Climate emergencies surround us today. The gap between the severity of the climate crisis and the inadequate response in schools threatens students’ lives and the future of the planet. Young people deserve tools that help them understand who shaped the warming world they inherited and how to meet the crises in front of them.
Timelines can be useful tools for distilling long, complex histories, and timelines of climate change are nothing new. A simple Google search can reveal dozens of sites or articles that claim to document its development. But the stories most timelines tell about the climate crisis misleadingly cast it as a product of the “natural” world — not as a consequence of human history, of choices, of systems through which profit and injustice flow. These accounts often laser-focus on the steady buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere and climbing temperatures with little-to-no attention to the authors of global warming, movements to curb it, and populations that bear the brunt of its effects. They promote a sense of inevitability, fueling a dangerous mix of despair and inaction. We have developed a different timeline of the crisis at hand.
The Climate Crisis Timeline is a brand new resource, and we’re eager to hear how you use it in your classrooms and curricula. Experiment with it, send us your teaching stories, and spread the word on social media (#TeachClimateJustice).
HRE USA 