Connect to people and projects focused on climate justice

Students’ understanding of climate change must be grounded in climate justice ideas, issues, and initiatives. By foregrounding human rights, climate justice connections highlight how changes in climate impact communities. Emphasizing how communities face and respond to climate change through social, economic, and policy actions helps to make climate education relevant to real-world issues. Furthermore, this emphasis builds opportunities for resilience through climate actions that work towards an understanding of intersectional environmentalism.

Climate Example: Youth activism to advocate for electric school buses

Students from marginalized communities disproportionately rely on diesel-fueled school buses to travel to and from school. Diesel-fueled school buses produce emissions that contain greenhouse gasses, contributing to climate change. These emissions also create local problems with air quality that cause higher incidence of asthma and other health conditions for youth, bus drivers, and others living in these communities. Read more about how parents and communities are organizing to advocate for electric school buses here and here. 

Second-graders from Boulder, Colorado teamed up with Mothers Out Front to learn about how air quality could be improved and climate change could be mitigated by transitioning school bus fleets to electric buses. To educate others about this climate justice issue, children made this  educational video advocating for electrification of school buses. Their advocacy added support to recent efforts across Colorado to support school districts as they make a shift from diesel-fueled buses to electric buses.