LACK OF AWARENESS/ EDUCATION
The challenge:
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Often the preposterous claims made in the media or by certain leadership about the validity of climate change can be extremely dangerous, when these claims are able to influence the beliefs of another person because they don't have adequate knowledge or awareness about the matter to make their own decisions. This seems to be the case with a lot of the general population, most have a vague idea of what climate change is but they lack a full understanding of the signs, effects, factors, and aftermath of climate change on Earth. This is because the education of climate change is not mandatory, and in the places it is offered it isn't accurate and is often misleading. As multiple studies have independently demonstrated, more than 98% of climate scientists accept that recent climate change is caused by human activity. Yet in a national survey of public, media and high school science teachers conducted by the National Centre for Science Education (NCSE), 10% of teachers outright rejected human responsibility for global warming while teaching about it, 5% avoided the question of causation altogether and more than 30 % took no definitive stand in their lessons. Moreover, almost 60% of science teachers have reported not having any form of instruction on how to teach climate science. In the case of science teaching, the lack of such awareness turns out to have some consequences. The NCSE survey found that many of the climate change classes that do exist, have courses that foster debate and speculation around the topic of climate change, such as encouraging students to "debate the likely cause of global warming" or "come to their own conclusions" on the topic. These techniques are simply inappropriate with regard to the teaching establishments;ished science that is agreed upon by an overwhelming majority of climate scientists and framing it with a lens of doubt, because that makes the problem seem less significant.
The Solution:
The global community agreed in the Paris Agreement to recognize climate change as man-made and work together on a common response. They made decisions based on scientific evidence, which was agreed upon by 97% of climate scientists. Yet the prominent climate skeptic in the world is President Trump , who has tweeted that climate change is an invention of the Chinese design to harm the American economy. He’s also made the famous argument of “but its cold outside.” While people like Rep. Larry G. Pitman claim that climate change can only be controlled by God, and that human beings are too insignificant to affect the climate. So unfortunately, the idea of whether or not climate change is real is still argued upon to this day. This is devastating, because the planet can’t work together to prevent climate change if not everyone believes it exists in the first place. This means before any actual action can be taken, awareness and education must be spread about the intricacies of climate change. There is currently no curriculum required in schools that talks about climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, what the effects of carbon on the ozone layer. It’s vital that this information be taught in schools in order to give children the ability to make eco-friendly decisions starting earlier on. Often times one of the biggest hurdles in front of climate change is the general population’s inability to change their routines in order to accommodate more renewable energy sources. But if climate friendly lifestyles where embedded in children at an earlier age it’s possible that they would be more likely to stick to these environmentally conscious ways as an adult and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Every time environmentalists try to bring attention the climate change, they are called conspiracy theorists or not taken seriously at all. But, if we focused on teaching these values to children instead and help them grow up as environmentally conscious, then we can greatly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions emitted from future generations.