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Flames from a flare stack at an oil refinery at dusk in Texas, U.S. Photographer: Luke Sharrett. Bloomberg Creative / Bloomberg Creative Photos / Getty Images
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The Texas State Board of Education changed its guidelines last month to “emphasize the ‘positive’ aspects of fossil fuels in science textbooks,” Scott Waldman reported last week. The Republican-controlled board approved changes proposed by climate denier Patricia Hardy, who wants teachers to offer “both sides” of climate science.
The edits aim to “portray the Earth’s warming temperatures as the result of natural fluctuations,” Waldman wrote, “flying in the face of the consensus among climate researchers that humans are causing it by burning fossil fuels.” While the board guide isn’t legally binding, “it certainly deters school districts” from covering climate because they “try to play it safe” and “don’t want to weigh into politics generally,” according to Carisa Lopez of the Texas Freedom Network, adding that it “certainly politicizes, deeply, climate change. It politicizes science.”
The Texas State Board of Education consists of five Democratic party members and 10 Republicans, including a Shell Oil lawyer Will Hickman and oil-field service company CEO Aaron Kinsey, who worked with Hardy on the changes. “Our schools are paid for by the fossil fuel industry for the most part,” Hardy told Waldman.
For a Deeper Dive:
Scientific American via E&ENews, Gizmodo
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