Earlier this year, Idaho lawmakers made a statement that the environment is only worth the bare minimum.
An Idaho House panel approved new K-12 science standards after eliminating key references to climate change caused by human behavior.
Idaho’s science standards were last updated in 2001, which means the science curriculum standards haven’t been reassessed in almost two decades.
The Idaho Statesman reported this is the third year the Idaho Legislature has struggled to agree on science standards for public schools. Previously, standards that referenced global warming and the origin of the universe were rejected by Republicans who were unhappy that the language didn’t offer alternative views.
While key climate change references were eliminated from the official curriculum standards, climate change can still be taught in schools. These standards, the Statesman reported, are only a minimum of what students are expected to know.
The approval of this curriculum sends a clear message: Idaho lawmakers are only willing to do the bare minimum, just enough to skirt criticism, when it comes to educating future generations about the environment.
There is as much of a problem with what went into these new standards as what was left out. The current language implies there is doubt as to whether, and to what extent, humans have impacted the environment.
This year’s updated curriculum requires teachers to “ask,” rather than teach, students questions on the causes of rising global temperatures over the past century with “an emphasis” on the major role of human activity.
These standards require educators to “ask” students about climate change, as if it were a philosophical topic that is up for debate, and to put an “emphasis” on the role humans have played in raising global temperatures, as if human activity is only one of many causes, rather than the major cause of climate change.
Students are also required to understand that human activity can disrupt ecosystems and threaten certain species.
The language here implies that humans aren’t playing an actively destructive role when it comes to the environment, which is wrong. Students shouldn’t understand that human activity “can” disrupt ecosystems, they need to understand that human activity is certainly disrupting ecosystems. It is threatening not just certain species, but almost every species on the planet.
Before these curriculum standards were approved, several drafts of these standards were rejected because certain legislators were unhappy the language didn’t offer alternative views.
Almost every political issue has multiple, or “alternative” sides. Climate change is not one of them.
A 2013 paper in Environmental Research Letters reviewed 11,944 abstracts of scientific papers matching “global warming” or “global climate change.” The authors of the paper found 4,014 of these abstracts discussed the cause of recent global warming, and of these “97.1 (percent) endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
Even four years ago there was about a 97 percent consensus about the cause of climate change among the global science community. This is a subject that is no longer up for debate.
In limiting the ways in which we teach children about the negative impact humans are having on the environment, we are limiting the growth of future generations.
Climate change and global warming are two words that have become exceptionally politically charged. When the politics of the language are stripped away, climate change is a relatively simple concept that is difficult to deny — humans are impacting the environment, which includes the climate and global ecosystems, in a negative way.
The way we treat the environment is not sustainable. In not moving toward more sustainable solutions, and in not talking about the ways in which we are hurting this planet, we are setting future generations up to fail. We cannot continue to pretend like climate change is something that is up for debate, or even that the impact humans are making on global ecosystems is marginal. It is not.
With each new generation, we have the chance to become better than we have been. It is absolutely crucial to teach the complete scope of the negative impacts humans have had, and continue to have, on the environment.
If climate change is tiptoed around in schools, children will grow up operating under the idea that humans have made a marginal impact on the environment. When, in reality, the effects of massive amounts of pollution compounded over decades has left ecosystems all over the globe in a fragile state.
Corrin Bond can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @CorrBond