NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch.
"In the United States, the teaching of climate change remains a subject of controversy," begins a story from Reporterre (September 14, 2026), a French "independent media outlet dedicated to ecology in all its forms" — and NCSE's Glenn Branch was consulted for comment.
"Since the alleged 'indoctrination' denounced by Donald Trump in 2017, climate education has emerged as a new front in the 'culture war,' summarizes Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education ... According to him, 'classrooms have become political and cultural battlegrounds,' particularly in the K-12 system ... but also in universities, 'with an attempt to water down the way the subject is addressed in the curricula.'"
The article focused on Florida, where new details recently emerged about the state department of education's censoring climate change in science textbooks, as NCSE previously reported. Bertha Vazquez — a retired Florida teacher, the coauthor of a recent book on climate change education, and a recipient of NCSE's Friend of Darwin award — complained of the "deluge of misinformation" about climate change inundating students.
Because some teachers are hesitant to discuss climate change in class because of the possibility of community backlash, "some schools are turning to organizations like the [CLEO] Institute in Florida. This organization trains teachers, provides them with educational resources, and raises students' awareness of the climate crisis." (The CLEO Institute is a recent recipient of NCSE's Friend of the Planet award.)
Reporterre also discussed Texas, where Texas A&M University recently removed climate and environmental courses from a list of courses satisfying general education requirements. Judy Dickey of the university's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, who teaches such a course, regarded the change as "a roundabout way of marginalizing" the topic by making the course "nothing more than a single, unimportant option."
"At a time when Florida and Texas are making it harder to teach climate change in their schools," the article added, "other states are taking an almost diametrically opposite approach," citing New Jersey and New York.
