Attitude

As the world faces more energy emissions and more frequent bouts of water scarcity, energy and water conservation messages by agencies and educators are important to inspire conservation-minded actions in people. However, people tend to be driven by their own motivation, or vested interest, to act. Many conservation messages typically do not consider the need of an individual's vested interest, and therefore may fall flat in inspiring action.

Climate change is a social and environmental issue impacting many communities around the world. Understanding ways to mitigate and adapt to these impacts of climate change are important for the continued strength of local communities. In particular, younger generations can be crucial in spreading the lessons learned from climate change education with their use of social media and their increased motivation to act.

Children have become less connected to nature in recent years due to innovations in technology and more time indoors. Specifically, children and adults are more affected by this disconnect in urban areas because there are usually fewer opportunities to experience natural settings. Many in environmental education believe that direct contact with the outdoors can achieve increased knowledge, attitudes, and a deepened connection to nature based on existing research.

As sustainability issues become more mainstream, higher education institutions can provide students with opportunities to learn about sustainability and enhance their capabilities. Sustainability education can help develop graduate attributes, which are skills and capacities like problem-solving, communications, and teamwork that are useful in the real world. Students who successfully gain these skills are often more employable, so higher education institutions work to facilitate the development of sustainability attributes.

One goal of environmental education is to expose students to career opportunities in the environmental sector. Environmental education programs can attempt to increase student interest in environmental jobs, but the focus typically leans toward science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) careers even though the environmental field includes various other career types such as law, business, and social advocacy. A student's vision of environmental jobs may therefore be limited, and research suggests this is true especially among students of color.

Environmental issues such as the increase of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and air and water pollution persist. The effects of these issues and other climate change concerns negatively impact both humans and the natural environment locally, regionally, and globally. For example, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) faces deforestation at an alarming rate. Environmental education (EE) aims to bring awareness to environmental issues like deforestation, its impacts, and actions students can take to mitigate those impacts.

Climate change is rapidly progressing and must be addressed immediately. To do so, educators must come up with unique and creative ways to communicate the impacts climate change has on society. One suggestion for increasing engagement is using film as a means of encouraging people to act against the ongoing threats to the climate. Previous studies have shown film to be conducive to changing perspectives and ideas about environmental topics in general, but not as much research has been published about the impact of climate change films in particular.

In general, humans tend to place themselves on a higher pedestal than animals and other living organisms. Because of this anthropocentric view, humans justify certain animal exploitative practices for their benefit, which has contributed to the ongoing environmental crisis. To better combat this crisis, it is crucial that focus is given to a new ethical framework grounded in environmental principles in which the responsibilities humans have to themselves, their success, and the abundance of wildlife is center.

Most of the scientific community agrees that climate change is a real, pressing issue. However, the subject of climate change remains controversial and politically charged to the rest of the population. The researchers in this study looked at how science, emotion, and politics intersect and inform communication, particularly with youth. Youth will have to grapple with the devastating realities of climate change if action is not taken, yet not much research has focused on youth voice on climate change action.

In order to successfully combat the ever-increasing challenges of climate change and to lessen the overall impacts, it is of the utmost importance for humans to shift toward environmentally-friendly behaviors. Environmental education (EE) has been proven to positively effect pro-environmental behaviors (PEB). Based on the role climate change has on the overall health of the environment, pro-climate behavior (PCB) is a subset of PEB. PCBs are individual actions that can support reducing energy and carbon emissions and other negative impacts of climate change.