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According to a recent NPR poll that found 55 percent of teachers do not cover climate change or even talk to their students about it during class time. But the demand is there — around 80 percent of parents told NPR they wished their kids were getting information about climate change in school, and the vast majority of teachers surveyed (86 percent) said they wanted to include it in their curriculum. The most commonly cited reason educators at the K-12 level gave for not addressing climate change was because it was “outside of their subject area.”

In 2010, the National Science Foundation launched the Climate Change Education Partnership Program (CCEP), aiming to partner with leading universities and educate students, teachers, and the public about global climate change and its impacts. “The topic of climate change is not currently well-represented in national and state science education standards,” according to Jill Karsten, a program director at the National Science Foundation, said in a press release. “We want to prepare individuals and their communities to make their own evidence-based decisions.”