Climate change is a highly contentious issue in North America and has been for quite some time. The effects of fossil fuel burning, fracking, and other industrial acts remained unknown until recent decades, meaning education around climate change is still uncertain. The widespread dissemination of political and environmental misinformation that has characterized the last few years on social media only exacerbates the issue, and we still don’t know what kind of long-term consequences this miseducation may carry for our planet. However, considering the polarization on climate change, the varying levels of involvement it has in school curriculums across the continent, and the tactics that corporations have used to manipulate knowledge on environmental justice, one thing is clear: accurate climate education that stresses the urgency of our situation is vital for the survival of Earth, and it has to start in school. The question is how we make that happen.

One of the biggest reasons that climate miseducation is so rampant in schools is that it has only recently become an important issue—while many people are aware that it should be taught, there are few plans in place as to how best to incorporate it into the curriculum. That lack of educational oversight from government officials and school districts means that students are left to learn about it themselves, either from teachers who may not be equipped to teach about it or from other adult figures in their lives whose knowledge about climate issues could be skewed by political views and online misinformation. Not only do students need to know about the climate emergency, but they also need the skill set to recognize misinformation when they see it—and that involves data and media literacy, competencies that are undervalued in school funding and tend to go overlooked despite their widespread applicability.

Furthermore, corporate control by fossil fuel companies is a major contributor to this lack of informed education. Oil and gas companies have reason to dissuade young people from learning about human environmental harm. If students know how detrimental a small percentage of the world’s population is to the planet, the companies will see profits decrease, lose out on potential labour when those people enter the workforce, and face backlash for their non-environmental policies. Katie Worth described the efforts of corporations to take control of climate curriculum, saying that many companies send spokespeople to schools to speak about their actions and minimize the impact of climate change on the environment. Corporations take advantage of the underfunding of schools and the cutting of resources to help equip teachers for their jobs—educators are more willing to accept questionable curricular material sent to them by fossil fuel companies if they already lack the time and ability to look for other sources of information. As one teacher told Worth, “if somebody sends me or if I run across something that looks professionally done, some lesson plan or curricula that have already created for me and it looks good and it looks like the kids will be into it, maybe I use it.”

Of course, there are motivations for discouraging accurate climate information on the part of legislators—those in charge of setting standards for education and funding school districts—and fossil fuel companies. While incredibly harmful to the environment, practices like fracking and other forms of oil extraction are lucrative and contribute to the workforce. According to the American Prospect, in 2019 one out of four members of the United States Senate owned stocks in fossil fuel companies, with Republican shareholders outnumbering Democrats two to one. These competing financial interests make it obvious why legislators would discourage the dissemination of climate education in schools: the more aware the general public becomes about climate issues, the more difficult it is for fossil fuel companies to fly under the radar and continue turning large profits through practices that are not only detrimental to the environmental but often also harmful to workers. It’s easy to understand why politicians, not only in the United States but across the world, are hesitant to propose larger-scale legislation addressing climate misinformation and miseducation when they may not be around to see the future consequences.

These issues work in tandem—misinformation in classrooms and at home fuels, the climate denial is often seen in the news. As a writer from the Climate Change Project states, “The way language is used to misrepresent and underplay the urgency of the climate crisis has considerably limited, if not altogether halted, our progress. The bulk of the media’s climate focus is squandered on human interest pieces flaunting politicized and irrelevant narratives with little to no educational value. Climate science is barely covered and on the rare occasions it does feature in a news interview, heavily diluted.”

The short-term impacts of climate misinformation are obvious. When a large volume of people are receiving inaccurate education about the current climate crisis and our ability to change human habits to reverse those negative effects, it stops groups from mobilizing against climate change and the natural disasters that occur as a result. They are also unaware of the massive harm that fossil fuel companies exact on the environment, and therefore make it more difficult to stop government and consumer funding from continuing to flow into the pockets of said companies, indirectly endorsing their actions without complaining about their practices. The long-term effects of climate misinformation are much more chilling, especially when considering that climate education is not a standard in school classrooms today. As students grow up without accurate knowledge of the climate emergency, their political power to change the status quo diminishes. In the future, they will vote simply on issues that have informed political campaigns in past decades: taxes, immigration policy, healthcare, and other topics, treating environmentally-conscious acts as nothing more than an offhand campaign promise or nonessential altogether, rather than what they should be: a core tenet of political platforms going forward, internationally.

Ultimately, the large-scale misinformation and miseducation campaigns around climate change and environmental issues are hard to combat. But there are still some steps we can take individually to be more conscious of their effects and to minimize the impact they can have in our communities. First of all, meeting with an education coordinator at your school to discuss incorporating more environmentally-aware initiatives into the curriculum is a worthwhile use of your time. You can also set up a meeting with your member of Parliament, MLA, or a city council member that you know has experience with climate change initiatives, as they may be able to draft or support legislation that places stricter limits on what repercussions media outlets may face for willfully spreading misinformation, as an example. You may want to speak directly to a school teacher or look into your school district if you attend a public school and contact the district supervisor. They may be able to tell you more about the resources that are going towards climate education and whether they have plans to implement it in the future.

Works Cited

Climate Education, https://www.noaa.gov/climate-education.

Climate Miseducation, Dec 10, 2021, https://www.climateone.org/audio/climate-miseducation.

Education is key to addressing climate change, https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/climate-solutions/education-key-addressing-climate-change.

How the Fossil Fuels Industry Harms Its Workers, https://www.limitlessenergy.org/blog/how-the-fossil-fuels-industry-harms-its-workers/.

Kotch, Alex. Members of Congress Own Up to $93 Million in Fossil Fuel Stocks, Jan 10, 2020, https://prospect.org/power/members-of-congress-own-up-to-93-million-in-fossil-fuel-stocks/.

Maston, Pamela, et al. Climate Change Education, https://earth.stanford.edu/climate-change-ed.

“The Miseducation of the Climate Crisis Generation.” The Climate Change Project, 2020, https://www.theclimatechangeproject.today/single-post/2020/04/24/The-Miseducation-of-the-Climate-Crisis-Generation.

Oh, Paul. Climate Change Miseducation Exposed in Miseducation, Dec 15, 2021, https://ncse.ngo/climate-change-miseducation-exposed-miseducation.

Strategy, https://citizensclimateeducation.org/solutions/.

Worth, Katie. How Climate Change Is Taught in America. Columbia University, 2021.

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