Climate Change Literacy and Education: History and Project Overview

Chapter 1

Climate Change Literacy and Education: History and Project Overview Downloaded by 80.82.77.83 on December 11, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): October 23, 2017 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2017-1247.ch001

Keith E. Peterman* Department of Physical Sciences, York College of Pennsylvania, York, Pennsylvania 17403, United States *E-mail: [email protected].

Climate change is the defining sustainability issue of our time. This chapter traces the early history of climate change to the present day where student ambassadors represent the American Chemical Society at the epicenter of international climate change negotiations. As early as 1827, Joseph Fourier proposed that gases in the atmosphere might be responsible for trapping energy from the sun, which is now described as the natural greenhouse effect. Svante Arrhenius hypothesized near the end of the 19th century that increases in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 could warm the planet, which we now call the enhanced greenhouse effect. The work of 20th Century scientists Roger Revelle, Dave Keeling, and others would lead to establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988. The IPCC First Assessment Report, completed in 1990, served as the basis for creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the 1992 “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. Each year, UNFCCC Parties gather for a Conference of Parties (COP) which serves as the convention’s “supreme body” with the “highest decision-making authority.” ACS student observers engage the global community at the annual COP to investigate and report on the science of climate change within a broad context of sustainability, economic equality, social justice, and the complexities of developing multilateral policy. The overarching purpose of the ACS student COP project and this book is to promote climate science literacy and education

© 2017 American Chemical Society Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.

among college and university students, young adults, educators, policymakers, and the general public.

Downloaded by 80.82.77.83 on December 11, 2017 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): October 23, 2017 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2017-1247.ch001

Climate Change Literacy and Education: History and Project Overview The inspiration for this book came on a cold December day in Copenhagen. As 2009 drew to a close, I found myself standing for nearly six hours in subfreezing temperatures, waiting to be admitted to the Bella Center, where the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was hosting its 15th Conference of Parties (COP15). By the time I arrived, Copenhagen had become an electric, exciting gathering of UN delegates, policy makers, NGO representatives, special interest groups, and media representatives. They came from all corners of the world, replete with hope and high expectations. More than 100,000 individuals had come to Denmark for COP15, and the city had even been dubbed “Hopenhagen” to underscore the fervent hope that negotiators from around the globe would finally reach an agreement to slow the rise of greenhouse gases (1). COP15 saw the largest gathering of world leaders ever outside the UN in New York, all of whom were poised to put their signatures on a defining, historic climate change treaty. A gaggle of U.S. legislators and emissaries preceded President Obama on the Hopenhagen stage. The President, meanwhile, arrived with significant domestic support: Senators Kerry (D-MA), Lieberman (I-CT), and Graham’s (R-SC), draft, non-partisan “Climate Framework,” and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) declaration that “greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare of the American people (2, 3).” The latter gave the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. More than 40,000 people held official UN accreditation to attend COP5, but the Bella Center could accommodate fewer than 15,000 people. Thanks to our press accreditation, I was one of the lucky ones to gain entrance, as was Matt Cordes, one of the co-editors for this book. Many of those who had made the trek to Copenhagen to participate in and observe the proceedings were literally left out in the cold. Unfortunately, COP15 did not deliver on its promise to usher in a formal agreement. The diplomatic haggling over targets (the emission-reduction goals for each nation), money (who and how much financial assistance should be provided to developing nations), and transparency (how emissions would be verified) was intense and intractable. What emerged instead was a widely varied list of promises under the “Copenhagen Accord”—a weak, non-binding agreement. What’s more, the UNFCCC parties did not formally adopt the accord. In the end, they could merely agree to “take note” of the Copenhagen Accord (4). My experiences in Copenhagen—the failed “Hopenhagen”—gave me pause. I had seen youth from nations large and small, wealthy and poor, crying for a voice in the negotiations. As the aging policymakers sat down to broker the planet’s future, however, those youth were not present at the bargaining table. 2 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.

The following March, at the 2010 Spring National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Francisco, the ACS Committee on Environmental Improvement (CEI) invited me to report on my COP15 experience. In the process, an idea took root with regard to engaging student representatives in the annual UN climate conferences.


Birth of the ACS Students on Climate Change Project “Sustainability” was the overarching program theme at the 2010 Spring ACS National Meeting. Climate change is the most significant global, environmental, economic, social-sustainability issue of our time. Following my meeting with CEI leadership and participation in a Sustainability Engagement Event (SEE) in San Francisco, I was appointed to chair a national SEE Action Team charged with “Incorporating Sustainability into the 2011 International Year of Chemistry (5).” Greg Foy, one of the co-editors for this book, joined me in leading this committee. With the ACS having gained UN NGO “Observer” status for the 2007 COP13 in Bali, Indonesia, our committee developed a proposal to begin sending student ambassadors to represent the ACS at the annual UNFCCC COPs. We presented our proposal to the full CEI committee at the 2010 Fall ACS National Meeting in Boston, where it was accepted, and CEI offered a seed grant to jump start the project. The ACS Students on Climate Change project was off and running (6). That winter, the first two ACS student members received UN accreditation to attend the 2010 COP16 in Cancun, Mexico (see Chapter 2). This served as an official kick-off event for the upcoming 2011 International Year of Chemistry (IYC 2011), with the students even publishing articles about their COP experiences and observations on the Editor’s Blog of Chemical and Engineering News (7). Since then, the project has grown in both scope and national outreach. The roots of this book, however, can be traced to the IYC 2011. In fact, ACS Students on Climate Change remains the only ongoing International Year of Chemistry project within ACS.

Early Greenhouse Hypothesis As early as 1827, French scientist Joseph Fourier proposed that gases in the atmosphere might be responsible for trapping energy from the sun (8). Fourier even established a distinction between “light heat” received on the earth from the sun, versus “dark heat” reflected back to the atmosphere. By way of analogy, he cited an experiment; when a thin sheet of glass is placed atop a black box, the temperature inside of the box increases. This would later be described as the natural greenhouse effect (9, 10). Unpolluted air is primarily composed of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), and argon (0.9%). The remaining 0.1% contains carbon dioxide (0.04%), water vapor, and other trace gases. Put another way, this 0.1% contains the gases responsible for global warming. Nitrogen, oxygen, and argon absorb neither visible nor infrared radiation, so they have no impact on the greenhouse effect. Visibly transparent carbon dioxide, 3 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


on the other hand, does absorb infrared radiation. So even though CO2 represents the merest fraction of our atmosphere, its importance to the climate change story cannot be overstated. Throughout virtually all of human history, CO2 concentration stood at approximately 0.028% (more often expressed as 280 “parts per million” or “ppm”). Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 has increased, eventually surpassing the 0.040% (400 ppm) threshold in 2013 (11). At the end of the 19th century, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius hypothesized that increases in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 could warm the planet; something we now call the enhanced greenhouse effect (12). Arrhenius puzzled in particular over the factors that cause the ice ages. He spent an entire year calculating—latitude by latitude—the balance of solar radiation entering versus “dark heat” retained by the atmosphere. His calculations even took into account “feedback effects,” the fact that increasing concentration of CO2 drove the evaporation of water, which would increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. This, in turn, would exert its own greenhouse effect. In the end, he concluded that doubling the concentration of CO2 would increase the Earth’s temperature by about 5o–6°C. Arrhenius published his work in 1896 and became the first scientist to predict that burning fossil fuels could increase CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and warm the Earth. He reasoned, though, that global warming would be good for the planet (13). Not until the later part of the 20th century would we identify the human contribution of CO2 into our atmosphere as a major factor in the enhanced greenhouse effect that was leading to global warming. Biographers say Arrhenius was a happy man, content with his work and family life. He taught himself to read at the age of three, and his broad academic interests encompassed mathematics and all of the physical sciences (14). He received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his theory on electrolytic dissociation, not for his work on the possibility of global warming. He did not even mention atmospheric CO2 or its link to warming the Earth in his Nobel lecture. Nevertheless, Arrhenius’ Nobel lecture offers some insightful passages. In it, he states that “…we can never be certain that we have found the ultimate truth. Theories…can sometimes be attacked on philosophical grounds.” But, he counseled that we can continue to use a theory “until a better and more satisfactory theory appears” (15). Arrhenius was encouraging us to not discount theories based on our own philosophical, theological, or ideological biases. We must eschew biases in favor of conjectures that can be verified or falsified through scientific studies. Although the international scientific community now nearly unanimously accepts the theory that climate change is the result of increased anthropogenically produced gases in our atmosphere, Arrhenius’ 1896 hypothesis was denied by almost every expert through the first half of the twentieth century. Until the mid-20th century, most scientists dismissed his ideas of global warming. Many felt that nature would balance itself. One, however, did not. 4 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


The Keeling Curve Charles Keeling took a remarkable and compelling route on his way to becoming the world’s leading authority on the accumulation of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere (16). Keeling began his undergraduate studies in 1945 as a chemistry major at the University of Illinois. His program of study required that he take a course in economics, but having grown up immersed in—and disillusioned by—his father’s ideas of economics and banking, the young Keeling rebelled against this requirement by dropping the chemistry major. He would ultimately graduate with a general liberal arts degree. As is frequently the case, social networking created opportunities when Keeling found himself facing the uncertainty of early adulthood. A family friend who remembered being impressed with Keeling even as a precocious child offered him a graduate fellowship at Northwestern University. Even though he lacked a degree in chemistry, he had taken enough courses to prepare him for graduate studies, and Keeling completed his Ph.D. in polymer chemistry in 1954. As fate would have it, the Ph.D. program required a minor in a “noncontiguous” field of study, and Keeling discovered a genuine interest in geology. Chemists—especially those with graduate degrees in polymers—were in high demand in the post-World War II era. Nevertheless, Keeling decided to forgo the promise of a big salary working for a chemical company in the east, opting instead for a post doctoral fellowship at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. Caltech had just started a new department in Geochemistry, and Keeling was its first post-doctoral fellow. Keeling called his time at Caltech in the mid 1950s “a period of opportunity.” When the time came to select a research topic, Keeling, an avid outdoorsman, decided to combine his love of nature with his newly developed interest in geochemistry. This would eventually lead him to develop a system for measuring CO2 in the air. Keeling was an ingenious, meticulous experimentalist who designed apparatuses to function in the “real environment.” Having built an instrument that would accurately and precisely measure atmospheric CO2, Keeling soon discovered that, “the highly variable literature values for CO2 in the free atmosphere were evidently not correct.” Reported values at the time ranged widely, from as few as 150 to as many as 450 ppm. This variability concerned Keeling, who soon developed a personal drive for precise measurements that would accurately represent atmospheric CO2 levels. First, Keeling decided to check the air around Pasadena. He was not surprised that these measured CO2 values varied widely due to the proximity of industry, automobiles, backyard burning (a common practice at the time), etc. In response, Keeling sought a location where he could sample more pristine air. He settled on the state park in the Big Sur costal region of central California, a full day’s drive from Pasadena and (he hoped) an ideal environment for these initial tests. At age 27, the prospect of taking air samples at Big Sur “didn’t seem objectionable, even if I had to get out of a sleeping bag several times in the night. I saw myself carving out a new career in geochemistry” (16). 5 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


Camping in the forest of Big Sur on a clear, nearly moonless night with starlight flooding down through the redwoods, Keeling opened the stopcock on an evacuated five-liter glass vessel, letting the cool, damp air rush into it (17). Thus began the collection of scientific data that would confirm Arrhenius’ hypothesis. Keeling reflects in his autobiography that he “did not anticipate that the procedures established in this first experiment would be the basis for much of the research that [he] would pursue over forty-odd years” (16). Keeling collected samples both night and day to ascertain a daily cycle of maximum and minimum CO2 concentrations in the forest air. To confirm these observations, he expanded his sampling to other pristine forests and rural settings, and in all cases he found the same results. In this way, Keeling discovered a diurnal pattern of CO2 highs and lows with a maximum concentration of 310 ppm in the afternoons. This regular daily pattern was the result of photosynthesis, respiration, and the atmospheric mixing cycle. Further, he realized that the constant result from place to place represented the ‘background’ atmospheric concentration of CO2 (18). He did not realize it at the time, but this astounding discovery would make Keeling famous in coming decades (19). In 1956, the U.S. Weather Bureau was planning to measure CO2 at remote locations around the globe as part of the International Geophysical Year, soon to be simply dubbed “IGY.” IGY was to be a comprehensive, 18-month effort to study global geophysical activities, beginning in July 1957. The emergence of new technologies and tools (including satellites) would enable IGY studies to not only span the globe from North Pole to South Pole, but to include activities in space as well. As part of IGY, Henry Wexler, then the Director of Meteorological Research for the U.S. Weather Bureau, wanted to sample atmospheric CO2 at a new meteorological observatory near the top of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. Wexler was keenly aware of Keeling’s work, and the young scientist successfully lobbied Wexler for the purchase of four infrared gas analyzers—an emerging technology at the time—to continuously monitor CO2 around the world, including atop Mauna Loa. Keeling’s work at Caltech also came to the attention of Roger Revelle, Director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. Revelle was already concerned that humans were returning to the atmosphere a significant amount of terrestrially stored carbon. This carbon had been extracted by plants and stored in sediments during half a billion years of geologic history, yet the massive (and expanding) combustion of coal, petroleum, and natural gas was reversing that process at a vastly accelerated rate (20). Revelle observed that “Human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future” (21). Revelle offered Keeling a position at Scripps, which Keeling accepted. Keeling got to work installing one of Wexler’s IGY-funded infrared gas analyzers atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Surrounded by thousands of miles of ocean, Mauna Loa offered the promise of pristine atmospheric samples. While the air in Pasadena swirled with industrial and other pollutants, Mauna Loa was devoid of any such anthropogenic interference. 6 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


On the first day of measurements in March 1958, Keeling recorded an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 313 ppm. Over the course of his studies, Keeling observed that his measurements would increase to a maximum in May, then decline to a minimum in October, repeating the same seasonal cycle the next year. He noted that “We were witnessing for the first time nature’s withdrawing CO2 from the air for plant growth during summer and returning it each succeeding winter.” Planet Earth, it seemed, was breathing. Keeling also made another significant observation in 1959, when he realized the average CO2 concentration that year was slightly higher than the previous year. In 1960, the average concentration increased still further. Even with this limited data, Keeling published his findings, noting two profound conclusions: • •

Our planet is undergoing natural seasonal breathing; and The background atmospheric concentration of CO2 is increasing (22).

Data collection at the Mauna Loa site has continued into this, its seventh decade, and the Keeling Curve—the longest continuous record of atmospheric CO2 data in the world (see Figure 1 below)—has become emblematic of the global warming story (23). Indeed, it serves as the cornerstone of global warming science today (24).

Figure 1. Keeling Curve. (Reproduced from ref. (23). Copyright 2016 esrl.noaa.gov).

7 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


In 1969, Keeling spoke to the American Philosophical Society about the data from Mauna Loa. Addressing the first decade of his Curve, Keeling cautioned that if the rise in CO2 continued, it would be “…likely to inhibit the escape of heat radiating upward from the Earth’s surface and bring about a warmer climate—the so-called ‘greenhouse effect (17).’” In his presentation, Keeling was responding with hard scientific data to the global warming question originally presented by Arrhenius. The burning of fossil fuels was increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and the consequences promised to impact the global climate. Years later, though, Keeling would reflect that “there was no sense of peril then, just a keen interest in gaining knowledge.”

Alarm Bells Ring The first Earth Day, held on April 22, 1970, launched the modern environmental movement. As the general public began to recognize that our biosphere was not an infinite sink immune from human impacts, citizens started pressuring policymakers to enact environmental laws that would protect our air, water, and other natural resources. As the 1970s progressed, there was growing concern that human emissions could impact the global climate. This was based not on any single piece of evidence, but on a growing body of cross-disciplinary documentation: experts in meteorology, geophysics, climatology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, oceanography, geography, hydrology, glaciology, and biology, were seeing critical alignment among their findings. There were still uncertainties, but the First World Climate Conference, held in Geneva in early 1979, expressed concern that “continued expansion of man’s activities on Earth may cause significant extended regional and even global changes of climate.” While Arrhenius had been unable to move beyond a hypothetical prediction of the possibility of global warming, by the latter half of the 20th century, Keeling’s findings, coupled with documented climate change impacts from other disciplines, began to elevate Arrhenius’1896 hypothesis to the level of distinct theoretical possibility. Mounting volumes of data showed a direct correlation between global temperatures and the levels of greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. Although there was still a level of uncertainty, a growing body of scientific evidence supported the theory of global warming. In 1981, James Hansen and a team of scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies published a seminal article in Science stating that increased levels of CO2 in our atmosphere would lead to warming sooner than previously predicted. Their model projected “global warming…for the next century is of almost unprecedented magnitude” estimating a 2.5°C temperature increase. Later in the decade, Hansen’s testimony before congress helped raise awareness of global warming among policymakers and civil society. His 1988 testimony was considered pivotal in moving the climate change discourse from the closed circle of climate scientists to a full blown public debate. Unfortunately, “climate change”—also branded “global warming” or “climate variability”—became a polarizing political debate in subsequent years. 8 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.

By the 1980s, scientists recognized the need for a comprehensive assessment body to separate fact from uncertainty. Global issues require a global organization, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was born (25).


The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) The World Meteorological Association (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) established the IPCC in 1988 to provide independent analysis of the existing consensus within the scientific community, and today scientists and policymakers around the globe recognize the IPCC as the most comprehensive, authoritative body for assessing the science of climate change. The IPCC is an apolitical, scientific entity comprised of thousands of scientists and experts from around the world, representing a number of relevant fields. Unlike government agencies, its role is not to make policy. Rather than conducting actual research, the IPCC exists to assess peer-reviewed, published scientific, and technical literature, and to make this information available to policymakers. The IPCC’s aim is to be objective, open, and transparent in its rigorous review of the scientific literature. Although the IPCC is policy-neutral, it is policy-relevant. In other words, once governments accept and approve its reports, policymakers are acknowledging the legitimacy of their scientific content. This makes IPCC reports highly relevant in crafting governmental policies. Since its inception in 1988, the IPCC has published five Assessment Reports (26). These state—with increasing scientific certainty—that climate change is occurring, and that it is largely due to human activity. The seminal First Assessment Report, published in 1990, demonstrated this “policy-neutral, policy-relevant” position. In it, the scientific community agreed that emissions from human activities were substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, adding that this could result in additional warming of the Earth’s surface. It would be another decade, though, before scientists concurred that they could be certain.

The Long Road from Rio to Paris When policymakers instituted the UNFCCC treaty at the 1992 “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, the IPCC First Assessment Report was a key foundational document. The UNFCCC exists to prevent “…dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system (27).” The U.S. joined more than 150 nations in signing the convention, and the annual Conference of Parties (COP) serves as the convention’s “supreme body,” with the “highest decision-making authority (28).” Today, the UNFCCC has near-universal membership with 195 parties (194 countries and the EU) having ratified the convention. 9 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


The UNFCCC is a platform for political negotiation. It is wholly separate from the IPCC, which provides the science. The UNFCCC decides what policies to enact based on the known science. COP3, held in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, was at the time the most prominent conference held. The UNFCCC treaty had set no mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual nations, and it contained no enforcement provisions; it called for subsequent updates that would set mandatory limits, but it was not a legally binding document. More than 10,000 participants from 161 countries attended COP3 with the goal of finally establishing mandatory, legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations. The result was “The Kyoto Protocol,” which entered into force on February 16, 2005 and bound 37 industrialized countries and the European Union to reduce emissions by an average of five percent against 1990 levels (29). The United States symbolically signed the Kyoto Protocol, but we stand alone as the only industrialized nation that never officially ratified it. In spite of limited U.S. engagement, the international community pressed forward with action guided by the UNFCCC. The December 2007 COP13 in Bali—the first for which the ACS was accredited to participate—intended to give direction for the negotiating process that would follow the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. The resulting Bali Roadmap led negotiators through the 2008 COP14 in Poznan, Poland, en route to COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark (30). COP15 held the potential to reshape global greenhouse gas emission targets (and the ensuing rise of global temperatures) for decades to come. As stated at the beginning of this chapter, COP15 failed to deliver on that potential. Subsequent conferences in Cancun, Mexico (COP16) and Durban, South Africa (COP17) achieved modest outcomes as set forth in the Cancun Agreements and similar documents (31). Here, parties agreed to create a legally binding global treaty by 2015, with an effective date of 2020. In a departure from previous agreements, China and India would be bound by this treaty. In reality, though, negotiators in the run up to COP21 in Paris did little more than kick the can down the road to the next climate conference. Poilcymakers drafted the historic Paris Agreement at COP21 in December 2015 (32). Here, at last, was a plan that offered hope for a world that has long awaited a global strategy to address climate change. Success in Paris can largely be credited to the visionary Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), which allowed each country to negotiate its own commitments within the context of their own political realities (33). The U.S. Senate, for example, would almost certainly not ratify an international climate treaty due to the number of senators who either deny that climate change is occurring or doubt that humans are responsible. Nevertheless, our nation was able to commit to a 26%–28% reduction from 2005 greenhouse gas emission levels by 2025 through the Clean Air Act and the regulatory authority of the EPA. INDCs leading up to Paris were “Intended.” The Agreement required 55 countries representing over 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions to sign on with their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in order for The 10 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.


Agreement to enter into force (34). That threshold was passed on October 5, 2016. Thirty days later, the Paris Agreement entered into force on November 4, 2016. I attended my first COP in 2009 at COP15 in Copenhagen, and my co-editors and I were all present to witness the historic success of COP21 in Paris in December 2015. The contrast between the two events could not be more stark. In Copenhagen, the parade of dignitaries grew more and more star-studded each day as leaders arrived for the high-level closing sessions to personally forge an agreement and—hopefully—put their signatures on an historic document. As we have seen, the actual conclusion fell short of “historic (4).” COP21 in Paris, on the other hand, opened with the largest one-day gathering of world leaders ever, with negotiators subsequently instructed by their respective heads-of-state to “get the job done.” And they did. More than 100,000 people converged on Copenhagen, and thousands took part in demonstrations. In Paris, a city still reeling from the terrorist attacks that left 130 dead just weeks before, an official state of emergency all but prevented any civil disobedience. The noteworthy exception, of course, was a massive permitted (and peaceful) demonstration that unfurled a “Red Line of Climate Injustice,” symbolizing a red-line temperature increase that cannot be passed (35). As well, a broad coalition of NGOs unrolled multiple red lines decrying injustices caused by climate change. The accepted text of the Paris Agreement envisions holding our planetary fever at 1.5°C, although UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated at COP21 that the collective INDCs put forth by UNFCCC member parties are not enough to keep our world from warming beyond 2°C this century (36). Whatever the actual outcome, The Paris Agreement represents our first global step (albeit it a baby step) toward tackling the civilization-challenging threat of climate change. *** The overarching purpose of this book is to promote climate science literacy and education among college and university students, young adults, educators, policymakers, and the general public. The ACS Climate Change Public Policy Statement recommends that “The U.S. Government should promote climate science literacy and education for citizens and policymakers about climate change impacts to help empower citizens and local and regional governments to make informed decisions and preparations to help protect homes, businesses, and communities against adverse impacts” (37). Each of the chapters in this book is authored by an individual who has participated in one or more UN COPs since the Students on Climate Change project was launched in 2010 as a kickoff event for the IYC 2011. All have traveled to the ACS National Headquarters in Washington, DC to receive instruction on media outreach, and to Capitol Hill and governmental agencies for off-the-record informational meetings and technical advice. They have written articles and leveraged social media to engage their peers and others in the climate change discourse. In addition, all authors have presented informed papers in climate literacy symposia at recent ACS national meetings. Climate change is the defining sustainability issue of our time. Today’s youth are the first generation to feel the adverse impacts of climate change, and, in the 11 Peterman et al.; Climate Change Literacy and Education The Science and Perspectives from the Global Stage Volume 1 ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2017.

words of UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, “the last generation that can put an end to climate change (38).” This book offers insight from students who have engaged the global community at the epicenter of international climate change negotiations. The following chapters present the science of climate change within a broad context of sustainability, economic equality, social justice, and the complexities of developing multilateral policy.

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