{"id":1632,"date":"2026-08-22T08:06:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T08:06:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1632"},"modified":"2026-08-22T08:06:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T08:06:52","slug":"were-teaching-kids-scarcity-in-an-age-of-abundance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=1632","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re Teaching Kids Scarcity in an Age of Abundance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Students head back to classrooms this month. Many arrive already convinced their future is hopeless.<\/p>\n

Read more Green Movement\u2019s Selective Outrage Over ESA Reforms<\/a><\/p>\n

In a Lancet Planetary Health study of 10,000 young people across ten countries, 75 percent said the future is frightening, and 56 percent said they believe humanity is doomed. A 2025 PNAS\u00a0study found one in five Americans aged 16 to 24 is afraid to have children because of the climate. That gloom has deepened over time. In Yale\u2019s long-running survey, the share of Americans 18 to 34 who say global warming is already harming this country rose from 40 percent in 2012 to 64 percent in 2022.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s causing such a dramatic shift? It could be what\u2019s missing in the classroom. Teenagers name teachers as their leading source on climate and energy. Seventy-one percent say they learned \u201ca lot\u201d or \u201csome\u201d from a teacher, ahead of parents at 67 percent and social media at 63 percent. Yet the median high school science teacher spends one or two hours\u00a0a year on the subject, and three-quarters of teachers say they have never been trained\u00a0to teach it.<\/p>\n

The teaching gap shows. Nearly three-quarters\u00a0of teens believe ocean plastic is a major contributor to climate change. (It\u2019s not.) Energy illiteracy is even worse: fewer than a third\u00a0of high schoolers can name the three sources that generate most American electricity.\u00a0Energy literacy scores among high school seniors fell\u00a0between 2017 and 2022.<\/p>\n

What fills the gap is the phone. Researchers at the University at Buffalo, writing last fall in Climatic Change, found that heavier social media use correlates with what they call \u201cclimate doom,\u201d the belief that warming will collapse social and economic order. When other researchers examined 100 climate videos\u00a0on TikTok, only eight cited a reputable source.<\/p>\n

A video feed full of ignorance and despair doesn\u2019t make a good curriculum.<\/p>\n

The consequences aren\u2019t just emotional. They\u2019re economic, too. After fifteen flat years, American electricity demand is climbing again, roughly 2 percent annually since 2020. Data centers are on pace to double their share\u00a0of peak demand inside two years. We are graduating energy-illiterate students at precisely the moment the country has to build.<\/p>\n

For a teenager trying to figure out what to do with his life, that ignorance could be costly. We hear a lot these days about how artificial intelligence is closing the on-ramps into white-collar work. The head of one leading AI lab has warned\u00a0that the technology could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, concentrated in the fields that used to hire new graduates. But that\u2019s not the whole story. Electricians\u00a0are growing at three times the rate of the average occupation, with roughly 73,500 openings a year. Nuclear technicians earn a median above $104,000, often without a four-year degree. Applied trades have added 2.5 million jobs\u00a0since 2019, and the average utility worker is past 50\u00a0and nearing retirement.<\/p>\n

Read more MAGA and the DSA, Part Two: Differences Between These Populist Antagonists<\/a><\/p>\n

Students need to know the full picture. That goes for job prospects as well as the climate. Natural gas displacing coal drove the largest share of the decline in American power-sector emissions, according to the Energy Information Administration. Technology companies have committed more than $50 billion\u00a0to nuclear power, more than in any previous decade. Three Mile Island\u00a0restarts next year. Most new reactors arrive in the 2030s. For a sixteen-year-old who wants to work in the nuclear industry, that timeline sounds like job security.<\/p>\n

Kids deserve to know that their futures are far from hopeless. A little bit of energy education could work like an SSRI for doomsday depression.<\/p>\n

Some groups are trying to fill the energy education gap. Generation Atomic\u00a0runs a nuclear science program for grades 6 through 12. The American Conservation Coalition\u00a0organizes young people around nuclear power and permitting reform. And Blue Energy Nation\u2019s BENERGY course launches nationally this fall. It features six modules built for homeschool families but easily folded into any science, civics, or economics class. (Its assigned materials include some RealClearEnergy journalism.)<\/p>\n

A mother in BENERGY\u2019s pilot survey wrote that the course \u201cbacks its science with facts! And it\u2019s not doom and gloom.\u201d Another said it \u201csparked his curiosity in the topic and may have given him some ideas of future career ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students shouldn\u2019t be left to form a worldview based on TikTok videos. We should teach them where energy comes from, how it impacts their futures, and what it will need from them. Fear is a lousy career counselor. A generation convinced the future is already finished will not build the grid that future requires.<\/p>\n

Read more ICE Continues to Arrest \u2018Worst of the Worst,\u2019 Including Three Illegal Alien Murderers and Two Other Heinous Criminals on Thursday<\/a><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

This content originally appeared at RealClear Education.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students head back to classrooms this month. Many arrive already convinced their future is hopeless. 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