The Santa Barbara Unified School District has an impressive history of responding to climate change.
It should add curriculum upgrades that educate its students on the facts that climate change is caused by fossil fuel emissions; is global; and the consequences of the climate having gone over the 1.5c tipping point.
In 2019, the school board supported a district-wide environmental and sustainability initiative that included facility projects incorporating solar panels, electric vehicle charging stations, climate-friendly food service that increases plant-based menu offerings and food waste reduction programs, LED lighting, and the establishment of a Sustainability Sub-Committee as part of its Wellness Committee.
That same year, the district called on Congress to “Take swift and effective action on climate change, by enacting a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend, to protect current and future students.”
This was the kind of climate leadership, willing to wade into the political realm, that was and is desperately needed.
Without climate legislation at the national level, global warming cannot be effectively addressed.
For a school district to have done it was prescient.
It has now become painfully obvious that, unfortunately, the burden of dealing with climate change has passed to future generations.
It is equally obvious that the burden they will inherit has gone over the 1.5C (2 F) tipping point.
Last February, climate scientists published a paper that showed global temperatures have already climbed past the 1.5c tipping point, reaching 1.7c above pre-industrial levels.
The pedagogy explaining climate tipping points could include explaining they are conditions leading to abrupt, irreversible and dangerous climate impacts, including extreme heat, more severe wildfires, droughts, sea-level rise and flooding, and humans and animal species on the move to escape the coming heat and droughts.
To prepare students for dealing with our changing climate, the district’s curriculum must teach that climate change is global and in need of a global solution, and that its primary cause is the emission of coal, oil and gas, i.e., fossil fuels.
Its curriculum must also instruct on the necessity for national legislation to enact laws dealing with the kinds of things the district urged Congress to do in 2019: reduce reliance on fossil fuels, install electric vehicle charging stations; and incentivize energy storage systems in conjunction with solar panels to increase independence from the electrical grid.
Having been an educator who designed curriculums, I’m well aware of the need to create a curriculum appropriate for the students being educated.
I realize that this information would be frightening, and inappropriate, for kindergarten and the lower grades, but as students pass into the upper grades it is essential to their climate education.
The truly sad part of this is that our students are inheriting an Earth beset by both climate change and political inaction.
The United Nations organized 28 world conferences of governments to address global warming. They were all long on talk and short on follow-through, making it clear that we are passing this problem on to future generations.
Kudos to the Santa Barbara Unified School District. We can only hope it keeps up the good work of incorporating the reality of an overheating climate into its curriculums.