Can Education Combat Global Warming?

How can we best position ourselves for managing the unpredictable challenges we face from Climate Change and learn to address them properly? A critical component for preparedness is education. In the absence of adequate scientific literacy across our society we will be without the necessary knowledge base that we will need to act swiftly in policy and innovation. We must raise the bar on our expectations of how our society as a whole will participate in finding solutions and mapping strategies for dealing with climate change. Climate change is a global concern but action must not wait for international policy to be agreed upon. A bold and visionary proposal should be enacted in the United States immediately. A mandate to include climate change science in the curricula of K-12 education is compulsory for preparing our future citizens to manifest solutions and coping strategies.

Education has played an integral role in our country’s history. Often our nation has looked to education as a means to addressing our most pressing challenges. In the early 20th century the High School movement was effective in growing the attendance of secondary education, creating a more productive society and gaining an edge on our European competitors. In response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the first example of Federal education legislation was passed, called the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). This led to the advancement of science, mathematics, and foreign language in K-12 schooling. Also, in the 1960s and 1970s education was the battleground for anti-poverty and civil rights laws. It was in the schools of the South where we fought for equal access and for an end to segregation and discrimination. Now we face a new challenge. We must prepare our citizens for a long and arduous fight to combat global climate change. Our education system is a tremendous and dynamic space to establish a robust foundation on confronting this issue.

A federal mandate to incorporate climate change into the curricula of K-12 public schooling will effectively encourage four main results that will provide impetus for properly addressing the realities of climate change. (1) Incorporating climate change science into our education system will vastly narrow the communication gaps afforded by scientific disconnects between the public and the scientific community. The public is only aware of human-induced climate change because of science. Therefore, the lead messengers have been predominantly scientists that speak in the tongue of scientific jargon. By exposing our children to this at an early age and progressively increasing the sophistication of lessons those disconnects will start to vanish and understanding will begin to take root. This deeper understanding will internalize for many citizens and they will be better equipped to demand policy change and participate in public debate in a more engaged fashion. (2) Climate change education will spark interest in the field. The early exposure will provide ample time and opportunity to become creatively involved in the subject. This infusion of enthusiastic students will foster creative problem solving and will advance the science in depth and breadth. In turn, this will increase the pool of possible experts, providing more opportunity for progress in such areas as computer modeling, designing coping strategies, and enhancing climate change metrics. 3) The broader knowledge base will perpetuate climate change considerations in every field and industry. Our children will take with them the fundamental knowledge of climate change into any career path they pursue as we do now with American history, social science, literature, and basic economics. This phenomenon will lead to cooperative and cross-disciplinary innovations and solutions. 4) Finally, because climate change science will have become woven into the fabric of our educational system it will have enduring applications. Climate change is a long-term challenge that demands consistent attentiveness. By implementing a lasting education strategy we will be committing the United States to take substantive action and guaranteeing that education will play a major role in combating climate change.

Climate Change education is not unprecedented. California is pending a bill (SB 908) to mandate that climate change science be included in the required minimum standards of the science curriculum.

The implementation of a federal climate change curriculum initiative has the dual appeal of far-reaching impact and high feasibility. We can obtain our four desired results as mentioned earlier with our current institutions and through our traditional channels of policy development. Education has historically been a cornerstone of American ingenuity and it will again rise to the challenge if called to duty.