Miseducation

Ah, so this is one of those, "you think you understand, but it's actually worse than you think" kind of social issues, cool!

I've been out of the public school system for about 17 years now, and I do not remember if I was formally taught about global warming or climate change in any official capacity. I knew of it, but I can't remember how or when or where I first learned about it. And I guess going forward I just assumed that kids coming after me would be taught in a more direct way than I had. Turns out that's kind of geographically and/or politically dependent.

Sidestepping whether or not it should be an issue, it is, and this book offers a shortened timeline of how interests aligned to bring the fight into the classroom (as if public school teachers didn't have enough going on). I found it specifically interesting how in the late 90's through early 2000's the evangelical right was largely pro-environment - spun as a sort of, "we must protect God's creation" kind of goal - but then abruptly realigned with large gas and oil company propaganda circa 2005. Seems like Big Oil just piggybacked onto the decades-old battle against evolution being taught in schools, and used Big Tobacco's playbook of denying and obfuscating the evidence for as long as possible.

Not exactly an uplifting read, but as a childless adult who doesn't really have any young people in my life this was pretty eye-opening into an issue I didn't fully know was going on.