Opinion: The province has no curriculum requirement for students to learn about climate change’s causes or solutions
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After Vancouver’s first snowless winter in 43 years, B.C. is failing to educate students about the climate crisis that is warming their world. As parents and health-care providers, we are worried how poorly our province is preparing our children to understand and solve the crisis that is going to touch every season of their lives — from winters without snow to summers that are too smoky to play safely outside.
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The province has no curriculum requirement for students to learn about climate change’s causes or solutions. A student can graduate from a B.C. high school without ever being taught that burning fossil fuels is driving the crisis threatening their world.
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Our children are worried about it, too. In a 2023 study of 1,000 Canadian young people (aged 16-25), 73 per cent of respondents reported that thinking about the future is frightening, and 78 per cent reported that climate change impacts their overall mental health. With these high levels of climate anxiety and misinformation spreading, B.C.’s gap in climate education leaves young people vulnerable, unable to separate fact from fiction or advocate for their own futures.
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Recent polling found that only 53 per cent of British Columbians know that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause of climate change, and 35 per cent understand that so-called “natural gas” is mostly methane, a greenhouse gas over 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Every student should leave high school knowing these foundational facts. Without accurate information, they cannot make informed decisions about their future, or hold leaders accountable for the policies shaping it.
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Last summer, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment B.C. and parent climate advocacy organization For Our Kids Vancouver delivered an open letter to Minister of Education Lisa Beare. The letter was signed by over 175 people, representing thousands of British Columbians. The letter called for mandatory, comprehensive climate education across all grades, because climate change touches everything, from science and economics to history and health.
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What B.C. students need is straightforward. A climate-focused graduation requirement and interdisciplinary course that explores real climate solutions would give students not just awareness, but agency. Teachers need professional development and resources to teach these topics confidently. A province-wide training day would be a meaningful start. And corporate influence has no place in any of this. Just as we would not invite the tobacco industry to design health curricula, we cannot allow fossil fuel companies like FortisBC to shape how students learn about climate change.
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The communities hit hardest by heat domes, floods, and wildfires are rarely the ones with the most resources to recover. Children are among the most physically and psychologically vulnerable to these disasters, and they are the least responsible for causing them. Leaving them without an honest, rigorous climate education is indefensible.
