Speaker 1: The students had all walked out of class to protest
Speaker 1: climate change. So this is part of a global climate
Speaker 1: strike with over a thousand marches happening in one hundred
Speaker 1: countries all around the world, and Portland students are right
Speaker 1: there in the thick of it, stain here.
Speaker 2: Today to show our one leaders, we're real live.
Speaker 3: This is a school walkout that kids in Portland, Oregon
Speaker 3: organized back in twenty nineteen. And you might remember that
Speaker 3: around that time a lot of students were holding these
Speaker 3: kinds of protests. It was a year after Greta Tunberg
Speaker 3: held her first school strike for the climate, and millions
Speaker 3: were showing up for these similar strikes around the world
Speaker 3: to basically demand that governments give us some real action
Speaker 3: on climate change. But the Portland march was a little different.
Speaker 3: It wasn't solely focused on getting local and federal governments
Speaker 3: to enact policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It was
Speaker 3: also about this fight with the school board happening right
Speaker 3: there in Portland.
Speaker 2: In the past four episodes of this series, we've gotten
Speaker 2: into the fossil fuel industry's insidious infiltration of school curricula.
Speaker 2: It's something they've been doing for the past century. We've
Speaker 2: shown how these companies pushed this false idea that we
Speaker 2: could never live without them, that free markets are what
Speaker 2: make us free. The nature is there for humans to
Speaker 2: extract from. It's been pretty dark, but today we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about people who are trying to fix the
Speaker 2: education system and get that influence out.
Speaker 3: That's right, the fossil fuel industry has pretty clearly tried
Speaker 3: to limit how we all think about climate solutions at all.
Speaker 3: But today we'll hear from people who are at the
Speaker 3: very least trying to solve the problem of disinformation and education.
Speaker 3: Welcome to a special bonus episode of the ABC's of
Speaker 3: Big Oil, From Earth and Drilled. I'm Darna Nor.
Speaker 2: And I'm Amy Westervelt. We'll start in Portland, Oregon, where
Speaker 2: we just heard kids walking out of school to demand
Speaker 2: better climate education. Stay with us. This episode is supported
Speaker 2: by Degrees Real Talk about Planet Saving Careers, an original
Speaker 2: podcast from the Environmental Defense Fund. People ask me all
Speaker 2: the time what they can do about climate change, and
Speaker 2: I feel a little bit like a climate change guidance
Speaker 2: counselor sometimes the short answer is what do you get at?
Speaker 2: What are you interested in? Where can you plug in.
Speaker 2: What I like about Degrees is that it helps people
Speaker 2: figure out how they could maybe use their job to
Speaker 2: make an impact. Degrees features candid conversations and takeaways from
Speaker 2: today's most inspiring climate change makers. Each episode tells a
Speaker 2: story of how one inspiring change maker found their climate
Speaker 2: career and how you can too. There's a new season
Speaker 2: out now, season three, and it's all about how, no
Speaker 2: matter industry, you can find a planet saving job. I
Speaker 2: got a sneak preview of season three of Degrees, and
Speaker 2: I loved it, especially the episode about Lake Street Drive,
Speaker 2: which is a green band, which is actually a lot
Speaker 2: harder to pull off than you might think, just in
Speaker 2: terms of all of the disposable things that come along
Speaker 2: with touring and concerts and music venues, trying to convince
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Speaker 2: How do you figure that out? It was really good,
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Speaker 1: Portland Public Schools sent out an email saying that while
Speaker 1: they support kids rallying and demonstrating and lobbying and protesting,
Speaker 1: they think that it shouldn't happen during school time. The students,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, say that it's more visible if
Speaker 1: they strike during school and by doing that, they're showing
Speaker 1: that this is something that matters to them right now.
Speaker 3: So the story kind of starts in twenty fifteen when
Speaker 3: a group of student activists in Portland approach the local
Speaker 3: school board basically hoping that the officials would agree to
Speaker 3: bring in environmental justice curricula for every school in the district.
Speaker 3: That's right, environmental justice, not just climate science, and the
Speaker 3: board actually passed the resolution in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: I think the primary place where students have gotten environmental
Speaker 4: education in K twelve has been through sciences. And you know,
Speaker 4: as a social studies teacher, while I certainly want students
Speaker 4: to come to me with a solid understanding of the
Speaker 4: sort of scientific foundations of the environmental crisis, I think
Speaker 4: that if we stop in science classes, I think we
Speaker 4: really risk overwhelming students with a lot of facts about
Speaker 4: how terrible the crisis is without maybe always studying the
Speaker 4: social movements and groups and people and communities working on solutions.
Speaker 3: So that's Tim Swineheart. He currently teaches environmental justice at
Speaker 3: Lincoln High School in Portland, and he worked with a
Speaker 3: lot of those kids to get the resolution passed. Some
Speaker 3: of them were actually his students. But he said that
Speaker 3: even though the board passed the measure unanimously, since then,
Speaker 3: not much has actually changed, and that's why they held
Speaker 3: that big walkout in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: We've talked a lot in this series about the oil
Speaker 2: industry's efforts to infiltrate education, but the industry has had
Speaker 2: ample help. The federal government has made funds available to them,
Speaker 2: for one and schools have adopted their materials for decades.
Speaker 2: But Darta, it sounds like these activists had a much
Speaker 2: harder time getting into just one school district than fossil
Speaker 2: fuel companies have ever had getting into all the schools.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it's really true, and it's a really good point,
Speaker 3: and it's sad. These kids got like thousands of students
Speaker 3: to walk out of class that day, so many that
Speaker 3: a lot of the schools actually counted it as an
Speaker 3: excused absence, and they held sit ins at city Hall
Speaker 3: and they worked with educators and parents to collect thousands
Speaker 3: of signatures and support of this measure. And it's not
Speaker 3: like the school board hasn't done anything right. They did
Speaker 3: this review of all textbooks used in schools and they
Speaker 3: voted to eliminate anything that promotes climate doubt.
Speaker 4: We did a review of many of the adopted curricula
Speaker 4: and science and social studies and found wishy washi language.
Speaker 4: You know, the climate change might be caused by right,
Speaker 4: not all scientists agree with the theory of the greenhouse effect,
Speaker 4: things like this, So part of it was calling out
Speaker 4: what was determined to be climate denial language in some
Speaker 4: of those textbooks.
Speaker 3: And the school board has done other stuff too. It
Speaker 3: created an advisory committee for the school district with student
Speaker 3: and teacher activists on it. Back in twenty twenty, they
Speaker 3: hired this manager to oversee climate justice programming, and all
Speaker 3: of that is really good, and they even started to
Speaker 3: work to secure some funding to support the new climate
Speaker 3: justice programming, but that actually ushered in some problems because,
Speaker 3: to the organizer's surprise, Portland General Electric, the area's largest
Speaker 3: utility company had actually contributed a quarter million dollars over
Speaker 3: three years to support the development of climate education programming.
Speaker 3: Not for nothing, either, administrators agreed to let the utility
Speaker 3: help create the classroom materials. In a letter to their supporters,
Speaker 3: the committee said that they learned of this partnership through
Speaker 3: TV news reports, as in the school board didn't even
Speaker 3: consult them beforehand before taking this funding.
Speaker 4: And you know, PGE is a publicly traded for profit corporation.
Speaker 4: But I think community like Portland does a good job
Speaker 4: of greenwashing itself, you know, but also has a history
Speaker 4: of having to really be pushed to get off of
Speaker 4: fossil fuels, to move away from coal burning power plants.
Speaker 4: I think of how even you know, even here, like
Speaker 4: when we have one of the strongest climate justice education
Speaker 4: policies in the country, there is a lot of movement,
Speaker 4: you know, in a positive direction, and still we see
Speaker 4: the ways in which corporations can sort of co opt
Speaker 4: that process, you know, to potentially kind of make themselves
Speaker 4: look better. Seemed like a pretty blatant conflict of interest
Speaker 4: again for a publicly traded for profit corporation that had
Speaker 4: been climate reticent in the past and had had been
Speaker 4: called out many times by community activists for their lack
Speaker 4: of vision when it came to climate policies and climate action.
Speaker 3: The organizers who fought so hard for this resolution are
Speaker 3: nervous that the PG and E funding could compromise really
Speaker 3: important pieces of the measure, Like there's this part of
Speaker 3: this measure that says that the curricula that the school
Speaker 3: district brings in won't encourage students to see themselves as
Speaker 3: like impartial to climate justice, but instead to actually get involved.
Speaker 4: One piece of language that I think is so important,
Speaker 4: especially right now, is that students come to see themselves
Speaker 4: as leaders and activists for social and environmental justice. So
Speaker 4: this policy specifically says that the school district will support
Speaker 4: student activism on climate and environmental justice.
Speaker 3: And so far, you know, the school board has sort
Speaker 3: of signaled that it's going to stick to this sort
Speaker 3: of commitment to activism. For instance, you know, they allowed
Speaker 3: kids to get an excused absence for the school strike
Speaker 3: that they held in twenty nineteen. But still, the idea
Speaker 3: of a utility that gets most of its power from
Speaker 3: gas and coal having its fingers in this project could
Speaker 3: obviously be a real problem down the line. Especially because
Speaker 3: the activists are hoping for the school district to do
Speaker 3: a lot more to meet the spirit of the resolution.
Speaker 4: What a lot of people have noticed or talked about
Speaker 4: is that the resolution says that there will be curricular
Speaker 4: opportunities for all PPS students to study climate literacy and
Speaker 4: climate justice. So there have been ways in which that
Speaker 4: curriculum has been created more democratically by small groups of
Speaker 4: teachers that come together as experts to kind of share
Speaker 4: their craft and their practice. If the school district supports
Speaker 4: professional development for teachers, which we have not yet, you know,
Speaker 4: in those areas, and then there are other ways in
Speaker 4: which what we call curriculum is actually sort of a
Speaker 4: series of spreadsheets and links and documents that you know,
Speaker 4: are stored on district servers, and you know, as long
Speaker 4: as there's sort of a digital representation of a lesson
Speaker 4: plan that may have been written by a teacher or
Speaker 4: may have been written by a district administrator, you know,
Speaker 4: and that it's linked to state standards, then we're able
Speaker 4: to say, oh, yeah, we have a climate justice curriculum,
Speaker 4: you know. And I think we have a mix of
Speaker 4: both right now on Portland, and maybe given the age
Speaker 4: that we live in and everything else that's going on.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's the best we can expect, but that's kind
Speaker 4: of a whole other can of worms that has been frustrating.
Speaker 3: Swineheart and his comrades in this fight for climate justice.
Speaker 3: Education aren't giving up the fight. They're still pushing the
Speaker 3: school board to discontinue its relationship with PGE. But they
Speaker 3: know that even bigger changes are needed, like transformative changes
Speaker 3: for the whole education system.
Speaker 4: We need new curriculum because this moment calls in some
Speaker 4: ways for the entire educational project to be rethought. You know,
Speaker 4: we're facing a planetary emergency, and I think that the
Speaker 4: status quo of education is just not going to cut
Speaker 4: it at this point.
Speaker 3: And this entirely new way of looking at education isn't
Speaker 3: just theoretical for Swinehart, because he's actually tried to envision
Speaker 3: what it would look like with this project that he
Speaker 3: worked on and called the People's Curriculum for the Earth.
Speaker 3: Co edited it with Bill Bigelow, who's this former social
Speaker 3: studies teacher, and they released it through Rethinking Schools and
Speaker 3: that's education project inspired by Howard Zinn back in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3: Now they're working on another edition, and it's basically this
Speaker 3: just gorgeous book of articles and role playing games and
Speaker 3: stories and poems and graphics, all designed to help teachers
Speaker 3: educate their students about climate change.
Speaker 4: We're specifically teaching against fossil fuels. We're not teaching about
Speaker 4: fossil fuels. We're teaching against fossil fuels. That's because life
Speaker 4: on Earth depends on us moving off of fossil fuels.
Speaker 4: And that's not a political opinion of mind, that's a
Speaker 4: scientific fact.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So the way in which we have developed this curriculum
Speaker 4: have been to engage students with ways in which they
Speaker 4: can see the struggles in various communities, i mean social movements,
Speaker 4: so that necessarily are going to be part of the
Speaker 4: fight to move our society away from fossil fuels.
Speaker 3: So, whereas the fossil fuel industry has sort of, you know,
Speaker 3: promoted this idea with schools that freedom comes from capitalism,
Speaker 3: that nature is this resource to be extracted, this curricula
Speaker 3: that Tim worked on is full of ways to teach
Speaker 3: kids about the importance of actually protecting the commons. And
Speaker 3: you know, while oil and gas companies have pushed this
Speaker 3: idea that individuals are all part of the problem, and
Speaker 3: we all need to do our part to solve climate change.
Speaker 3: This curricula actually names polluting companies as the real enemies.
Speaker 3: There's even a piece in it called forget shorter showers.
Speaker 4: Fossil Fuel companies want us to believe that we can't
Speaker 4: live without them, right, And you know, so I think
Speaker 4: we have to recognize as communities, as educators, that it's
Speaker 4: going to take a fight to loosen their stranglehold on
Speaker 4: our democracy, our collective consciousness, and our communities. And I
Speaker 4: think that part of that work has to begin in school.
Speaker 3: But you know, my favorite part of this whole curricula
Speaker 3: is actually some that Bill Tim's co editor came up with.
Speaker 3: It's a response to the chocolate chip cookie experiment that
Speaker 3: Kurt Davies told us about in the second episode of
Speaker 3: this podcast.
Speaker 2: You remember, my.
Speaker 5: Daughter came home from school in probably third or fourth grade.
Speaker 6: And she said, we did this really cool lesson today
Speaker 6: where the teacher gave us a chocolate chip cookie and
Speaker 6: a toothpick and we had to.
Speaker 4: Carefully extract the chocolate chips without breaking the cookie.
Speaker 5: And the lesson was you can do mining safely. And
Speaker 5: I flipped out I was like, oh my god, you're
Speaker 5: getting mining propaganda.
Speaker 3: Well, the People's Curricula has a version of the chocolate
Speaker 3: chip cookie experiment in it too, but it's a pretty
Speaker 3: different version.
Speaker 4: My co editor, Bill Bigelow ran across that activity and
Speaker 4: designed this just brilliant simulation. He took that activity and
Speaker 4: he ran students through it in the way that the
Speaker 4: you know, American Coal Foundation sort of suggests that you would.
Speaker 4: But he asked them to do it really with two minds.
Speaker 4: You know, one was to just kind of participate in
Speaker 4: the activity. The other one was to think about, well,
Speaker 4: what is this activity teaching students and what's missing? Right,
Speaker 4: it becomes this incredible opportunity for students to say, well, gosh,
Speaker 4: I can't put this cookie back together. You know, what
Speaker 4: is this idea of reclamation, Like what is that supposed
Speaker 4: to I have a bunch of crumbles here. I can't
Speaker 4: just put it back together. You know, if this is
Speaker 4: the earth, what are the implications for what this means
Speaker 4: when mining companies talk about quote reclamation. I think there's
Speaker 4: a way in which, you know, we can use some
Speaker 4: of this industry propaganda actually critically in our classrooms. Right
Speaker 4: to have students examine the ways that they've been used
Speaker 4: in the past, the way they're still deployed today, you know,
Speaker 4: basically as sort of what's not even greenwashing because they're
Speaker 4: not pretending to be green.
Speaker 2: I love that they re envision this chocolate chip cookie experiment,
Speaker 2: and I also love that that they're trying to sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, create something that can be used beyond Portland.
Speaker 2: I was really shocked to read that they found out
Speaker 2: in the process of this that sort of like we won,
Speaker 2: but also the utility is going to fund this whole thing.
Speaker 2: It's just like it shows you how hard it is
Speaker 2: to actually get these companies out.
Speaker 3: Right one hundred percent. And it's not surprising, right, We've
Speaker 3: talked so much in this series about how oil and
Speaker 3: gas interests will make it seem like they're doing something
Speaker 3: altruistic by providing funding. And obviously it's not like there's
Speaker 3: a whole lot of public funding going around for education
Speaker 3: right now, particularly not for climate justice education.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, the problem isn't that they give funding to
Speaker 2: this stuff. The problem is that it never comes without
Speaker 2: strings attached.
Speaker 3: Right, But why would they fund it if it weren't
Speaker 3: for the strings attached? There wasn't something in it for them.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I feel like one of the most insidious ideas
Speaker 2: that that sort of fossil fueld pr has pushed is
Speaker 2: the idea that corporations are people. I mean, way, way,
Speaker 2: way way Before the Citizens United case made that like
Speaker 2: a legal reality in the US, the fossil fuel companies
Speaker 2: were coming up with ways to get people to think
Speaker 2: of companies as people. And you just find that, I
Speaker 2: don't know, invading people's thinking on these things all the time,
Speaker 2: where it's like, but shouldn't we give them a chance?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, it's not a person, it's a corporate entity.
Speaker 2: They don't have like you're not gonna hurt their feelings,
Speaker 2: and of course they're acting in their own interests.
Speaker 3: The point of a private company like this is to
Speaker 3: make money for executives for shareholders, Like the purpose of
Speaker 3: having the company is to grow profits, right.
Speaker 2: Which is like how corporate structures work in the US. Like,
Speaker 2: that's sort of like the way the law works around corporations.
Speaker 2: What I don't understand is why anybody expects them to
Speaker 2: behave differently unless required to do so. Anyway. Okay, so
Speaker 2: we've discussed the fact that one reason that fossil fuel
Speaker 2: propaganda ends up in schools is because school teachers are
Speaker 2: often super overworked and underpaid, and then schools in general
Speaker 2: are under resourced, so they've kind of got way too
Speaker 2: much on their plates to worry about. And when they're
Speaker 2: looking for materials or curricula to bring into the classroom
Speaker 2: and someone offers them something that looks credible and slickly produced,
Speaker 2: it makes sense that they don't necessarily take hours and
Speaker 2: hours to vet it.
Speaker 3: I talk to somebody who's working on a project that's
Speaker 3: trying to help teachers to sort of weed out all
Speaker 3: of the bullshit lesson plans out there. I spoke with
Speaker 3: Frank Neopold, and he works on climate education at the
Speaker 3: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
Speaker 5: I fund a project called the Clean Collection, which is
Speaker 5: the Climate Literacy Energy Awareness Network. And what we're doing
Speaker 5: there is the Internet is of educational materials, and you know,
Speaker 5: teachers will always be looking for supplementary materials to whatever
Speaker 5: curriculums they're working with, and whether it's from kindergarten to undergraduate,
Speaker 5: whether it's earthscience or non orth science. You know, it
Speaker 5: could be biology. Could they also be non science disciplines.
Speaker 3: So the Clean Collection has this team of people who
Speaker 3: rigorously review climate and energy education resources to see if
Speaker 3: they're actually aligned with some basic climate literacy standards, and
Speaker 3: then they compile all of them on this database. It's searchable,
Speaker 3: and then if you're a teacher and you're looking for,
Speaker 3: you know, a lesson plan about heat waves or droughts
Speaker 3: or coal or other environmental issues, you can just go
Speaker 3: online and find these pre vetted materials.
Speaker 5: So we've looked at over thirty thousand digital assets and
Speaker 5: we currently have a reviewed collection of something in the
Speaker 5: order of, you know, seven hundred and fifty, so from
Speaker 5: thirty thousand to seven hundred and fifty, and we continuously
Speaker 5: re evaluate the science of materials. Once it's in, it
Speaker 5: doesn't stay in. It has to continue to stay be current.
Speaker 3: And this is a really cool project. But the thing
Speaker 3: is that, you know, while these materials might be up
Speaker 3: to snuff based on scientific standards, some oil and gas
Speaker 3: messaging can crop up in these much subtler ways. So
Speaker 3: for instance, there's this one vetted lesson plan from a
Speaker 3: group we've heard about in the series before called the
Speaker 3: National Energy Education Development Project or the NEED Project. This
Speaker 3: lesson plan is called Energy Flows, and it's about all
Speaker 3: the different forms of electricity, and there's nothing in it
Speaker 3: that would necessarily raise red flags. But that's also the
Speaker 3: problem because there's also nothing in it about the dangerous
Speaker 3: effects of burning fossil fuels. And that's not surprising because
Speaker 3: need is funded by dozens of companies, including almost all
Speaker 3: of the major fossil fuel interest groups. But still there's
Speaker 3: no outright climate denial in this and so that's better
Speaker 3: than what might end up in a teacher's hands.
Speaker 2: I mean, it does seem better than just a free
Speaker 2: for all where teachers are kind of, you know, left
Speaker 2: to sort it out for themselves. But I think that,
Speaker 2: you know, to tackle this kind of super insidious issue.
Speaker 2: One way to do that is to create a bunch
Speaker 2: of groups that vet every single climate related thing that
Speaker 2: gets into schools. But it seems like surely there must
Speaker 2: be some more systemic approaches out there.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure there's a way to really exercise you know,
Speaker 6: fossil fuel influencing classrooms unless we like overhaul capitalism.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is Katie Worth again. She's the investigative
Speaker 2: journalist we heard from the start of this series. Her
Speaker 2: book Miseducation about the state of climate education in US
Speaker 2: schools comes out next month.
Speaker 6: There's so much public private partnerships and schools. I think
Speaker 6: it would just be a major shift. We would actually
Speaker 6: have to fully fund education to like not take donations
Speaker 6: from Apple, say you know, of computers. I'm not totally
Speaker 6: sure how you would do it through state or federal legislation.
Speaker 6: If say you legislate that schools couldn't use educational materials
Speaker 6: that are from energy interests, like are we cool with
Speaker 6: a private solar company coming in and doing a presentation
Speaker 6: about how solar power works or donating a solar rate
Speaker 6: to the school. So to me, the more likely and
Speaker 6: achievable scenario is that we really advocate for improved climate
Speaker 6: education in every state and in every classroom.
Speaker 2: Can you point it out that that education shouldn't just
Speaker 2: be one lesson in like middle school or high school either.
Speaker 2: In an ideal scenario.
Speaker 6: A good climate education can't just be a single unit
Speaker 6: in middle school science. And then maybe if you take
Speaker 6: you know, high school earth science or environmental science, you'll
Speaker 6: learn a little bit more like you know it should be.
Speaker 6: The issue is relevant to many educational context because it's
Speaker 6: like relevant, like basically in every single industry. Let me
Speaker 6: read to you the classes that climate change shows up
Speaker 6: in the academic standards of the state of Hawaii. Third
Speaker 6: grade social studies, middle school science, high school biology, US
Speaker 6: History and Government, World History and Culture, Pacific Islands Studies,
Speaker 6: Earth Science, environmental science, and at least one math class.
Speaker 6: So you know, there's no kid that's going through the
Speaker 6: school system in Hawaii that's not hearing some stuff about
Speaker 6: climate change and getting at least a little bit climate literate.
Speaker 2: So, in addition to the clean collection vetting climate education resources,
Speaker 2: Katie found some examples in her research of training programs
Speaker 2: for teachers.
Speaker 6: So Washington State is spending millions of dollars a year
Speaker 6: on professional development for teachers that is specific to climate change.
Speaker 6: They started just a few years ago, and in their
Speaker 6: first two years they reached one in five teachers in
Speaker 6: the state. Like that's a big number. So they started
Speaker 6: with science teachers and now they're doing these professional development
Speaker 6: seminars with people and other disciplines. And the truth is
Speaker 6: like a lot of teachers didn't learn much about climate
Speaker 6: change themselves in school, right, It's like not you know,
Speaker 6: one of the classics that we all learn about, like
Speaker 6: how to do long division or something like, a lot
Speaker 6: of teachers haven't learned it themselves, and so there's a
Speaker 6: good reason why they kind of shy away from it
Speaker 6: when it comes up in the curriculum because they're just
Speaker 6: not confident and they have all millions of other million
Speaker 6: other things to do, like giving teachers time off, giving
Speaker 6: them resources, helping educate them so that they can be
Speaker 6: resource for their students, and like give their kids a
Speaker 6: real good education about it is you know, transformational.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I actually
Speaker 3: heard from the folks in Portland that they're pushing for
Speaker 3: this similar kind of professional development for teachers too. But
Speaker 3: all of this still does kind of seem like it's
Speaker 3: putting a lot of responsibility on individuals, on the students,
Speaker 3: on the teachers parents, to sort of sort out the
Speaker 3: systemic problem for themselves, right.
Speaker 2: I know, it's this exhaustingly familiar approach to problems in
Speaker 2: this country. So we did hear about one really pretty
Speaker 2: unexpected place where a systemic solution is in.
Speaker 7: The works, Si Framulata and Luemila Quindici persa a prind
Speaker 7: si quira nos Comuni.
Speaker 2: So this is coverage of the people in cyclical on
Speaker 2: Climate Change, La Dato Si, which was released back in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. This caused like quite a stir because you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of business people and politicians are too so
Speaker 2: so when the Pope came out and was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: climate change caused by humans, we should do something about it,
Speaker 2: it caused kind of a big a big flat.
Speaker 4: Catholic schools very broadly have this mandate coming from all
Speaker 4: the way up from the Pope, really to focus on
Speaker 4: environmental issues and weave that into the curriculum.
Speaker 5: So that's a big thing happening here.
Speaker 2: That's William Mendorin, the high school science and math teacher
Speaker 2: we heard from earlier in the series. He works at
Speaker 2: a private Catholic high school, and he says Catholic schools
Speaker 2: all over the world have this mandate now to incorporate
Speaker 2: the Pope's and cyclical on climate into their curricula.
Speaker 3: Amy, does that mean that the most progressive climate education
Speaker 3: in the US in the next couple of years will
Speaker 3: actually be at Catholic schools. That's pretty wild, I know,
Speaker 3: it really is.
Speaker 2: I feel like it says a lot about what the
Speaker 2: heck is going on with our public school system. Van
Speaker 2: Doren said that that in California at least, that there
Speaker 2: is a formal, concerted effort to actually like create a
Speaker 2: blueprint for how this is going to work in Catholic
Speaker 2: schools in general. And then California is sort of like
Speaker 2: a leader on this stuff. So usually when a curricula
Speaker 2: gets adopted here, it ends up going to all the
Speaker 2: schools throughout the country. So yeah, there you go, Catholic
Speaker 2: school Anyway, I feel like we've we've found at least
Speaker 2: a few silver lightings in this kind of otherwise fairly
Speaker 2: dark and depressing topic about fossil fuel companies in schools.
Speaker 3: It's true. It's heartening to know that you know there's
Speaker 3: at least people working on this and that there have
Speaker 3: some success at the moment.
Speaker 4: Darna, thank you so much for being here and doing.
Speaker 2: This with me. It's been it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 3: It's been such a pleasure for me. I'm so glad
Speaker 3: that I got to be a part of this.
Speaker 2: Drilled is an original production of the Critical Frequency podcast Network.
Speaker 2: This series is a collaboration with earther Gizmoto's climate and
Speaker 2: justice site. My co host and co reporter for the
Speaker 2: series is Darna Noir. Our editors are Julia Richie for
Speaker 2: Drilled and Brian Kahn for Earther. Our producer is Juliana Bradley.
Speaker 2: Mixing and mastering by Peter duff. Our fact checker is
Speaker 2: Trevor Gowan. Music is by Martin Wissenberg. Our artwork was
Speaker 2: created by Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment attorney is James
Speaker 2: Wheaton of the First Amendment Project. You can find corresponding stories, videos,
Speaker 2: and documents for this series on earther dot com. For
Speaker 2: listening and we'll see you next time.