Accurate teaching needed Nicolas Loran/Getty

Are US schools doing a good job teaching climate change? That’s a crucial question, given that children now in classrooms will be the ones dealing with the serious impacts of a warming world as adults.

The answer, according to a report out today, is distressing. Based on a comprehensive survey of science teachers at middle and high schools across the US, the report’s authors find that we are failing students when it comes to both the quantity and quality of climate change education.

The report found teachers generally devote no more than 1 or 2 hours of time to cover the topic, far less than recommended by leading science educators. And despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is human-caused, many teachers continue to “teach the controversy”, suggesting that there is far less certainty or consensus about its existence and causes.


The authors offer several explanations for this sorry state of affairs. Only 4.4 per cent of teachers reported explicit pressure to downplay or ignore the subject. That is irrelevant, however, if many are self-censoring, fearing push-back from parents and others in their community who are active and vocal climate change deniers.

Consensus gap

More important may be the “consensus gap” – the mismatch between those who think the science isn’t settled and the reality that it is. While there is a 97 per cent consensus among experts that climate change is primarily human caused, seven in 10 teachers put the figure at less than 80 per cent.

As the authors note: “If a majority of science teachers believe that more than 20 per cent of climate scientists disagree that human activities are the primary cause, it is understandable that many would teach ‘both sides’ by conveying to students that there is legitimate scientific debate instead of deep consensus.”

Who is to blame? In one of my books, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, I describe how those with financial interests in fossil fuels have spent tens of millions of dollars over the past two decades to create the consensus gap, orchestrating a public relations campaign aimed at attacking the science and the scientists, and confusing the public about the reality and threat of climate change. They have also created today’s partisan political divide on the issue, most evident in the US, turning rank and file conservatives into the foot soldiers in the war on carbon regulation.

It would be nice if schoolteachers were immune to all this. Alas, it appears they are not.

Our educational system is a microcosm of wider society. If we are to restore objectivity to how we teach our children about topics like climate change, we must restore objectivity to our broader public discourse. Fortunately, there is a growing willingness among opinion leaders and US media to name and shame those acting in bad faith, like the billionaire Koch brothers, who fund groups intent on misleading the public.

Our children will bear the brunt of the climate crisis, battling coastal inundation, the damage done by more extreme weather, increasingly withering droughts and devastating floods. We owe it to them not only to give them the facts, but to help them begin to clean up the mess that we created.

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.aab3907