently results in natural forest degradation.

Making charcoal affects global warming through the production and emission of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide CO2 and methane CH4. In tropical ecosystems it is thought charcoal production and use can significantly contribute to poverty reduction and environmental sustainability by providing energy in accordance with sustainable development goals.

Extracts of many forest plants are used as the basis of modern drugs. Worldwide many indigenous people rely on medicinal plants using forests as their pharmacy. Medicinal species found in natural areas are of increasing interest to medical researchers and commercial producers.

The threats to these species include: habitat destruction, bioprospecting, biopiracy, and overharvesting. The smoke from fuel wood burning is made up of a complex mixture of gases and fine particles also called particle pollution, particulate matter, or PM. In addition to particle pollution, wood smoke contains several toxic harmful air pollutants including: benzene, formaldehyde, acrolein, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs.

Open fireplaces are the most polluting way to burn fuel wood. The more efficiently wood is burned e. Use of wood pellets for energy has seen a dramatic increase in recent years in global production grew by 17 percent.

Wood pellets consist of wood particles sourced from trees harvested specifically for the purpose of manufacturing wood pellets, portions of harvested trees that are not utilized for saw-timber, such as tops, branches, and leaves, or timber mill by-products such as sawdust, woodchips or wood shavings compressed into small cylinders for use as burning fuel.

Forest biomass harvesting offers increased revenues for land-owners due to sale of logging residues in addition to saw timber, although there is some concern that timber harvesting for biomass or use of logging residues for wood pellet production may have negative implications for forest ecology and future sustainability. Due to the removal of woody debris, which under traditional harvest systems is mostly left behind, there is potential for impacts such as reductions in ecosystem carbon storage, the nutrient pool and overall landscape productivity, and levels of biodiversity.

Skip to main content. You are here Home. Looking at the climate change challenge there are a number of games and interactive tools to broaden our understanding of the dynamics involved.

Climate Interactive , for one, has led the development of the role-playing game World Climate , which simulates the UN climate change negotiations and is being adopted from middle school all the way up to executive management-level classrooms. Many are recognizing the power of games and everyone from government agencies to NGOs to a group of teenagers is trying to launch a game to help address climate change. World Climate : A role-playing game for groups that simulates the UN climate change negotiations by dividing into regional and national negotiating teams to create a treaty to limit global warming to 2 degrees C or less.

Climate Challenge : The player acts as a European leader who must make decisions for their nation to reduce CO2 emissions, but must also keep in mind public and international approval, energy, food, and financial needs.

Fate of the World : A PC game that challenges players to solve the crises facing the Earth from natural disasters and climate change to political uprisings and international relations. It is available on Steam. CEO2 : A game that puts players at the head of a company in one of four industries. VGas : Users build a house and select the best furnishing and lifestyle choices to have the lowest carbon footprint.

CO2FX : A multi-player educational game, designed for students in high school, which explores the relationship of climate change to economic, political, and science policy decisions. The user can select from adjustments in sectors from energy to transit.