While there is an almost unanimous awareness of climate change (or global warming as they tend to know it), there is a definite lack of understanding of the causes and effects. A majority of students appeared to associate climate change with the depletion of the ozone layer, and many seemed to believe that climate change was a result of things such as garbage as opposed to greenhouse gases. That’s a concern to me, as for Canadian’s to be engaged to the climate change debate, they need to understand not only the problem, but the solutions on offer.

What really surprised me though was the level of insight of the questions that the students asked. I briefly discussed carbon capture and storage, purposefully not going into the details because I thought it would be too technical and not capture their interest, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. All three groups I talked to latched onto it immediately. They posed questions which I have never heard adults in the general population ask me before, and are exactly the type of questions we need all Canadians to be asking.

“How much carbon dioxide can we store underground?”

“Is it a gas or a liquid that we are storing?”

“What are the chances of it leaking?”

“Is there any risk to other plants or animals, or some other long term problem that we haven’t thought about?”

We hope to focus our programs on critical thinking skills, teaching students how to think around a topic, not just take it at face value. It was encouraging to see that kids are not only able, but very interest in having a conversation like this.