EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said global warming has to be included in curriculums, and that putting solar panels on schools is a good way to teach children about "how dramatic climate change really is."
In a recent interview with Irish America, McCarthy was asked whether climate change "should be part of the educational system":
Very much so. I think part of the challenge of explaining climate change is that it requires a level of science and a level of forward thinking and you’ve got to teach that to kids.
People didn’t have a sense of how dramatic climate change really is, and what it means for all of us. So that’s been a challenge. But what’s great about renewables is that when you put a solar panel on the roof of a school, you change the entire dynamic of education for the students. It’s hands-on.
When you wanted to get people active in the environmental world a while ago it was recycling, because you could do it yourself. Part of the challenge today is to make all of these things [affecting climate change] personal enough so that people can get engaged and get active, and feel like there are things we can do together. That’s the hump we need to cross in climate control and I think we’re doing that. I really do, I think people are getting active and engaged.
The federal government has invested a lot of research into how to get Americans to care about climate change, including $697,177 on a traveling play about global warming, and $5.6 million creating climate change games.
A Gallup poll released earlier this year found climate change near the bottom of the list of issues Americans are concerned about.