This question can have many answers. Below we have chosen to present five wide-ranging ones, with which we will try to summarize the main social and didactic motivations behind the choice to address this issue in schools.
- Climate change is a global theme: it affects all human beings and many other living species and touches every area of the planet.
- Climate change is a phenomenon that involves very high social risks: not dealing with it can lead to serious consequences and perhaps the very disappearance of a large part of humankind.
- Climate change is an urgent issue: reducing the margin of risk in the next 10 years is essential to achieve the objective of controlling the phenomenon.
- Climate change is a highly interdisciplinary issue: its nature is physical, its causes are economic and historical, its consequences are social and environmental. And the school is the place where all these issues can be tackled.
- Climate change is an issue related to individual and collective behaviour and to an adequate level of information: although the behaviour of each of us contributes directly to the evolution of the issue, most people are poorly informed. Educating (school) students and raising community awareness is therefore a matter of urgency.
