Before high school, I didn’t understand the full impacts of climate change. Then, I took AP Environmental Science, which made the environmental crisis hard to dismiss. The class made me take notice of the nitrogen oxides emitted from car exhaust, the light pollution glowing from downtown San Diego, and the smog enveloping me during my trips into L.A. I began looking into pro-renewable energy policies and other solutions that we touched on in class, and I felt more aware of the consequences and solutions than I’d ever been before. I realized how necessary climate change education is; it’s not optional. The subject is essential to build a future generation that will effectively combat the climate crisis.
When surveying teenagers 13-18 years old about climate change attitudes and education in 2020, George Mason University found that 78% of students had heard their science teachers talk about climate change in some cases, but the students’ understanding of it was shaky. Only 23% could identify climate change as causing ocean acidification, which is the decrease of ocean pH due to the absorption of higher levels of CO2 each year. When asked if industrial activities reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, only 36% of surveyed students answered false. These results show that while it may be mentioned in classrooms, climate change isn’t taught to the extent needed to understand the causes and consequences of it. It calls attention to how exposure to climate change doesn’t always lead to a true grasp of the concept, which is why schools should implement more specific curricula about environmental science, not just mentions about the subject.
Additionally, in July, the U.S. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed rescinding the 2009 Endangerment Finding. Endangerment Finding’s entire purpose is to research 6 air pollutants that are a danger to public health and the climate, which lets the EPA regulate and monitor the emissions of these pollutants. Without this finding, the U.S. loses its basis for regulations on GHGs, which weakens climate policies and will eventually ramp up the effects of climate change.
There’s a concerted effort on the part of this administration and current EPA to undermine the work of environmental scientists and undo climate protections from years before. It’s more important than ever that schools introduce more climate education and environmental science. The increase in climate literacy will determine that teenagers learn the truth about our impacts on the Earth.
Additionally, climate misinformation continues to spread online, making it harder to know what to trust. According to a 2021 study in Frontiers in Communication that analyzed climate-related tweets, the most shared posts were ones that denied that global warming is human-caused, showing how these false claims travel quickly on social media. This is especially worrying, as a survey from the American Press Institute found that 93% of Gen Z use social media as a news source. Fake news can influence uninformed students’ perceptions of climate change and overshadow true information. Schools must teach true information online to combat the online misinformation.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Earth has reached record high temperatures every year for the past 10 years. We can already see the effects of rapid climate change in our world today, with rising sea levels and stronger hurricanes. This generation of students are our future policy makers, engineers, educators and scientists. If they continue to be misinformed, they may enter the workforce and future conversations about climate change unprepared to make informed decisions.
Schools must encourage more specific discussions and lessons about climate change through mandatory courses. Already, the National Science Teaching Association has stated that science educators should be supported in their efforts to expand climate change education. They’ve also offered climate change focused lesson plans for teachers to incorporate into classrooms to truly educate students at every grade level. Investing in climate change education gives our generation the scientific literacy to engage in important discussions about the environment that will determine our future health, economy, and most importantly, our environment.
