The mission of K12 Climate Action, as part of the Aspen Institute, “is to unlock the power of the education sector to be a force toward climate action, solutions, and environmental justice to help prepare children and youth to advance a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable society.”
Whereas its primary audience is our nation’s 98,000 public schools, K12 Climate Action offers resources and an approach to climate action that could benefit any school. The organization offers a Local K-12 Climate Action Plan: Key Questions to Get Started, a guide to “help you ask questions to begin determining opportunities for your [school] to develop local… climate action plans,” while also providing resources to support action-plan implementation.
In “My Climate Moment,” an article in Harvard’s summer 2022 Ed. Magazine, K12 Climate Action leader Laura Schifter wrote: “Our schools… present a very powerful opportunity. As places of learning, they can build our societal capacity to tackle climate change.” The 2021 K12 Climate Action Plan, as Schifter writes, “envisions a future where our… schools are beacons of climate action: where our school buildings produce as much energy as they consume; where America’s 480,000 school buses are electric; our schools’ 2 million acres of land are green schoolyards; the 7 billion meals served in schools are sustainable; and importantly, the 50 million students in school are engaged in learning about climate change, climate solutions, and sustainability and are prepared for success in the clean economy.”
K12 Climate Action seeks to harness the collective power of our schools and bring about structural and systemic improvements to counteract climate change. In addition to this resource, and undergirding the future leadership of our environment and human wellbeing, we must always remind ourselves of the exponential potential for change through each educator and in each classroom, each student, and moment. To this end, read about another organization’s endeavor to connect teachers in and around education focused on climate change and justice.
