US College Biology Textbooks Failing to Address Climate Change, According to a New Study

United States college biology textbooks are failing to address the climate crisis, a new study says. The book analysis over the last 50 years found that fewer than three pages in a typical 1,000-page biology textbook from recent decades address climate change.

Source: DW News/YouTube

Although the coverage of Climate change has expanded since the 70s, the sentences focused on Climate change peaked in the 90s and have declined by 80 percent in recent decades. The study, published in the Public Library of Science journal, Plos One, found that the average coverage of Climate change in biology textbooks from the last 10 years was 67 sentences, which is up from 51 sentences in the 2000s. This is not enough, given the climate emergency that we are currently in.

The study analyzed 57 US college biology textbooks published between the 1970s to 2019 and found that Climate change often was placed in the back of the books, from the last 15 percent to the last 2.5 percent of the pages.

“People tend to move through books from beginning to end,” Landin said, “and of course, everybody sort of runs out of time, so if you have something at the very end, the odds are that that’s going to be either covered quickly or not at all.”

The researchers found that no textbook mentioned actions relate to dietary choices, and only eight books addressed transportation as a way to lower greenhouse emissions.

“Climate change is affecting life all over the globe,” said Jennifer Landin, author of the study and an associate professor of biology at North Carolina State University. “And we are not covering it to nearly the degree it needs to be.”

Human-caused Climate change is warming our oceans and harming the delicate underwater ecosystems. The single best thing that you can do to help fight Climate change is to go vegan. With the latest IPCC report that says it’s ‘now or never‘ to take action against Climate change, we need to act fast!

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