We need to support climate change education because it works!
And we need a lot more of it
A beaver pond in Central New York. Photograph by Jonathan R. Hendricks.
Dr. Don Haas, Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, New York 14850
Last updated September 8, 2022.
Anyone who is concerned about climate change is concerned because, somewhere along the line, they have learned about dangerous consequences of a warming globe. A large and growing majority of Americans are concerned about climate change. If that majority is rightly concerned, then we know that climate change education works for at least some of the people some of the time. This is a call to support climate education. To make the case for that support, we’ll answer four questions about climate education:
What are the most important outcomes of effective climate change and energy education?
How do we know climate education works?
What are some key characteristics of effective climate and energy education?
How can you support climate and energy education?
We need climate change education because we - society and ecosystems across the globe - are in peril. While we are already too late to avert a great deal of suffering and death, we can and must work for a better future. See the essay, It’s too late. Let’s get to work anyway for a deeper dive into those ideas.
What are the most important outcomes of effective climate and energy education?
At the most basic level, everyone should understand that:
It’s assumed that readers of this essay both accept these three propositions and hope to see them more broadly accepted. Further, building understanding for understanding’s sake is not enough. Effective climate and energy education actively engages learners in working to make things less bad. It is education that is essential for meeting civic responsibilities. If we could somehow nurture broad acceptance of those three basic ideas, we’d be in much better shape.
Going a little deeper, it is fair to say that understanding climate and climate change requires not only knowledge of the physical processes at work in the climate system, but also understanding of how energy production and use influences both the climate and society. Energy education is effectively inseparable from education about climate change. Pundit Chris Hayes noted that talking about climate change without talking about energy is like talking about lung cancer without talking about smoking.
The biggest open questions about future climate change are grounded in how human behavior will change, most substantially around how we make and use energy. So, truly successful climate and energy education also addresses how people, individually and collectively, make decisions. This includes, but is not limited to, understanding media literacy, cognitive biases, and environmental justice issues.
It is also essential to understand that all large-scale energy production is bad for the environment. The only truly environmentally friendly energy sources are the ones we don’t use. Reducing energy use is among the most important changes we can make to protect the environment. This goes beyond doing things we do now more efficiently or with more efficient technologies. It involves changing the nature of systems of transportation, industry, housing, and commerce. We need to, for example, not merely work to make cars more efficient, but make a transportation system more efficient than cars. We need to move from doing what we know how to do to doing what needs to be done (Fullan, 1991).
Scientific understanding of climate change, energy systems, and the associated social science grows daily, and it is simply impossible for anyone to be knowledgeable about all of it. Basic understanding of climate and energy systems is a reasonable achievable goal, and, when coupled with the ability to assess the credibility of new information, is enough to meet civic responsibilities. Meeting those responsibilities includes making decisions and taking actions related to individual and collective resource use, and especially energy use.
How do we know climate education works?
We define climate education broadly. It includes the obvious formal education that takes place in classrooms, following a curriculum, and the informal that happens, well, everywhere else. That includes places like our (PRI’s) own Museum of the Earth and Cayuga Nature Center, and many more museums, nature centers, zoos and aquaria, and so much more. Journalism and movies like Don’t Look Up, educational television, and conversations over dinner. PRI has resources that either fit into or support all of those different kinds of education.
While we can point to the obvious evidence that everyone who understands something about climate change must have become educated somehow as evidence that climate education works, we can also point to scholarly research to provide the kind of evidence academics (like myself) seek. That can help us understand the characteristics of programs and resources most likely to make a positive difference in what people understand. Of course, some approaches work better than others, and some approaches that are effective for one audience are not effective for another.
Immersive long-term coherent programming has demonstrably lowered learners’ carbon emissions long after completing that programming (Cordero et al., 2020). We know too that young people can be effective educators of adults, particularly their parents, and daughters are especially effective at educating their fathers (Lawson et al., 2019). Youth involved in climate action report that it improves their mental health, and it can also save their school districts money by reducing energy costs (Bandura & Cherry, 2020; Cherry, n.d.).
The title of the recent research article, “Information about the human causes of global warming influences causal attribution, concern, and policy support related to global warming” (Bergquist et al., 2022) gives away its most important result. It also notes that the increase in attribution is greater among Republicans than Democrats and that there were no backlash effects among Republicans.
The percentage of Americans alarmed about climate change has grown in recent years. See more on Climate Change in the American Mind here.
Perhaps the most important evidence that climate change education works is the fact that Americans’ concerns about climate change are growing, with 33% identified as alarmed in the most recent (2021) Climate Change in the American Mind Survey. The alarmed category has grown the most rapidly among the six groups, while the Cautious, Doubtful, and Dismissive have been shrinking in recent years (“Global Warming’s Six Americas,” n.d.). Some of the education, the increase in concern, is likely due to predictions of climate science routinely coming true. Mother Nature is a teacher too. And journalists having gotten better about connecting extreme weather events to climate change is further evidence of education working.
Concern about climate change is growing, but, given the urgency of the climate emergency, it needs to grow faster, and that concern needs to be connected to action.
What are some key characteristics of effective climate and energy education?
Deep understanding of climate and energy systems and how those systems influence society and the environment comes from reading, listening, conversing, and engaging in the problem. It is always built upon the work of others. It always comes from education, whether that education is in a classroom or a museum, from reading, or from watching videos. Those with deep understandings likely engage in all of those forms of education, and all of those forms of education deserve support.
Of course, some approaches are more effective than others and vary in effectiveness depending on the audience.
Some rules of thumb with examples and links to related resources:
The most important thing people can do about climate change right now is talk about it. Most people aren’t having meaningful conversations about climate change. Talking to politicians and leaders of industry is especially important. Young people can be particularly effective communicators with their families and, daughters appeared to be especially effective in influencing parents (Lawson et al., 2019). Bob Inglis’s story of conversion from climate-denying congressman to climate activist gives reason for hope.
Evidence matters, but evidence alone is not sufficient to build meaningful understanding for most learners in most situations. The state of political discourse in the United States today demonstrates that clear evidence is insufficient to produce understandings of climate change, vaccine efficacy, election results, or even whether or not the Earth is round. Wherever you stand on these example issues, the state of polarization around them shows that we do not have broad agreement on what counts as evidence. Helping learners discern who is trustworthy is part of effective education (Dutilh Novaes & Ivani, 2022).
Tell relevant and engaging stories to illuminate your data and make it memorable. Extreme weather events provide ample sources for stories to raise concern. Rapid changes to our energy system that reduce carbon emissions like Cornell’s Deep Geothermal Heat Project that may reduce the Ithaca campus’s carbon emissions by 40% and the incredibly rapid transition away from coal in the US electric grid are two encouraging stories. Data stories can be made engaging with the use of props and good attention to scale. A gallon of gasoline is 87% carbon by weight, meaning a six pound gallon of gas has 5.5 pounds of carbon. That’s about the same amount of carbon as in a standard 8 foot 2x4.
Effective and honest climate education will scare learners, but if fright is the only emotion evoked, we’ve missed the mark. Provide (or at least describe) opportunities for learners to work on solutions. Climate anxiety is a real, serious, and growing concern (Hickman et al., 2021), but it is not alleviated by pretending that the climate emergency is not a climate emergency. Providing honest information about climate change and providing opportunities to work on solutions reduces climate anxiety and other associated negative emotions. See resources in the agenda for Climate Emotions Matter, a workshop we hosted in collaboration with the Climate Mental Health Network. A recording of that session is here.
Know and respect your audience. Noting that decreasing reliance on oil and gas is an issue of national security and that the skills of oil and gas drillers are directly applicable to drilling for deep geothermal resources is likely to strike a chord with most anyone, but economic and national security arguments do resonate more with conservative audiences. Insulting an audience is extremely unlikely to persuade members of that audience, yet it is fairly commonplace. Be curious about rather than dismissive of what people believe about climate and energy, and engage in discussions rather than debates.
Remember that people do actually change their minds (and persist). While the majority of Americans accept the basics of climate change, many in leadership positions do not. While beliefs are often stubborn, they do change. The rapid societal shift related to the acceptance of gay marriage is an object lesson. While beliefs may seem to sometimes change quickly, that rapid change often represents a tipping point that came after years of discussion and engagement with an issue.
Nurture action. Action can precede understanding, run in parallel with the building of understanding, or follow the development of understanding. Engaging in Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences (MWEEs) actions while learning about human impacts within ecosystems is at the core of NOAA’s B-Wet grant program. Many projects in the program focus on climate change, and PRI and Prince George’s County Public Schools have just been awarded a grant in the program. Students and teachers in the program will not only learn about the essential roles that trees play in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed and in their communities, they will also share what they learn with community members and engage in activities described by the county’s climate action plan.
See also “Rules of thumb for teaching controversial issues,” in Chapter 10 Obstacles to Addressing Climate Change of The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change. For a deep dive into the research on how people change their minds, see How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion (McRaney, 2022).
A gallon of gasoline weighs about six pounds. The overwhelming majority of that mass - about 5.5 pounds is the carbon in the gasoline. Graphite is pure carbon. The three 2” x 2” x 6” blocks of graphite shown here together weigh 5.5 pounds. The quarter is included to show scale.
Wood is about half carbon by weight. An eight foot 2x4 weighs about 11 pounds meaning that it has about the same amount of carbon in it as a gallon of gasoline. If you want to remove the carbon from the atmosphere that is added by burning gasoline, you need to grow the equivalent of a standard 2x4, and it cannot be allowed to burn or decay.
How can you support climate and energy education?
For starters, engage in it yourself. Recognize that, no matter what your occupation, you can and should be a climate educator. The single most important thing we can do about climate change right now is talk about it. That’s because most people only rarely talk about it, and when we do talk about it, we are more likely to talk with people who agree with us. A substantial majority of Americans support substantial climate action, but a substantial majority of us don’t know that most of our fellow Americans support such action (Sparkman et al., 2022). The scope of the changes we need to make requires involvement and buy-in from a solid majority of us, and to get there, we need to talk about it. We need to educate one another.
PRI not only provides effective resources and programs to help people better understand climate change and energy, we help other institutions and individuals do the same. New research is constantly improving the state of the art in climate and energy education. PRI employs best practices for effective climate education in our work at the Museum of the Earth, the Cayuga Nature Center, on our associated websites, and, perhaps most importantly, in the work we do with educators so that they too can lead the most effective climate education possible. We also define “educator” quite broadly. Everyone can and should be a climate educator. You are a climate educator, and PRI’s Climate Change & Energy Education Resources can support you in your work. Of course, we welcome your support in return.
We need climate action and we need it immediately. In order for action to scale up quickly, we need to scale up climate and energy education pronto! Whether you are a student, a cashier, construction worker, teacher, researcher, retiree, registered nurse, retail sales associate, or attorney, you can engage in climate education today, and you can support PRI’s work in climate energy education by sharing our resources and by giving to support our efforts.
Related Resources From PRI:
Climate Change & Energy Education - the homepage for PRI’s climate and energy resources