Our earliest lessons about changing temperatures and heat-trapping pollution often come from school classrooms as children. But what if those lessons spread misinformation to mold young minds to embrace dirty energy for corporate profits?
As The Lever reported, the Illinois Petroleum Resource Board is driven by the oil and gas industry and provides misleading public education campaigns to Illinois students and teachers. A cited example of these deceptive materials was uncovered in a 1996 VHS video called Fuel-Less, a parody of the hit movie Clueless.
What's happening?
The petroleum board provides "public awareness and education programs regarding the upstream Illinois oil and gas industry." It conducts elementary, middle, and high school presentations to promote oil and gas careers.
State education offices have promoted the board's teacher workshops to obtain professional development credits. The message is the same for students and teachers: Daily life revolves around petroleum, and our world cannot exist without it.
Sally Burgess from the Sierra Club in southern Illinois said, "It just seems like [the effort is] getting in there and indoctrinating students to support the industry."
Why is environmental education important?
As the world steers away from planet-warming oil and gas energy, the petroleum board's role in school is concerning. The dirty energy industry is targeting classrooms and misinforming students that climate science is uncertain and that oil and gas are beneficial and the only true options available.
Students listening to the petroleum board presentations don't necessarily understand the full context of gas and oil's effects on the planet. Biased, profit-motivated programming ignores and avoids that the green transition is real, viable, and beneficial to our future, the planet, and all its inhabitants.
"What people want is that there's a transition to renewable energy … [and] there's a ton of jobs there, and those jobs have the potential for being just as good if not better than existing oil and gas jobs," said Oakley Shelton-Thomas from the environmental group Food and Water Watch.
What can be done about misinformation in schools?
Educators and parents can inform students how the promise of oil and gas jobs is misleading as states continue to move toward the clean energy transition.
Teachers and school districts can work together to offer an unbiased, accurate, and balanced curriculum to help children make informed, educated decisions. Meanwhile, parents can talk to their kids about greenwashing and how major corporations run enticing ad campaigns to attract and brainwash future consumers, employees, and advocates.
"I would like to find ways of working with students to show that there might be a slightly different future ahead," said John Delurey from the clean energy nonprofit Vote Solar. "It's an exciting future, and it's best to prepare for it."
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