PAYING FOR THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY.

Too often human impact on the environment is reduced to a "mea culpa" description, with little analysis of decision-making mechanisms that often have led to even further devastation of the environment. In " Climate Miseducation", Katie Worth reports on the shockingly disproportionate influence that the fossil-fuel industry has in setting science education standards in Texas, which consequently influence much of the textbook content throughout the U.S. As a science educator and school sustainability leader at an international school in Italy, I found the process in Texas of setting standards based on volunteer committees and decision-making by members of the State Board of Education extremely worrying. By allowing them to analyze the costs and benefits associated with fossil-fuel usage - and who pays - they will certainly come to the same conclusion as any other rational scientist: Although the start-up costs are great, converting our society to renewable energy will save us from the dramatically greater health, social, economic and environmental costs associated with continuing on the current path. [Extracted from the article]