"Had Florida’s high school marine biology students read the original draft of their textbook, they would have learned about research that found climate change is killing at least 150,000 people per year, and another 1ºC of warming would double that." Instead, they learned that “human health will also be affected by the increase in CO2 and another 1ºC will further increase the impact.” Also, an environmental science textbook by publisher Cengage removed the word “polluting” in front of “coal burning power plants.”
"These count among the changes that Florida education officials asked science textbook publishers to make in the summer of 2024 that either watered down or eliminated content about the climate crisis, an investigation by WUSF + The Hechinger Report has found."
"Not changes that were required to bring the textbooks in line with the [existing] state science standards," said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit that tracks how climate is taught in classrooms across the country.
"These revelations come as the state is quietly updating its science standards for the first time since 2008." Academic standards outline what knowledge + skills a student should master in each grade + subject; the existing science standards mandate that students be taught about human-caused climate change in several high school electives—including earth science, marine science, + environmental science—and leaves room for the subject to arise in several other classes.
"But it’s unclear whether Florida’s updated science standards will include education about climate change, which has already shaped the lives of many of the state’s 3 million students. The reasons are obvious, but state education officials did not respond to repeated questions on the topic.
Governor Ron DeSantis officially removed references to climate change from state statutes in May 2024. Morally, censorship ranks right up there with book burning. In a burning world, no less. These officials ought to end up in a certain level in Hades.
