Just this month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere reached a record 419 parts per million. This alarming new milestone has alerted us to a reality of living in a world with an atmosphere not seen in four million years.
Back then, sea levels were 78 feet higher and the planet was 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average. The Earth played host to large mastodons and our early human ancestors would not emerge for another two million years in much cooler temperatures. For nearly all of our existence, humankind has not lived with anywhere near the levels of CO2 we’re encountering today. We are a living experiment and this is uncharted territory. What we do know is that the effects of climate change are already being felt, from intense hurricanes, flooding and heatwaves to unstoppable wildfires consuming all in their path.
Now more than ever, the efforts for nations to cut carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases must be intensified. This is also why climate literacy is so important.
The decades-long failure to provide quality and meaningful climate and environmental education and civic skills to students worldwide has undermined the effort to solve the climate crises and other critical environmental issues while hampering efforts to build a global green economy and to create the jobs of the future. It has also impeded efforts to teach citizens the civic skills that they need to fully participate in their national, state and local government decision-making process, undermining the rights of citizens to take action to protect themselves, their children and the health of the planet.
Climate education, with an emphasis on equity and inclusion at every level, will foster a new generation ready to tackle the existential climate crisis we face today. Combined with urgent policy shifts, climate and environmental literacy will create jobs, build a green consumer market and allow citizens to engage with their governments in a meaningful way to solve climate change.
At COP26, governments will meet to raise ambition under the UN’s Paris Climate Change Agreement. That stepped-up action must include climate and environmental literacy.
EARTHDAY.ORG believes every school in the world must have compulsory, assessed climate and environmental education with a strong civic engagement component.
In unity, Kathleen Rogers
President
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