The New Climate Literacy Act

Watching her coworker compile the footage of their former students, Jeanine Silversmith felt a few tears slide down her cheek. In short video segments, each student shared their journey with climate literacy and how environmental learning had impacted their lives in the past few months. While ideally these stories would’ve been able to be told in person, hearing them remotely was striking nonetheless.

“I was starting to cry,” Silversmith said, smiling fondly at the memory. “I was proud, but I don’t want to even use the word proud. It’s not even pride. I was just hopeful.”

Silversmith is the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Environmental Education Association (RIEEA). Since its founding in 1978, the membership organization’s goal has been to unite individuals and educators around promoting climate literacy across the state of Rhode Island. This partnership works to fill a hole in climate education felt by many students.

“Honestly, we had pretty much no climate education throughout any of our schooling. It was pretty difficult,” says Arianna Cunha, 19, former coordinator of the Youth Sunrise Movement in 2022. In the face of a complete absence of climate education in her own high school, Cunha gathered a group of students for weekly meetings. They discussed the environment, actions they could take to protect it, and their own personal connections to activism. Without much legislative action regarding climate education, these students decided to take the matter into their own hands.

While Cunha is devoted to student organized climate action, she acknowledges that sometimes legislation is what is necessary to reach a wider audience. According to Cunha, there has not been a social justice movement that has engaged 11.5% or greater of a population and has not achieved at least part of its goal. This is the statistic that Sunrise uses to shape their organizing efforts.

“I definitely think that there needs to be a curriculum change,” Cunha said. “It’s the only way for us to fully reach the 11.5% that we need.”

However, Cunha and her Sunrise peers have struggled with getting through to their state senators. During their weekly meetings, Sunrise youth members would sit around Cunha’s living room phoning their senators. Their goal was to have one person for each district in touch with the corresponding senator. 

“A lot of them would dance around the issue and be like, “Yeah, I totally support it,” and then not actually pass real climate legislation,” Cunha said. “They were free and willing to lie to us because we were children.”

Struggling to get through to state senators has been the most difficult part of maintaining momentum for the Sunrise Youth Movement in Rhode Island. However, while the state may be slow to act on these demands, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of Rhode Islanders want change.

A study conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 77% of Rhode Island residents believe that climate change should be taught in schools. The same study found that  74% of state residents believe that climate change will harm future generations. Still, efforts to pass climate literacy curriculum have yet to come to any fruition.

“Education is one of the major ways that we can mitigate climate change and stop environmental degradation,” Silversmith said. “But there is very little attention historically placed on education as a solution.”

This is why Silversmith has not given up the battle for legislation that can help the cause of increased climate literacy. 

With the help of other members of RIEEA, Silversmith drafted the Climate Change and Ocean Protection Education and Workforce Development Acts, also known as the 2023 Climate Literacy Act. Formally introduced by Senator Valarie Lawson and Representative Terri Cortvriend, these bills each call for $500,000 in grants for partnerships between educators and community-based organizations focused on climate change and environmental justice. Forty percent of the funding is designated for low-income communities of color who are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, according to the RIEEA website.

Instead of working with the Rhode Island Department of Education, which handled the previous climate literacy act, RIEEA decided to work with the Department of Labor and Training to set up their grants program. RIEEA intentionally made this choice in recognition of the intertwined nature of climate education and workforce development. 

For now, short of public support, climate education in Rhode Island is pursued privately by organizations such as RIEEA as well as students and teachers wanting to make an impact on their community.

Anna Dubey, a Brown student mentor for Brown’s Outdoor Leadership and Environmental Education Program (OLEEP) has witnessed the state of climate education first hand. Every Wednesday, Dubey travels to the Met High School to help lead workshops on climate change and environmental justice issues. The greatest difficulty that OLEEP faces is educating students on issues that occur in their own communities.

“We’re talking to students about environmental impacts like pollution in communities that they’re living in, which is really difficult to teach,” Dubey said. “There’s a balance between being honest and frank but also giving accurate information about the efforts going on to make things better.”

Dubey is able to relate to the students because at the school she attended in New York City, climate change was hardly mentioned until halfway through high school.

“My high school did not offer any specific classes about the environment,” Dubey said. In my sophomore year chemistry class it was taught by a climate denier. So that was my climate education.”

However, while the students might not have much prior knowledge of climate-related issues, they are quick to become engaged and passionate about the subject, according to Dubey.

Silversmith has witnessed similar passion amongst the students that RIEEA works with. Throughout her time with the organization, she has seen many students testify in front of the state house with immense confidence and ease. 

“Nothing hits a legislative body more in their heart than youth standing up and saying, ‘This worries me, this is important to me, I want this,’” Silversmith said.

Through RIEEA, Barrington High School students worked together after school to build their own wind turbine. At the Prout School, Kacie Doran, 19, led her peers in building a community garden that students would walk by everyday on their way to class. Other schools adopted composting. 

Now a first year in college, Doran clearly remembers the inspiration she felt at her first RIEEA seminar after hearing from an older student who had implemented an entire solar panel system throughout her hometown.

“She was my age and I remember being like, ‘Woah, she did that all on her own, like no help,’” Doran said. “That was the first time I realized I could do something similar and make an impact.”

Doran would eventually go on to lead her own seminar. The first time that she stood up to speak in front of the group, she could feel her knees shaking. However, as it became clear that her peers were eager to learn and contribute, she felt her confidence grow. For many of them, this was the first time they were given the chance to discuss environmental topics with their peers.

“When we all came together at the end and talked about their experience with the whole process we had just done, everyone was so excited to be there,” Doran said. “I felt like I was doing something right cause all of these people had these big smiles on their faces.”

Over the past few years, Silversmith has watched students become more and more passionate about the climate. Whether that be through continuing to be involved with activism after their time with RIEEA, or going on to study it in college. For them, it is a pressing and emotional topic. Silversmith feels the pressure as well. This is why she believes so firmly in the work that RIEEA does.

“Every year students are more passionate about the environment. They’re also more engaged and active and anxious about it.”

Silversmith says she deeply empathizes with the anxiety felt amongst youth groups.

“I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of anxiety about the climate and about the environment,” Silversmith said. “Young people are not always aware of the agency they have to make a difference.”

Finally, after months of waiting, the House Finance Committee heard the two new climate literacy bills on May 11th. According to Silversmith, the hearing went “very well” with many people testifying in support of the bill and none in opposition. One of the students who testified was named Frank, a 20-year-old graduate of the Rhode Island public school system.

“These bills are super important to me and my community because as much as we love to talk about a climate crisis and as big and important as that is, another issue we face in Central Falls, Pawtucket, and Providence itself is a community crisis,” Frank said.

Community green spaces play a crucial role in bringing people and youth together, Frank emphasized. This has been even more apparent following the COVID pandemic. These bills would allow students to have the tools to fight for these spaces, and therefore, for their communities.

There is a hearing scheduled for the Rhode Island Senate Finance Committee on May 17th. Within the month, Rhode Island might just have a new climate literacy act.