In the world of education, and maybe the world full stop, there's nothing more important than teaching young people the science of climate change. They need this information as surely as they need reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Without detailed knowledge of the climate and extinction crises, moving forward, they'll lack essential tools for civic engagement, for advocating for policies that could make enormous differences to their quality of life, and for being able to make the best choices for themselves and even their own children. We owe it to future generations to make sure our kids understand the realities of our changing climate so that they can fully participate in their own future.
Read other essays from our #ClimateEdNow series.
Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen books of literary fiction, most recently a novel called A Children’s Bible (W.W. Norton), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction and one of The New York Times Book Review’s Best 10 Books of 2020. Other titles include the novels Sweet Lamb of Heaven (2016) and Mermaids in Paradise (2014). Millet has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction and various other honors and works as a writer and editor at the Center for Biological Diversity, an organization dedicated to fighting climate change and species extinction.