“Climate pollution” in a valley: a question of children at a Nepal school during the years of climate change, and how we can best address it together

This is a simple example of the growing use of phrases like “carbon pollution” and “climate pollution” that used to be rare. Connecting climate change with something visceral and dangerous brings more immediacy to a problem that’s often seen as unfolding far away or in the future, even though it’s causing suffering now. Climate pollution is becoming more common on websites of green groups. The EPA website features the words “carbon pollution” as a way for the Biden administration to communicate its position on the issue.

Susan Joy Hassol, the director of Climate Communication, believes that pollution is a better word to use than emissions.

It wasn’t always a popular move to link global warming with air quality. They were always seen as distinct problems by most environmental groups. Environmental justice advocates, on the other hand, have argued that global emissions and local air pollution were inextricably linked and needed to be addressed together. Otherwise, they argued, climate legislation could actually impede efforts to clean up the air in communities saddled with pollution.

The heads of state are in Egypt for the United Nations climate change negotiations. And when world leaders talk about climate change, they evoke one group more than any other: children.

Children living on the front lines of climate change have a lot of questions. How is information about a changing planet passed down to the inheritors of a hotter Earth? In places where the Internet is not widespread, how do young people understand what’s happening?

In Nepal, we talked to students and teachers at a school about their experiences and hopes for the future.

The valley has a school located in it. The river is at the bottom. There are peaks of more than 23,000 feet behind the school. It is about a two day walk from the school to the nearest road. Until earlier in the year, the area had sporadic solar electricity.

Almost two dozen boys who live and study at the school most of the year, only have a brief period in the winter when they return to their hometowns nearby.

A mountainous area with a glacial lake as a climate-change resource: The experiences of a Nepalese high school student

“We can see many mountains here,” says Mingma Thamang, an 18-year-old student at the school who has hiked up to a nearby glacial lake multiple times in recent years. He says he’s heard that the lake could cause a big flood in the future.

Indeed, the lake is at critical risk for flooding, according to scientists. And the school is located very close to the river, and would likely be damaged or destroyed in such a disaster.

Bolendra Acharya has been at the school for 12 years, and he says there are other changes as well. Snow that used to cover the nearby mountains in thick blankets is now spotty and thin. Bare rock is visible on the highest peaks. It’s not as reliable to have rain on a predictable schedule in the summer.

A lot of people who live in the area raise livestock or work in the mountain trekking industry so unreliable rain is a problem. When the rain comes late, or all at once, it hurts crops and makes it difficult to safely cross the river. Domestic yaks and other livestock are unable to access grazing areas.

When the area becomes more popular with Nepalese tourists, as well as with heavy rain and glacier melt, there are more dangers for hikers who are using narrow riverside paths and suspension bridges.

Acharya grew up nearby and says, when he was young, life in the valley was very different. Our life was not in danger. We would just cross the river,” he says. “But now it seems like, at any time, it could just sweep us away. There is a kind of fear among us. Anything could happen.

Acharya makes it a point to talk to his students about the environment. He wants to introduce the students toclimate change because they live in an area that has a lot to learn.

There is no formal curriculum for climate change but they study general science. The primary focus of the school is to educate students to become lamas. For the first five years, students study math, History, Science, and other academic subjects while those who continue on for three years focus on religious and language training.

Lhakpa Sonam Sherpa, who recently graduated from the school, says he learned about plants and animals of the region, and about the larger geography of Nepal.

How much is there about climate change? A survey of 50 years of introductory biology textbooks, published in PLoS ONE1

That’s not the only shift. The amount of information about the impacts of climate change grew as the space devoted to solutions shrank, according to a survey of introductory biology textbooks from 50 years ago. The work was published on 21 December in PLoS ONE1.

In the 1970s, the median position of sections about climate change was only 15% of the page; in the 2010s it is 2.5%. According to Landin, controversial topics are usually put at the end because teachers don’t have to teach them.

Eric Plutzer is a political scientist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park and he told me that there isn’t a good guide to how much students are learning about climate change. Instructors could be spending more time on climate change than textbooks indicate, he adds.