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Student and writing residency applicant Elsa Fredericks writes about the change she would like to see in climate change education

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/2171598491

Elsa Fredericks was a recent applicant of Salzburg Global’s writing residency program. We are now excited to publish her piece, as it is closely aligned with two of our key priority areas for the organization’s education work, regenerative education and education for inclusive futures. 

At the recent United Nations COP28 Climate Conference, UNESCO announced its Declaration on the Common Agenda for Education and Climate Change. Shortly after, I opened my phone to see two young protesters throwing soup at the Mona Lisa on behalf of “sustainable food”, two years after another young climate protester threw cake at her while calling out, “think of the Earth”. Unfortunately, presenting climate change as an apocalyptic threat to the world has too often generated only symbolic action while discouraging more constructive action by the world’s youth. Current climate education can demotivate young people by diffusing their feeling of responsibility in the face of such an enormous challenge. Only a more positive educational message reflecting the recent inspiring technological progress and honoring regional/cultural differences can motivate youth around the world.

Education policymakers must understand that the tactics of both those opposing and those supporting action on climate change have fundamentally changed. A study titled “Climate Confusion Among U.S. Teachers'' revealed that as recently as 2015, only two-thirds of U.S. teachers personally believed global warming is primarily caused by humans. Widespread climate denialism led activists and many experts to present worst-case scenarios to scare people into awareness. But now awareness has spread and climate denialism has been largely replaced by economic arguments against the funding of technology development. Recently, The Economist described an “anti-climate backlash”, while a Wall Street Journal op-ed claimed that climate change policies could divert $3 trillion from fighting poverty. On the other side, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger argues that the old environmentalism of reflexively opposing development must be replaced by a “new environmentalism” supportive of aggressively building a clean energy future. Bill Gates has also argued against previous worst-case scenarios, allowing that emissions will peak while arguing for new technologies and a carbon tax.

Given this changed backdrop, the first step in any successful climate education strategy must be a positive message demonstrating the valuable contribution of concrete individual action. A study of a U.S. college course on climate change that focused on ownership and empowerment found a significant and ongoing improvement of the students’ carbon footprint five years later. Researchers found that if students in all middle- and high-income countries were educated with this focus, emissions could be reduced by 18.8 gigatons by 2050. Achieving such a result of course requires tailoring education to individual countries, for example by leveraging the country climate change profiles of the World Bank and USAID. A powerful incentive for young people is seeing their own positive change clearly backed by statistics, through, for example, the simple change to a more plant-based diet. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a single cow produces annually about 200 pounds of methane, while the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization calculates livestock account for 14.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Youth that feel empowered to individual action will also be more supportive of their countries’ required collective action. They will more readily understand that it is short-term thinking to view spending on climate action as unwarranted or excessive when economists forecast that climate change could shrink global GDP by up to 18% in the longer-term. If the increased tech-literacy of young people and their inherent interest in new technology are leveraged, it is very plausible that they will be inspired to actively support investments in new technologies. The best educational approach is to integrate examples from environmental science across subjects even broader than the U.S. Next Generation Science Standards, instead of creating separate classes solely focused on environmental topics. Institutions such as Stanford’s new Doerr School of Sustainability are actively creating a curriculum to be made available globally, which should treat new technologies as inspirational.

In short, governments should view climate change education as an integral part of their broader tech diplomacy. Until recently, only about 25% of countries even mentioned education in their national climate action plans. But now, 28 countries are already signatories in the new UNESCO COP28 declaration to “adapt, mitigate, and invest” in education and climate change. It will be critical for a positive message to both empower concrete individual action and inspire support for emerging technologies, while tailoring education to cultural, developmental, and regional differences. 

Elsa Fredericks is U.S./Austrian/German citizen currently studying at Redwood High School in the San Francisco Bay Area while researching climate change education and tech diplomacy.