People who spend more time in school are more aware of climate change. This was shown in a global observational study in 2015. And it's not just a correlation – a recent causal study uses a natural experiment (changes in compulsory schooling laws) – to show that people who drop out of school a year later have four percentage points higher probability. to vote for the Green Party and at the same time be more concerned about climate change and more likely to try to reduce their own energy consumption.

So we know that the how long people spend in school affects attitudes towards climate change. But how else can education play a role in solving the climate crisis? What about what's on the syllabus? One of the (many) UN Sustainable Development Goals is to ensure that “ all students acquired the knowledge and skills needed to support sustainable development ". In order to monitor progress towards this goal, the UN asks countries to report on whether sustainable development is included in education policies and curricula. A questionnaire is sent to every country in the world with the question: "Is education for global citizenship and education for sustainable development part of the formal curriculum?". (Lee Crawfurd, Radhika Nagesh, more at cgdev.org)