General

• How is climate change affecting your town, city or village?  (Floods?  Heatwaves? Air pollution? Has your river run dry, or is it polluted? Are you a gardener who has noticed a difference?)
• How worried are you about the climate crisis?
• Imagine you were given the power to do just one thing in the world to help solve the climate crisis.  What would you do?
• Do you think we should be banning or restricting things that we know are bad for the environment?  ie., cars, flying, eating meat, for example.  If you don’t agree with bans or restrictions, what do you think we should do?
• What do you think of protestors who block roads, or disrupt sports events?  Should they be protesting in another way?
• Have you made any changes in your life personally to cut your carbon footprint?  Would you like to make other changes?
• Do you think everyone’s affected equally by the climate crisis?  
• What’s your nearest green space – why do you like it?
• Do you think richer nations in the northern countries should pay to help poorer countries suffering from climate disasters in the south?
• Some people think that rivers and trees should be given rights.  Do you think they should?
• A soap company, Faith In Nature, has given Nature a seat on the board of their company so that it will be considered in all the company’s decisions.  Do you think this is a good idea or is it impossible to do that?
• Emojis are such a big part of conversations nowadays that we need lots more for climate conversations (there are no emojis for the words community, farming, carbon etc).  What emojis would you introduce?

Food

• Think about your last meal.  Can you explore how that food came to be on your plate, and just how many people were involved (and where!) to get it there?
• Do you take the climate into account in your diet?
• If you are vegan can you share any great ideas for people who are trying to cut down on meat?
• Do you grow any of your own food?

Energy

• How is your home heated? How do you cut down on energy use?
• Do you have any solar panels?  Was it easy to get them installed?  Do you sell any of your energy back to the grid?
• Do you have a heat pump?  Was it very expensive?
• Is your home insulated?  Do you know how to insulate your home if not?

Water

• Do you try to conserve water?  How do you do it?
• Do you have a waterbutt in your garden? Would you like to have one?
• Do any of you know what grey water is?  Do any of you recycle it?  What do you think about the idea of doing that? (Greywater is gently-used water from your bathroom sinks, showers, tubs, and washing machines. It is not water that has come into contact with feces, either from the toilet or from washing nappies. Greywater may contain traces of dirt, food, grease, hair, and certain household cleaning products. While greywater may look “dirty,” it is a safe and even beneficial source of irrigation water in a yard. Keep in mind that if greywater is released into rivers, lakes, or estuaries, its nutrients become pollutants, but to plants, they are valuable fertilizer. Aside from the obvious benefits of saving water (and money on your water bill), reusing your greywater keeps it out of the sewer or septic system, thereby reducing the chance that it will pollute local water bodies. Reusing greywater for irrigation reconnects urban residents and our backyard gardens to the natural water cycle.

Nature

• When do you feel at your closest to Nature?
• Where is your favourite place on earth?
• How do you think animals are being affected by climate disasters?
• Does the loss of so many animal species worry you?
• Have you noticed a change in insect numbers where you live, or in your house?
• Have you noticed a change in the number of birds near you? 
• Do you think most people feel apart from nature, or a part of it? How do you feel?

Fashion/clothes

• Do you ever think about the climate when you buy clothes?
• Have you changed the way you buy clothes?
• Do you ever mend your clothes?
• Can you recommend any good places to buy second hand clothes?

Animals

• The heart of a shrimp is located in its head.
• A snail can sleep for three years.
• The fingerprints of a koala are so indistinguishable from humans that they have on occasion been confused at a crime scene.
• Slugs have four noses.
• Elephants are the only animals that can’t jump.
• A rhinoceros horn is made of hair.
• It is possible to hypnotise a frog by placing it on its back and gently stroking its stomach.
• It takes a sloth two weeks to digest its food.
• Nearly 3 percent of the ice in Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine.
• A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
• Bats always turn left when leaving a cave.
• Giraffes have no vocal chords.
• Kangaroos can’t fart.
• An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.
• Around 50 percent of orangutans have fractured bones, due to falling out of trees on a regular basis.
• Frogs cannot vomit. If one absolutely has to, then it will vomit its entire stomach.
• Fleas can jump 350 times their body length.
• Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backwards.
• Crocodiles cannot stick their tongue out.
• Starfish do not have a brain.
• Only female mosquitoes bite.
• Polar bear skin is black.
• The only mammal capable of flight is the bat.
• A newborn kangaroo is the size of a lima bean.

Plants (Source – Greenpeace)

• Plants can count

Carnivorous plants like sundews and pitcher plants are fascinating as they are, and the way they trap and consume insects has fuelled science fiction stories about killer plants. But Venus flytraps can actually count.

Their lack of brain or central nervous system hasn’t prevented these plants from developing an ingenious way to conserve energy when waiting for a meal. The trap is triggered when an insect brushes against the exposed hairs, but the plant will wait until this has happened twice. Just once might be a false alarm.

So how do Venus flytraps count? Each time a hair is triggered, it generates a wave of calcium through the trap but one wave isn’t enough to close it. If a second wave is triggered within a few seconds, then the trap will close; if not, then calcium levels return to normal until a hair is brushed again. Mind blowing.

• Plants can hunt

Venus flytraps catch insects by lying in wait, but some carnivorous plants go in search of their food. The bladderwort hunts among small pools of water that collect at the base of other plants.

These pools are colonised by tiny aquatic creatures and once it finds a pool, the bladderwort starts producing traps. When an animal brushes against the bladder trap, it’s sucked in and consumed. Once it’s eaten its fill, the bladderwort can send out a tendril to search for another plant pool.

• Plants can fight

Plants compete for sunlight, because being shaded out by your rivals means getting less energy from the sun. But some go to extreme measures to get their share – they fight for it. Giant water lilies are fearsome plants. As they emerge, this Amazonian plant wields its spiked leaf buds like a club to clear away other plants from the water’s surface.  Eventually, its huge, circular leaves dominate the water. Each measures about 2m across and is covered in hefty spikes, which shove or crush their way through any other plants in their way. Just watch how they move.

• Plants can smell

Plants might not have noses, but they certainly use airborne chemicals to detect what’s around them.

Dodder is a parasitic plant which attaches itself to other plants, getting its nutrients by sucking on their sap. But rather than growing aimlessly in the hope of finding something tasty, it can ‘smell’ other plants. Dodder can not only detect its preferred food, choosing tomatoes over wheat, but it can sense which plants are healthier and so able to provide better sustenance.

• Plants can talk

Plants don’t just use wafting aromas to seek out food, they also use them to communicate.

When leaves are being munched by caterpillars or other insects, many plants will mount a defence, such as producing noxious chemicals which deter their attackers. But other plants nearby will also trigger their defences, even if they aren’t currently being eaten. Studies have shown that plants send out chemical signals to warn others that insects are on the way.

Plants talk underground as well. Thanks to relationships with symbiotic fungi, the roots of many trees are connected together in a vast system – a mycorrhizal network, or the ‘wood wide web’ as it’s been dubbed. Signals pass between trees via the fungal threads, allowing them to communicate and share resources. All this suggests trees can even cooperate with one another, which once again challenges our notion of plants being stationary and silent.