Climate Discussions In School Textbooks? Why, Yes - 4 Paragraphs On Page 728

[hatrack]

Maybe you've heard. We are facing a climate crisis that threatens life on our planet. Climate scientists are unequivocal: We are changing the world in deep, measurable, dangerous ways -- and the pace of this change will accelerate dramatically in the decades to come. Then again, if you've been a middle school or high school student recently, you may not know this.

That's because the gap between our climate emergency and the attention paid to climate change in the school curriculum is immense. Individual teachers around the country are doing outstanding work, but the educational establishment is not. Look at our textbooks. The widely used Pearson/Prentice Hall text, Physical Science: Concepts in Action, waits until page 782 to tell high school students about climate change, but then only in four oh-by-the-way paragraphs. A photo of a bustling city includes the caption: "Carbon dioxide emissions from motor vehicles, power plants, and other sources may contribute to global warming." Or they may not, the book seems to suggest.

IAT's Coordinated Science: Physical, Earth and Space Science devotes several pages late in the book to climate change, and concludes with this doubt-soaked passage:

Some people take the position that the increase in carbon dioxide should be reversed. They believe this is necessary even though the size of the contribution to global warming is not certain. It is their belief that the consequences would be very difficult to handle. Other people take a different position. They consider that it would be unwise to disrupt the world's present economy. They consider the future danger to be questionable. The big problem is that no one is certain that rapid global warming will take place. If it does, it may be too late to do anything about it!


The danger of climate change as "questionable"? ExxonMobil itself could not have produced a more skeptical approach.

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-04-18/changing-climate-our-schools

[caraher]

1. That may be worse than just ignoring the issue

Imagine a comparable passage on evolution...

[Nihil]

2. Sad, very sad.

> Some people take the position that the increase in carbon dioxide should be reversed.
> They believe this is necessary even though the size of the contribution to global warming
> is not certain. It is their belief that the consequences would be very difficult to handle.
> Other people take a different position. They consider that it would be unwise to disrupt
> the world's present economy.

Nice way to reinforce not just "Greed is Good" but "Short-term profit outweighs everything else".

Precautionary principle RIP.

[caraher]

3. it's almost a "precautionary principle" for business as usual

I was chatting with an economist who expressed, quite sincerely, this sort of view. For him, the present economic system as he understands it is a very real, precious (and fragile?) think we need to be very careful not to disrupt unnecessarily, in almost the same way most of us view the actual physical environment. I think economic systems come and go and can be changed according to our ingenuity (though not easily!) while the laws of nature are immutable and non-negotiable, but can see how in the eyes of some the economic and political circumstances of the day might feel every bit as "real."