Local and state officials in mid-March piled 50,000 sandbags along the low-lying banks of the San Joaquin River when rising levels threatened to overtake Firebaugh.
Emma Gallegos/EdSource
Earlier this year, students across the country watched as wildfires devastated large parts of Southern California. Yet even as they watched — and, in some cases, lived through — a real example of what climate change can look like, many students don’t understand why events like these are happening more frequently and with greater intensity. Without that foundational knowledge, they are ill-equipped to help mitigate the significant problem affecting their generation. Lack of climate literacy is a crisis that higher education has a responsibility to address.
Acknowledging the problem is no longer enough. Although 72% of U.S. adults recognize that our climate is changing, only 58% acknowledge that it is human-caused, and even…
