The urgent need for comprehensive climate education is everywhere — starting in schools, to universities all the way to the workplace and government. Climate literacy is essential — not just for understanding the science behind climate change, but also for understanding its social and economic implications. But until this day, many key groups and nations remain underrepresented in climate education initiatives, resulting in large populations being inadequately informed about the issue. This is despite the United Nations stressing that education is an essential tool in addressing climate change, and the UNFCCC mandating its Parties to undertake educational campaigns and ensure public participation and access to climate change information.1
However, our educational systems often fail to incorporate climate topics — a gap that extends to both the corporate and governmental sectors. Even though there's a strong push for including climate education in schools, progress has been slow. Some states and institutions have taken the lead, but there's still a long way to go.
Sophia Kianni
Young People are the Future
Young people have changed the movement and the face of climate change. Not just that, but we've changed the world. In 2019, we had over six million people go out into the streets to strike for climate action. How can we continue this incredible momentum that has been brought about by young women like Greta Thunberg or Vanessa Nakate? How can we continue to make people understand just how urgent the situation we’re in is? How dramatically and immediately we need climate policies to be implemented?
That's where I decided to start Climate Cardinals, when I was a senior in high school. We are a youth-led climate education nonprofit that has now grown to over 10,000 student volunteers across 80 countries, with an average age of 16. We've been able to translate over a million words of climate resources into over a hundred languages, realizing that the people who are worst impacted by the climate crisis often lack the resources and opportunities to get involved due to a lack of material available in their native language.
Young people are the future of this movement. There's never been a time in history when a young person could go on the Internet and have hundreds of thousands, millions of people hear their concerns. Social media has been a game-changer in this conversation. But together with that, we need effective climate communication. We need people who can help to mobilize the masses. We also need intergenerational dialogue between young people and older generations, bridging that gap and learning from each other to present as a united front.
There has never been a better time to step up for Gen Z. Our generation is going to be disproportionately impacted by climate change, if action is not taken. We are already experiencing twice as many climate change-induced weather disasters as our grandparents, and it's continuing to get worse. 83% of Gen Z-ers are concerned about the planet's health, and eco-anxiety is on the rise.
We need to lead with the narrative of hope. We do have the solutions we need. What we're missing is political and corporate will and action. We need to utilize our collective power, our strength as marketers and as communicators, to get people to understand what we need is systems change. We need collective action so that we can build the better future that everyone, especially young people, deserve.
Climate literacy is a vital aspect of addressing climate change, yet there is an unequal distribution of engagement efforts worldwide. Citizens from poorer regions — which often disproportionately experience climate impacts — often express concern but lack in-depth knowledge. Educational attainment plays a key role in climate change awareness depending on the region, but to date most research has been concentrated in a select few nations like the UK, North America, and Australia. Public engagement initiatives are lacking in crucial countries like China, Russia and Turkey, despite their importance in achieving the 1.5 target.2
According to a 2022 survey, 45% of people say it is almost impossible to find climate change information they can easily understand. Climate change is not an official part of the curriculum in most public high schools, meaning that a lot of people have limited understanding of the science of how our planet works. This includes heads of corporations and government officials, who now must come up with ambitious policies for both climate and nature.3 Research shows that most registered voters think that schools should teach children about the causes, consequences and potential solutions to climate change — an agreement that spans across the political spectrum.4 Students tend to be more open to changing their opinions, making educational institutions ideal targets for climate engagement.5
Sweta Chakraborty, PhD
Driving Climate Literacy through Digital Technology:
It’s been made clear that communicating solutions is the key to mobilizing society to reach our climate goals. We Don’t Have Time is a tool to this end. It is the world’s largest social media platform for climate solutions. The We Don’t Have Time app incorporates behavioral science in every aspect of communication and outreach to support widespread behavioral outcomes that align to climate science.
The app connects companies, communities, scientists, policymakers, advocates, journalists — everyone who wants to solve the climate crisis. Through targeted, thoughtful content sharing, audiences receive climate solutions messaging that is not only relevant, but that resonates cognitively, allowing more predictable behavioral outcomes—i.e., proactive actions towards individual and local alignment to climate realities and solutions.
The app not only supports individual actions of more than 120,000 monthly active users from 160 countries, but its messaging also reaches 190 million viewers per month. The democratization of access to relevant climate information—climate impacts as well as avenues to safeguarding oneself, one’s family, community, and beyond—presented through different trusted spokespeople for different communities has been unjustly missing. Establishing a baseline avenue for communicating relevant climate information is a foundation for then sharing climate ideas and scaling evidence-based climate solutions to communities around the world.
Conversations start on the WDHT platform and continue to reverberate through social media. Viewers may consume WDHT content from Twitter, LinkedIn, Spotify or other social and traditional media outlets. Understanding where consumers view and act on content produced and/or amplified through We Don’t Have Time allows the app to target viewers based on data and consistently improve numbers of users and monthly reach.
We Don’t Have Time’s both for and non-profit partners are able to share ideas, solutions and call to actions through the app. The integration of behavioral science into the platform allows for the measurement of conversion from viewership to action. This measurable behavioral impact is critical to showcase the power of strategic, targeted communication as a change agent.
We Don’t Have Time reaches all actors aiming to align behavior and policy to the realities of the climate crisis. Reaching various publics and ideally mobilizing support for proactive, climate-forward policies can help policymakers see through the implementation of evidence-based legislation. Reversely, supporting the amplification of voices from historically marginalized populations like Indigenous peoples, women, and youth can also support the development of policies entrenched in just and equal outcomes for all global citizens.
It’s not just enough to educate children and young people about environmental issues — timing matters, too. In Beyond Ecophobia, environmental educator David Sobel emphasizes the importance of building a deep emotional connection between children and the natural world before introducing them to environmental problems and crises. Sobel argues that exposing young children to distressing global issues before they are ready can lead to fear, dissociation, and a sense of helplessness, rather than empowering them to make positive changes. He advocates for an educational approach that begins with nurturing an appreciation for local flora and fauna — allowing children to explore, play, and fall in love with the natural world. This bond lays a solid foundation for introducing more complex ecological concepts later in their education journey, equipping them to become active stewards of the world.6
Educational psychology research highlights the importance of fostering a sense of collective efficacy and engaging students in practical actions, internships with advocacy organizations and incorporating civic engagement exercises in the classroom. These can create opportunities for active participation, reinforcing students' confidence in their ability to enact change even in the face of complex problems. Despite the very real danger of the climate crisis, it's crucial to balance the "doom and gloom" narrative with optimism and active engagement.7
Scarlett Westbrook
Making Climate Education Law
In 2019, I joined hundreds of students across the world in organizing school climate strikes. In the UK, our protests had four central demands: save the future, teach the future, tell the future and empower the future. We received unprecedented support from the public and the politicians we lobbied of the second ask in particular - teach the future, a demand to reform the education system to incorporate climate education into every aspect of the education system so that the next generation of workers have all of the knowledge, skills and resources necessary to build a resilient, climate just society. Our education system isn’t preparing young people for the future we inherit despite that being its central purpose, through having essentially zero mention of climate.
Many will live to see the end of this century – and the full effects of climate inaction. But our education system is failing to prepare young people for this future. Whilst we’re told to list the benefits of climate change in geography lessons, we’re not once taught about the historical events and political systems that catalyzed the climate crisis, the social and economic repercussions that this catastrophe will induce, or what constitutes the possible solutions.
Consequently, we’re not equipped with the skills we need to live and work in a world increasingly impacted by the climate crisis and are denied information on the climate that isn’t confined to small sections in science GCSEs or optional subjects like horticulture and environmental science, which few institutions have the financial capacity to host.
This cannot continue. So, alongside some of my other climate striker friends, I set up Teach the Future - a student-led campaign to reform the education system through a parliamentary Bill, the Climate Education Bill. We need to ensure climate education is no longer exclusive to those who take optional subjects or briefly glazed over, but instead centered in all subjects. The climate crisis will affect everyone, whether they are a builder or a banker, a carer or a pharmacist.
This means that climate education must be intertwined into every subject in a way that is accessible to all. Climate education needs to be extended to include knowledge about how to stop and abate the climate emergency and ecological crisis, deliver climate justice and provide support for students to deal with eco and climate anxiety – something which climate education will also mitigate, as students will be empowered with the information needed to tackle the issue. We also need to be taught about and prepared to adapt to our changing world. The climate crisis is already here. Our education system needs to stop treating this disaster as a hypothetical future and instead ensure we are ready for what is an inevitable reality.
To achieve all of this, we must reform teacher training qualifications to prepare teachers to educate their students on the climate crisis and its interdependence with their subjects. Whether that’s introducing climate apprenticeships in the renewable energy sector, expanding vocational courses so that they cover sustainability, or changing academic content to give us a realistic idea of our world and subjects in their climate-impacted contexts.
By doing so, we can create thousands of green jobs and set a precedent for the rest of the world, while also saving the costs of tackling extreme climate breakdown further down the line. The government’s plans arguably depend on it. If the government is serious about getting to Net Zero, it needs the workforce to do it. For all the government’s talk about the importance of skills-based education, it is missing a trick by failing to train the next generation who will be essential to the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Our Climate Education Bill in the United Kingdom would implement all of this and more to ensure that we truly teach the future. This Bill has made me the youngest parliamentary policy writer in history, as it is the first time that a teenager has put forward a Bill; I was just 15 when we put forward our first draft. It was first tabled in 2021 but fell as the Parliamentary session finished before it could make its way through the necessary stages to become law, and is currently awaiting its second reading in Spring 2023 after being retabled this January.
Through Teach the Future, we are bringing youth climate strikers to the corridors of power, so MPs can come face to face with the next generation fighting to save our planet. Young people want to be part of the solution to the climate crisis. What we need are the skills and knowledge to do so. Our demands are simple: teach us the truth, prepare us for the future.
Recently, Connecticut and Rhode Island have become the first US states to introduce mandatory climate education.8 Over in Europe, Barcelona University is introducing a mandatory climate emergency module for all of its students after a number of sit-in protests.9 But we are moving too slow: given the substantial body of research showing how climate change affects young people’s wellbeing, alongside the urgent need to decarbonize, we are in need of nationalized education programs on climate science, climate change, climate impact, and climate justice – conveying a holistic view of the challenge we’re facing, as well as the solutions we need to tackle it.
In response to the challenge, a number of climate initiatives have been gaining momentum: The Carbon Literacy Project covers the essentials of climate change, carbon footprints, and individual responsibilities in a day’s worth of Carbon Literacy training, targeting diverse audiences from everyday citizens to professionals and students. Recognized at COP21 by the UN as one of the 100 global Transformative Action Programs, its impact is accompanied by a growing range of Carbon Literacy Toolkits — comprising off-the-shelf courses tailored to different sectors and audiences.10
Climate Fresk is another project which has proven impactful in making climate education more accessible. Initially launched in France, Climate Fresk’s activities now span over 40 countries. Its reach has been growing at a remarkable pace, doubling workshop participants every five months.11 These initiatives are paving the way towards a more climate-literate society — but they should be the norm, rather than the exception.
Chris Duncan
The use of advertising and PR to make products, companies and brands appear less damaging to the planet than they actually are has been with us for decades. But with the huge increase in consumer awareness of climate change, we’ve seen an explosion in greenwashing.
When it comes to making claims about green credentials, the way that language is used matters, or more specifically the way language is misused matters. Let’s take the way that some energy companies communicate about gas, as an example.
First of all, you’ll hear gas described as ‘the cleanest-burning’ fossil fuel. While gas may produce less CO2 than oil or coal when it is actually burnt, extracting, transporting and storing gas also leaks methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. In reality, the overall climate impact of gas can be worse than coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.
But putting methane aside, calling gas ‘the cleanest-burning’ fossil fuel or a ‘low-carbon’ fossil fuel is misleading. I’ve seen examples of energy companies claiming that 50% of its energy will be in the form of ‘low-carbon’ electricity, a fine thing. But if you dig really hard into the numbers, you’ll see that number includes ‘low-carbon’ electricity produced by… burning gas.
This is the same tactic used by the tobacco companies when they marketed cigarette brands as ‘low-tar’ or ‘light’, a practice now outlawed in the US and EU. Whatever the tar content, smoking cigarettes causes cancer. And whatever words you use to describe it, burning gas is driving climate change.
But it’s not just the marketing of fossil fuels where we see language used to misdirect. Companies across the world have made Net Zero pledges, which is a fantastic development. But when you read the language that goes alongside some of these claims, they can seem slightly less convincing. A favorite of the oil industry is to say that they will reach Net Zero but only “in step with society”. This is a huge caveat, particularly when you consider the same companies are often lobbying against the very measures needed to help society reach Net Zero.
There are phrases that you’ll see used time and again in advertising and product packaging, like: “carbon neutral”, “Net Zero” and “nature positive”. These claims are often made without any real substance to back them up or they over-rely on the use of offsets, which can often not deliver the emissions reductions that they promise. This practice has become so widespread that, in a promising move, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has indicated that it will clamp down on firms making these claims.
In the aviation industry, we’ve seen companies marketing ‘low CO2 flights’ or ‘sustainable aviation’. Neither of these claims stand up to any kind of scientific scrutiny and are misleading for consumers. But the impact isn’t just on individual consumers making choices about whether to buy one product over another. It’s much more insidious than that, language like ‘sustainable aviation’ or ‘natural gas’ reduces the sense of urgency needed to drive the transition to a carbon-free future.
I’m pleased that we’re now starting to see guidance for how language should be used, with developments like the ISO Net zero guidelines and the UN Integrity Matters report. And increasingly companies are being held to account in the courts for their greenwashing – it’s something we specialize in at ClientEarth. But as communicators, it is crucial that we closely interrogate the language that we use and don’t fall into repeating language and terminology that misleads and plays down the urgency of the challenge we’re facing.
The need for climate education is not just limited to the school system: Research by Kite Insights on employee attitudes towards climate change revealed an emergent workforce committed to climate action. A survey found that 80% of employees express a readiness to adopt climate-positive practices in their professional roles. A striking 67% of participants perceived climate change as a severe risk capable of adversely affecting them and their loved ones within their lifetime, underscoring the urgency behind these attitudes. However, a significant gap exists between willingness and ability, with less than 50% of participants feeling adequately equipped to effect tangible change in their workplaces.12
This data underscores the importance of climate literacy in the professional sphere, which is emerging as a critical factor in job satisfaction and employee retention. 70% of respondents associated acting on climate change at work with their personal sense of motivation and well-being. 15% have contemplated changing jobs in the past year to more directly engage in climate-related matters, a figure that rises to 20% among the most climate-conscious employees. Despite 55% of employees acknowledging their company’s crucial role in tackling the climate crisis, only 34% feel capable of articulating their company’s climate commitments, a percentage that decreases to a concerning 22% amongst junior employees. This suggests a pressing need for businesses, particularly those amongst the world's largest 2,000 publicly traded companies committed to net-zero, to prioritize internal climate education. By doing so, they can translate their climate commitments into meaningful action, bridging the knowledge gap and empowering their employees to drive a truly sustainable transformation.12
Anna McShane
Improving Climate Literacy in Business
Businesses largely want to be transparent with their customers and wider stakeholders about their sustainability efforts, but aren’t always equipped with the knowledge and tools to do so, often leading to misleading environmental claims. The level of scrutiny surrounding corporate green claims is on the rise and, as a result, we have seen an increase in clients asking for guidance to navigate their sustainability claims and avoid greenwashing accusations.
In response, we are increasing our output of material such as information-sharing webinars (most recently in partnership with the European Advertising Standards Agency (EASA) and the Competitions & Markets Authority (CMA), briefings and guidance documents, to reassure and guide clients. We work closely with them to shape their communications and share our principles upfront. These are focused on being factual, evidence-based, accountable, and making sure claims accurately reflect a company’s achievements.
Many of our corporate clients operate globally and often have questions about communicating across international borders, but the same principles of transparent communications apply. It’s also important to stay up to date with local regulations and legislations. Brands can reach out to their local self-regulatory organization (SRO) for advice.
It's also crucial to equip people with tools to envision the future, as our conventional ways of predicting the future are biased and limited. Improving our futures literacy can help us break free from these constraints, allowing us to better navigate the challenges that lie ahead. Futures literacy is the skill to understand and harness the human capacity to imagine the future. It helps us not only to expect what the future could hold, but also to understand how our own thoughts and feelings are influencing those expectations. Our conventional ways of envisioning the future – shaped by culture, norms and confirmation bias (see Human Psychology for Catalyzing Action) – often narrow our imagination and limit it to pre-determined paradigms. This is further reinforced by our brain’s present bias, hinders our comprehension of new concepts and exacerbates short-termism.13
Futures literacy can be shaped by encouraging individuals to shape their imaginations through critical thinking and storytelling approaches — supporting them to envision the future rather than adopting dominant societal narratives. Future literacy helps us become more aware of our own assumptions about the future, and turn uncertainty from a source of stress into a source of ideas and inspiration – helping us not just predict the future, but actively shape it.13
CASE STUDY
How Netflix is increasing 200 million subscribers’ climate literacy
Media and entertainment can be part of the solution in educating the public about climate change and promoting sustainability through its power to inspire. Companies like Netflix recognize the importance of sustainability and are taking steps towards reducing their own carbon footprint. But they don’t stop there: Through their curated Sustainability Stories, Netflix is promoting content that highlights climate issues and provides solutions for a more sustainable future. By making this content easily accessible for their over 200 million subscribers worldwide, Netflix is helping to raise awareness and educate a large audience about the importance of sustainability — contributing to climate literacy and promoting positive environmental practices.14
Netflix has set two short-term climate targets based on scientific consensus, with a focus on the next decade: reduce their emissions by half before the year 2030, and achieve net-zero emissions by restoring nature and capturing carbon to support global net-zero goals. The majority of emissions result from the production of their shows, which are tackled through energy efficiency, electrification of vehicles, clean mobile power alternatives and renewable energy. In 2021, the company reduced emissions by 10%. In 2022, over 165 million households globally, representing more than 70% of Netflix members, viewed at least one show that helped them better comprehend climate issues or featured optimistic sustainability solutions.15
Media and creative industries play an important role not just in shaping public perception, but they can help disseminate knowledge on critical global issues like climate change — using the power of creativity to reach a wider audience. These industries have the potential to simplify complex climate science into compelling narratives, and depict future scenarios in a way that resonates with the public. Documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth and series like Our Planet have already demonstrated the possibilities of visual media in raising climate awareness — now it is time to inspire widespread action through knowledge and empowerment, using communication principles of balancing urgency with solutions.
Creative sectors can employ art, music and literature to build emotional connections, making the abstract and distant aspects of climate change more immediate and relatable through combining factual reporting with emotive storytelling.
CASE STUDY
Earth Minutes: Building climate literacy through media
Earth Minutes specializes in environmental communication, on a mission to drive the future of environmental thinking and learning. They are a young collective of environmental researchers and creatives who provide a diverse range of communication services that are grounded in science with the strong values of optimism and innovation. Their goal is to make environmental information more accessible physically and financially, and sustainable — including digital sustainability — for all. Ultimately, Earth Minutes aim to ensure that everyone is provided with the sufficient tools to think and live more sustainably.
Most recently, Earth Minutes built a ‘Digital Ocean School’ in partnership with Surfers Against Sewage. This is an immersive 360-online platform, with the aim to make ocean education more engaging and inclusive for all, especially urban communities. Through online workshops and ‘connect, explore and protect’ activities, this experience helps young people to feel more connected to the coast and encourages local action. This platform also challenges the level of accessibility across current educational resources, in which they have developed a diverse accessibility toolbar — including dyslexia text and audio transcript functions — to ensure more young people can be provided with the sufficient tools to connect and protect the ocean for their futures, as well as the planet’s. With nearly 3,000 users since the launch in 2022 and double the user retention rate in comparison to other virtual tours, this platform is reimagining the future of ocean education.
Countries around the world are facing an urgent need for better climate education. While some progress has been made in incorporating climate topics in educational systems, the pace isn't fast enough given the pressing nature of the climate crisis. Effective education doesn't just mean teaching the facts, but ensuring they're introduced at the right time and in a way that engages students. A growing number of projects demonstrate how it can be done — but these should become standard practices, not exceptions.
Coupled with the influence of media and creative industries, there's potential to combine facts with emotive storytelling to make climate information accessible and memorable. The task ahead is clear: we need to ramp up educational initiatives, bridge knowledge gaps beyond educational institutions to include places of work, and empower a global audience that is not just aware but inspired to take action in their everyday lives and communities.
Supercharging Climate Action Through Creativity
Creative industries stand at the forefront of driving change. Encompassing a diversity of sectors, from advertising, architecture, and film to software and TV/radio, these industries aren't just the pulse of the creative economy — they are a critical catalyst for climate action and communication.
Keep reading
- United Nations. Education is key to addressing climate change. United Nations. Accessed August 29, 2023. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/climate-solutions/education-key-addressing-climate-change
- Mountford H. COP27: Four key storylines that will shape the climate agenda in 2023. ClimateWorks Foundation. Published 2022. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.climateworks.org/blog/cop27-four-key-storylines-that-will-shape-the-climate-agenda-in-2023/
- Edelman. Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report 2022 - Trust and Climate Change.; 2022:58. https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2022-11/2022%20Edelman%20Trust%20Barometer%20Special%20Report%20Trust%20and%20Climate%20Change%20FINAL_0.pdf
- Leiserowitz A, Maibach E, Rosenthal S, et al. Politics & Global Warming, April 2022. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Published 2022. Accessed March 20, 2023. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-global-warming-april-2022/toc/11/
- Grosse C. Climate Justice Movement Building: Values and Cultures of Creation in Santa Barbara, California. Soc Sci. 2019;8(3):79. doi:10.3390/socsci8030079
- Sobel D. Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education. Orion Society; 1999.
- Obach BK. In Defense of Doom and Gloom: Science, Sensitivity, and Mobilization in Teaching about Climate Change. Teach Sociol. Published online March 31, 2023:0092055X231159094. doi:10.1177/0092055X231159094
- Yang M. ‘Face it head on’: Connecticut makes climate change studies compulsory. The Guardian. Published 2022. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/17/climate-change-studies-connecticut
- Burgen S. Barcelona students to take mandatory climate crisis module from 2024. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/12/barcelona-students-to-take-mandatory-climate-crisis-module-from-2024. Published November 12, 2022. Accessed May 23, 2023.
- Carbon Literacy Project. About Us. The Carbon Literacy Project. Accessed August 29, 2023. https://carbonliteracy.com/about-us/
- Climate Fresk. Purpose. Accessed August 29, 2023. https://climatefresk.org/world/purpose/
- Kite Insights. Every job is a climate job - Why corporate transformation needs climate literacy. Published online June 2022. https://kiteinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Every-Job-Is-A-Climate-Job-Kite-Insights.pdf
- Larsen N. What Is ‘Futures Literacy’ and Why Is It Important? FARSIGHT. Published June 25, 2020. Accessed August 6, 2023. https://medium.com/copenhagen-institute-for-futures-studies/what-is-futures-literacy-and-why-is-it-important-a27f24b983d8
- Netflix. Sustainability.https://about.netflix.com/en/sustainability. Accessed March 21, 2023.
- KnowESG, Netflix, Inc. Netflix Highlights Progress Made on Sustainability. KnowESG. Published March 28, 2023. Accessed July 20, 2023. https://www.knowesg.com/companies/netflix-highlights-progress-made-on-sustainability-28032023
Figure 92: Importance of climate literacy in the professional sphere. Source: Kite Insights.
Figure 93: Importance of climate literacy in the professional sphere. Source: Kite Insights.
Climate Literacy Campaign by The Goals Goals
The urgent need for comprehensive climate education is everywhere — starting in schools, to universities all the way to the workplace and government. Climate literacy is essential — not just for understanding the science behind climate change, but also for understanding its social and economic implications. But until this day, many key groups and nations remain underrepresented in climate education initiatives, resulting in large populations being inadequately informed about the issue. This is despite the United Nations stressing that education is an essential tool in addressing climate change, and the UNFCCC mandating its Parties to undertake educational campaigns and ensure public participation and access to climate change information.1
However, our educational systems often fail to incorporate climate topics — a gap that extends to both the corporate and governmental sectors. Even though there's a strong push for including climate education in schools, progress has been slow. Some states and institutions have taken the lead, but there's still a long way to go.
Sophia Kianni
Young People are the Future
Young people have changed the movement and the face of climate change. Not just that, but we've changed the world. In 2019, we had over six million people go out into the streets to strike for climate action. How can we continue this incredible momentum that has been brought about by young women like Greta Thunberg or Vanessa Nakate? How can we continue to make people understand just how urgent the situation we’re in is? How dramatically and immediately we need climate policies to be implemented?
That's where I decided to start Climate Cardinals, when I was a senior in high school. We are a youth-led climate education nonprofit that has now grown to over 10,000 student volunteers across 80 countries, with an average age of 16. We've been able to translate over a million words of climate resources into over a hundred languages, realizing that the people who are worst impacted by the climate crisis often lack the resources and opportunities to get involved due to a lack of material available in their native language.
Young people are the future of this movement. There's never been a time in history when a young person could go on the Internet and have hundreds of thousands, millions of people hear their concerns. Social media has been a game-changer in this conversation. But together with that, we need effective climate communication. We need people who can help to mobilize the masses. We also need intergenerational dialogue between young people and older generations, bridging that gap and learning from each other to present as a united front.
There has never been a better time to step up for Gen Z. Our generation is going to be disproportionately impacted by climate change, if action is not taken. We are already experiencing twice as many climate change-induced weather disasters as our grandparents, and it's continuing to get worse. 83% of Gen Z-ers are concerned about the planet's health, and eco-anxiety is on the rise.
We need to lead with the narrative of hope. We do have the solutions we need. What we're missing is political and corporate will and action. We need to utilize our collective power, our strength as marketers and as communicators, to get people to understand what we need is systems change. We need collective action so that we can build the better future that everyone, especially young people, deserve.
Climate literacy is a vital aspect of addressing climate change, yet there is an unequal distribution of engagement efforts worldwide. Citizens from poorer regions — which often disproportionately experience climate impacts — often express concern but lack in-depth knowledge. Educational attainment plays a key role in climate change awareness depending on the region, but to date most research has been concentrated in a select few nations like the UK, North America, and Australia. Public engagement initiatives are lacking in crucial countries like China, Russia and Turkey, despite their importance in achieving the 1.5 target.2
According to a 2022 survey, 45% of people say it is almost impossible to find climate change information they can easily understand. Climate change is not an official part of the curriculum in most public high schools, meaning that a lot of people have limited understanding of the science of how our planet works. This includes heads of corporations and government officials, who now must come up with ambitious policies for both climate and nature.3 Research shows that most registered voters think that schools should teach children about the causes, consequences and potential solutions to climate change — an agreement that spans across the political spectrum.4 Students tend to be more open to changing their opinions, making educational institutions ideal targets for climate engagement.5
Sweta Chakraborty, PhD
Driving Climate Literacy through Digital Technology:
It’s been made clear that communicating solutions is the key to mobilizing society to reach our climate goals. We Don’t Have Time is a tool to this end. It is the world’s largest social media platform for climate solutions. The We Don’t Have Time app incorporates behavioral science in every aspect of communication and outreach to support widespread behavioral outcomes that align to climate science.
The app connects companies, communities, scientists, policymakers, advocates, journalists — everyone who wants to solve the climate crisis. Through targeted, thoughtful content sharing, audiences receive climate solutions messaging that is not only relevant, but that resonates cognitively, allowing more predictable behavioral outcomes—i.e., proactive actions towards individual and local alignment to climate realities and solutions.
The app not only supports individual actions of more than 120,000 monthly active users from 160 countries, but its messaging also reaches 190 million viewers per month. The democratization of access to relevant climate information—climate impacts as well as avenues to safeguarding oneself, one’s family, community, and beyond—presented through different trusted spokespeople for different communities has been unjustly missing. Establishing a baseline avenue for communicating relevant climate information is a foundation for then sharing climate ideas and scaling evidence-based climate solutions to communities around the world.
Conversations start on the WDHT platform and continue to reverberate through social media. Viewers may consume WDHT content from Twitter, LinkedIn, Spotify or other social and traditional media outlets. Understanding where consumers view and act on content produced and/or amplified through We Don’t Have Time allows the app to target viewers based on data and consistently improve numbers of users and monthly reach.
We Don’t Have Time’s both for and non-profit partners are able to share ideas, solutions and call to actions through the app. The integration of behavioral science into the platform allows for the measurement of conversion from viewership to action. This measurable behavioral impact is critical to showcase the power of strategic, targeted communication as a change agent.
We Don’t Have Time reaches all actors aiming to align behavior and policy to the realities of the climate crisis. Reaching various publics and ideally mobilizing support for proactive, climate-forward policies can help policymakers see through the implementation of evidence-based legislation. Reversely, supporting the amplification of voices from historically marginalized populations like Indigenous peoples, women, and youth can also support the development of policies entrenched in just and equal outcomes for all global citizens.
It’s not just enough to educate children and young people about environmental issues — timing matters, too. In Beyond Ecophobia, environmental educator David Sobel emphasizes the importance of building a deep emotional connection between children and the natural world before introducing them to environmental problems and crises. Sobel argues that exposing young children to distressing global issues before they are ready can lead to fear, dissociation, and a sense of helplessness, rather than empowering them to make positive changes. He advocates for an educational approach that begins with nurturing an appreciation for local flora and fauna — allowing children to explore, play, and fall in love with the natural world. This bond lays a solid foundation for introducing more complex ecological concepts later in their education journey, equipping them to become active stewards of the world.6
Educational psychology research highlights the importance of fostering a sense of collective efficacy and engaging students in practical actions, internships with advocacy organizations and incorporating civic engagement exercises in the classroom. These can create opportunities for active participation, reinforcing students' confidence in their ability to enact change even in the face of complex problems. Despite the very real danger of the climate crisis, it's crucial to balance the "doom and gloom" narrative with optimism and active engagement.7
Scarlett Westbrook
Making Climate Education Law
In 2019, I joined hundreds of students across the world in organizing school climate strikes. In the UK, our protests had four central demands: save the future, teach the future, tell the future and empower the future. We received unprecedented support from the public and the politicians we lobbied of the second ask in particular - teach the future, a demand to reform the education system to incorporate climate education into every aspect of the education system so that the next generation of workers have all of the knowledge, skills and resources necessary to build a resilient, climate just society. Our education system isn’t preparing young people for the future we inherit despite that being its central purpose, through having essentially zero mention of climate.
Many will live to see the end of this century – and the full effects of climate inaction. But our education system is failing to prepare young people for this future. Whilst we’re told to list the benefits of climate change in geography lessons, we’re not once taught about the historical events and political systems that catalyzed the climate crisis, the social and economic repercussions that this catastrophe will induce, or what constitutes the possible solutions.
Consequently, we’re not equipped with the skills we need to live and work in a world increasingly impacted by the climate crisis and are denied information on the climate that isn’t confined to small sections in science GCSEs or optional subjects like horticulture and environmental science, which few institutions have the financial capacity to host.
This cannot continue. So, alongside some of my other climate striker friends, I set up Teach the Future - a student-led campaign to reform the education system through a parliamentary Bill, the Climate Education Bill. We need to ensure climate education is no longer exclusive to those who take optional subjects or briefly glazed over, but instead centered in all subjects. The climate crisis will affect everyone, whether they are a builder or a banker, a carer or a pharmacist.
This means that climate education must be intertwined into every subject in a way that is accessible to all. Climate education needs to be extended to include knowledge about how to stop and abate the climate emergency and ecological crisis, deliver climate justice and provide support for students to deal with eco and climate anxiety – something which climate education will also mitigate, as students will be empowered with the information needed to tackle the issue. We also need to be taught about and prepared to adapt to our changing world. The climate crisis is already here. Our education system needs to stop treating this disaster as a hypothetical future and instead ensure we are ready for what is an inevitable reality.
To achieve all of this, we must reform teacher training qualifications to prepare teachers to educate their students on the climate crisis and its interdependence with their subjects. Whether that’s introducing climate apprenticeships in the renewable energy sector, expanding vocational courses so that they cover sustainability, or changing academic content to give us a realistic idea of our world and subjects in their climate-impacted contexts.
By doing so, we can create thousands of green jobs and set a precedent for the rest of the world, while also saving the costs of tackling extreme climate breakdown further down the line. The government’s plans arguably depend on it. If the government is serious about getting to Net Zero, it needs the workforce to do it. For all the government’s talk about the importance of skills-based education, it is missing a trick by failing to train the next generation who will be essential to the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Our Climate Education Bill in the United Kingdom would implement all of this and more to ensure that we truly teach the future. This Bill has made me the youngest parliamentary policy writer in history, as it is the first time that a teenager has put forward a Bill; I was just 15 when we put forward our first draft. It was first tabled in 2021 but fell as the Parliamentary session finished before it could make its way through the necessary stages to become law, and is currently awaiting its second reading in Spring 2023 after being retabled this January.
Through Teach the Future, we are bringing youth climate strikers to the corridors of power, so MPs can come face to face with the next generation fighting to save our planet. Young people want to be part of the solution to the climate crisis. What we need are the skills and knowledge to do so. Our demands are simple: teach us the truth, prepare us for the future.
Recently, Connecticut and Rhode Island have become the first US states to introduce mandatory climate education.8 Over in Europe, Barcelona University is introducing a mandatory climate emergency module for all of its students after a number of sit-in protests.9 But we are moving too slow: given the substantial body of research showing how climate change affects young people’s wellbeing, alongside the urgent need to decarbonize, we are in need of nationalized education programs on climate science, climate change, climate impact, and climate justice – conveying a holistic view of the challenge we’re facing, as well as the solutions we need to tackle it.
In response to the challenge, a number of climate initiatives have been gaining momentum: The Carbon Literacy Project covers the essentials of climate change, carbon footprints, and individual responsibilities in a day’s worth of Carbon Literacy training, targeting diverse audiences from everyday citizens to professionals and students. Recognized at COP21 by the UN as one of the 100 global Transformative Action Programs, its impact is accompanied by a growing range of Carbon Literacy Toolkits — comprising off-the-shelf courses tailored to different sectors and audiences.10
Climate Fresk is another project which has proven impactful in making climate education more accessible. Initially launched in France, Climate Fresk’s activities now span over 40 countries. Its reach has been growing at a remarkable pace, doubling workshop participants every five months.11 These initiatives are paving the way towards a more climate-literate society — but they should be the norm, rather than the exception.
Chris Duncan
The use of advertising and PR to make products, companies and brands appear less damaging to the planet than they actually are has been with us for decades. But with the huge increase in consumer awareness of climate change, we’ve seen an explosion in greenwashing.
When it comes to making claims about green credentials, the way that language is used matters, or more specifically the way language is misused matters. Let’s take the way that some energy companies communicate about gas, as an example.
First of all, you’ll hear gas described as ‘the cleanest-burning’ fossil fuel. While gas may produce less CO2 than oil or coal when it is actually burnt, extracting, transporting and storing gas also leaks methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. In reality, the overall climate impact of gas can be worse than coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.
But putting methane aside, calling gas ‘the cleanest-burning’ fossil fuel or a ‘low-carbon’ fossil fuel is misleading. I’ve seen examples of energy companies claiming that 50% of its energy will be in the form of ‘low-carbon’ electricity, a fine thing. But if you dig really hard into the numbers, you’ll see that number includes ‘low-carbon’ electricity produced by… burning gas.
This is the same tactic used by the tobacco companies when they marketed cigarette brands as ‘low-tar’ or ‘light’, a practice now outlawed in the US and EU. Whatever the tar content, smoking cigarettes causes cancer. And whatever words you use to describe it, burning gas is driving climate change.
But it’s not just the marketing of fossil fuels where we see language used to misdirect. Companies across the world have made Net Zero pledges, which is a fantastic development. But when you read the language that goes alongside some of these claims, they can seem slightly less convincing. A favorite of the oil industry is to say that they will reach Net Zero but only “in step with society”. This is a huge caveat, particularly when you consider the same companies are often lobbying against the very measures needed to help society reach Net Zero.
There are phrases that you’ll see used time and again in advertising and product packaging, like: “carbon neutral”, “Net Zero” and “nature positive”. These claims are often made without any real substance to back them up or they over-rely on the use of offsets, which can often not deliver the emissions reductions that they promise. This practice has become so widespread that, in a promising move, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has indicated that it will clamp down on firms making these claims.
In the aviation industry, we’ve seen companies marketing ‘low CO2 flights’ or ‘sustainable aviation’. Neither of these claims stand up to any kind of scientific scrutiny and are misleading for consumers. But the impact isn’t just on individual consumers making choices about whether to buy one product over another. It’s much more insidious than that, language like ‘sustainable aviation’ or ‘natural gas’ reduces the sense of urgency needed to drive the transition to a carbon-free future.
I’m pleased that we’re now starting to see guidance for how language should be used, with developments like the ISO Net zero guidelines and the UN Integrity Matters report. And increasingly companies are being held to account in the courts for their greenwashing – it’s something we specialize in at ClientEarth. But as communicators, it is crucial that we closely interrogate the language that we use and don’t fall into repeating language and terminology that misleads and plays down the urgency of the challenge we’re facing.
The need for climate education is not just limited to the school system: Research by Kite Insights on employee attitudes towards climate change revealed an emergent workforce committed to climate action. A survey found that 80% of employees express a readiness to adopt climate-positive practices in their professional roles. A striking 67% of participants perceived climate change as a severe risk capable of adversely affecting them and their loved ones within their lifetime, underscoring the urgency behind these attitudes. However, a significant gap exists between willingness and ability, with less than 50% of participants feeling adequately equipped to effect tangible change in their workplaces.12
This data underscores the importance of climate literacy in the professional sphere, which is emerging as a critical factor in job satisfaction and employee retention. 70% of respondents associated acting on climate change at work with their personal sense of motivation and well-being. 15% have contemplated changing jobs in the past year to more directly engage in climate-related matters, a figure that rises to 20% among the most climate-conscious employees. Despite 55% of employees acknowledging their company’s crucial role in tackling the climate crisis, only 34% feel capable of articulating their company’s climate commitments, a percentage that decreases to a concerning 22% amongst junior employees. This suggests a pressing need for businesses, particularly those amongst the world's largest 2,000 publicly traded companies committed to net-zero, to prioritize internal climate education. By doing so, they can translate their climate commitments into meaningful action, bridging the knowledge gap and empowering their employees to drive a truly sustainable transformation.12
Anna McShane
Improving Climate Literacy in Business
Businesses largely want to be transparent with their customers and wider stakeholders about their sustainability efforts, but aren’t always equipped with the knowledge and tools to do so, often leading to misleading environmental claims. The level of scrutiny surrounding corporate green claims is on the rise and, as a result, we have seen an increase in clients asking for guidance to navigate their sustainability claims and avoid greenwashing accusations.
In response, we are increasing our output of material such as information-sharing webinars (most recently in partnership with the European Advertising Standards Agency (EASA) and the Competitions & Markets Authority (CMA), briefings and guidance documents, to reassure and guide clients. We work closely with them to shape their communications and share our principles upfront. These are focused on being factual, evidence-based, accountable, and making sure claims accurately reflect a company’s achievements.
Many of our corporate clients operate globally and often have questions about communicating across international borders, but the same principles of transparent communications apply. It’s also important to stay up to date with local regulations and legislations. Brands can reach out to their local self-regulatory organization (SRO) for advice.
It's also crucial to equip people with tools to envision the future, as our conventional ways of predicting the future are biased and limited. Improving our futures literacy can help us break free from these constraints, allowing us to better navigate the challenges that lie ahead. Futures literacy is the skill to understand and harness the human capacity to imagine the future. It helps us not only to expect what the future could hold, but also to understand how our own thoughts and feelings are influencing those expectations. Our conventional ways of envisioning the future – shaped by culture, norms and confirmation bias (see Human Psychology for Catalyzing Action) – often narrow our imagination and limit it to pre-determined paradigms. This is further reinforced by our brain’s present bias, hinders our comprehension of new concepts and exacerbates short-termism.13
Futures literacy can be shaped by encouraging individuals to shape their imaginations through critical thinking and storytelling approaches — supporting them to envision the future rather than adopting dominant societal narratives. Future literacy helps us become more aware of our own assumptions about the future, and turn uncertainty from a source of stress into a source of ideas and inspiration – helping us not just predict the future, but actively shape it.13
CASE STUDY
How Netflix is increasing 200 million subscribers’ climate literacy
Media and entertainment can be part of the solution in educating the public about climate change and promoting sustainability through its power to inspire. Companies like Netflix recognize the importance of sustainability and are taking steps towards reducing their own carbon footprint. But they don’t stop there: Through their curated Sustainability Stories, Netflix is promoting content that highlights climate issues and provides solutions for a more sustainable future. By making this content easily accessible for their over 200 million subscribers worldwide, Netflix is helping to raise awareness and educate a large audience about the importance of sustainability — contributing to climate literacy and promoting positive environmental practices.14
Netflix has set two short-term climate targets based on scientific consensus, with a focus on the next decade: reduce their emissions by half before the year 2030, and achieve net-zero emissions by restoring nature and capturing carbon to support global net-zero goals. The majority of emissions result from the production of their shows, which are tackled through energy efficiency, electrification of vehicles, clean mobile power alternatives and renewable energy. In 2021, the company reduced emissions by 10%. In 2022, over 165 million households globally, representing more than 70% of Netflix members, viewed at least one show that helped them better comprehend climate issues or featured optimistic sustainability solutions.15
Media and creative industries play an important role not just in shaping public perception, but they can help disseminate knowledge on critical global issues like climate change — using the power of creativity to reach a wider audience. These industries have the potential to simplify complex climate science into compelling narratives, and depict future scenarios in a way that resonates with the public. Documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth and series like Our Planet have already demonstrated the possibilities of visual media in raising climate awareness — now it is time to inspire widespread action through knowledge and empowerment, using communication principles of balancing urgency with solutions.
Creative sectors can employ art, music and literature to build emotional connections, making the abstract and distant aspects of climate change more immediate and relatable through combining factual reporting with emotive storytelling.
CASE STUDY
Earth Minutes: Building climate literacy through media
Earth Minutes specializes in environmental communication, on a mission to drive the future of environmental thinking and learning. They are a young collective of environmental researchers and creatives who provide a diverse range of communication services that are grounded in science with the strong values of optimism and innovation. Their goal is to make environmental information more accessible physically and financially, and sustainable — including digital sustainability — for all. Ultimately, Earth Minutes aim to ensure that everyone is provided with the sufficient tools to think and live more sustainably.
Most recently, Earth Minutes built a ‘Digital Ocean School’ in partnership with Surfers Against Sewage. This is an immersive 360-online platform, with the aim to make ocean education more engaging and inclusive for all, especially urban communities. Through online workshops and ‘connect, explore and protect’ activities, this experience helps young people to feel more connected to the coast and encourages local action. This platform also challenges the level of accessibility across current educational resources, in which they have developed a diverse accessibility toolbar — including dyslexia text and audio transcript functions — to ensure more young people can be provided with the sufficient tools to connect and protect the ocean for their futures, as well as the planet’s. With nearly 3,000 users since the launch in 2022 and double the user retention rate in comparison to other virtual tours, this platform is reimagining the future of ocean education.
Countries around the world are facing an urgent need for better climate education. While some progress has been made in incorporating climate topics in educational systems, the pace isn't fast enough given the pressing nature of the climate crisis. Effective education doesn't just mean teaching the facts, but ensuring they're introduced at the right time and in a way that engages students. A growing number of projects demonstrate how it can be done — but these should become standard practices, not exceptions.
Coupled with the influence of media and creative industries, there's potential to combine facts with emotive storytelling to make climate information accessible and memorable. The task ahead is clear: we need to ramp up educational initiatives, bridge knowledge gaps beyond educational institutions to include places of work, and empower a global audience that is not just aware but inspired to take action in their everyday lives and communities.
Figure 92: Importance of climate literacy in the professional sphere. Source: Kite Insights.
Figure 93: Importance of climate literacy in the professional sphere. Source: Kite Insights.
Climate Literacy Campaign by The Goals Goals
Supercharging Climate Action Through Creativity
Creative industries stand at the forefront of driving change. Encompassing a diversity of sectors, from advertising, architecture, and film to software and TV/radio, these industries aren't just the pulse of the creative economy — they are a critical catalyst for climate action and communication.
Keep reading- United Nations. Education is key to addressing climate change. United Nations. Accessed August 29, 2023. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/climate-solutions/education-key-addressing-climate-change
- Mountford H. COP27: Four key storylines that will shape the climate agenda in 2023. ClimateWorks Foundation. Published 2022. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.climateworks.org/blog/cop27-four-key-storylines-that-will-shape-the-climate-agenda-in-2023/
- Edelman. Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report 2022 - Trust and Climate Change.; 2022:58. https://www.edelman.com/sites/g/files/aatuss191/files/2022-11/2022%20Edelman%20Trust%20Barometer%20Special%20Report%20Trust%20and%20Climate%20Change%20FINAL_0.pdf
- Leiserowitz A, Maibach E, Rosenthal S, et al. Politics & Global Warming, April 2022. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Published 2022. Accessed March 20, 2023. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-global-warming-april-2022/toc/11/
- Grosse C. Climate Justice Movement Building: Values and Cultures of Creation in Santa Barbara, California. Soc Sci. 2019;8(3):79. doi:10.3390/socsci8030079
- Sobel D. Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education. Orion Society; 1999.
- Obach BK. In Defense of Doom and Gloom: Science, Sensitivity, and Mobilization in Teaching about Climate Change. Teach Sociol. Published online March 31, 2023:0092055X231159094. doi:10.1177/0092055X231159094
- Yang M. ‘Face it head on’: Connecticut makes climate change studies compulsory. The Guardian. Published 2022. Accessed May 23, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/dec/17/climate-change-studies-connecticut
- Burgen S. Barcelona students to take mandatory climate crisis module from 2024. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/12/barcelona-students-to-take-mandatory-climate-crisis-module-from-2024. Published November 12, 2022. Accessed May 23, 2023.
- Carbon Literacy Project. About Us. The Carbon Literacy Project. Accessed August 29, 2023. https://carbonliteracy.com/about-us/
- Climate Fresk. Purpose. Accessed August 29, 2023. https://climatefresk.org/world/purpose/
- Kite Insights. Every job is a climate job - Why corporate transformation needs climate literacy. Published online June 2022. https://kiteinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Every-Job-Is-A-Climate-Job-Kite-Insights.pdf
- Larsen N. What Is ‘Futures Literacy’ and Why Is It Important? FARSIGHT. Published June 25, 2020. Accessed August 6, 2023. https://medium.com/copenhagen-institute-for-futures-studies/what-is-futures-literacy-and-why-is-it-important-a27f24b983d8
- Netflix. Sustainability.https://about.netflix.com/en/sustainability. Accessed March 21, 2023.
- KnowESG, Netflix, Inc. Netflix Highlights Progress Made on Sustainability. KnowESG. Published March 28, 2023. Accessed July 20, 2023. https://www.knowesg.com/companies/netflix-highlights-progress-made-on-sustainability-28032023
