Effects of Climate Solutions Education on Youth Climate Change Beliefs and Pro-Environmental Behaviors: The University of California’s Bending the Curve Course

Anthropogenic climate change is a reality driven by unrelenting global fossil fuel usage and resulting emissions. The United Nations has declared that in addition to technological solutions, enhancing climate literacy can play an essential role in advancing climate mitigation, adaptation as well as promoting wellbeing. Yet, there is a lack of empirical research showing the effects of climate education on human behavior. Here, we analyzed the effects of the climate solutions focused University of California Bending the Curve (BtC) course on: 1) climate change beliefs, 2) personal pro-environmental actions, and 3) psychological health, using baseline and post-course surveys. 374 youth (median age 21 ± 1.7 years, 63% female) participated in the study. We observed that the BtC course enhanced climate change beliefs. Specifically, at post relative to pre-course, we observed significantly increased belief that global warming will impact individuals personally as well as impact our future generations; it tripled the number of students who believe that humans can and will act to reduce global warming; it significantly increased the number of individuals who believe in a scientific basis for climate change. Notably, climate literacy also enhanced belief in the efficacy of personal climate action, and increased agreement amongst youth that many of their friends also share the same views on global warming. With regard to personal pro-environmental actions, the solutions focused education significantly improved self-reported actions including waste reduction, making food choices with reduced emissions and purchase of carbon offsets. These actions reduced carbon footprint per student at post vs. pre-course by a significant 0.3 ± 0.1 CO2 tons/year, which is equivalent to CO2 absorbed by about 15 trees per year. Psychological health outcomes did not show any significant post vs. pre-course change. Overall, our findings provide evidence that solutions-based climate education can be an important strategy to enhance individual climate change awareness as well as personal pro-environmental actions that lead to significant individual carbon footprint reduction, with potential for widespread scale-up.