This summer and early autumn, amid the record temperatures in Southern Europe and destructive weather events from California to Libya, I have spent a lot of time reflecting on a well-known quote from pioneering environmentalist, Gus Speth.

He said: “I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought with 30 years of good science we could address those problems, but I was wrong.

“The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy - and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation and we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

With our climate crisis looming ever closer, Speth’s quote speaks directly to educators and is a tangible call to action.

Driving change

If we - as educators and local leaders - don’t take our responsibilities in this area profoundly seriously, the hope that the next generation will alleviate climate change and move towards resolving the world’s challenges can fade quickly.

We need to engage students to think critically about their impact in and on the world.

We need to support students to explore their responsibilities and contributions as citizens of their own communities and of the global community. We need to empower students to navigate the complexity of the climate crisis and discover the solutions that humanity needs.

Climate change is the kind of complex challenge to which solutions will not be found in a siloed curriculum or a rigid assessment regime. We need the citizens of tomorrow to be able to problem solve in a way that traditional education is currently not set up to develop.

Our first responsibility as educators is to prepare students with the skills required to understand the complexities and explore bold solutions to climate change.

We have a duty to increase understanding of how change happens in human adaptive systems, and how to impact that selfishness, greed and apathy Speth spoke about. Ingenuity must become one of our most prized characteristics.

Tackling anxiety

The second - and equally important - responsibility is to support students to develop the resilience (and optimism!) that is needed to tackle the climate crisis. Both research and the lived experience of teachers tell us that climate change anxiety is rampant among young people. Worse still, there is a kind of defeatism that pervades those who care most about the issue.

Tragically, many young people will say that the world is on fire and it’s too late to do anything about it. And who can blame them?

This summer was a case in point - it is all too easy to imagine that the genie is out of the bottle and simply can’t be put back in, whatever we try. But we can’t allow ourselves or our students to think that way.

Scientists tell us we do have time to mitigate the crisis, and that the agency of the next generation will be key. Our students must be prepared and empowered to be the leaders on this issue, that their forebears (that’s us) have failed to be.

We must build student agency and self-efficacy.

We must expose them to a curriculum that allows them to draw parallels and see relationships between radically different concepts (such as behavioural science and atmospheric science, for example) and then have the confidence to act on it.

If the climate crisis is to be averted, it’s up to us as local leaders, parents, educators and school communities to ensure the young people in our charge are the people who make it happen.

Olli-Pekka Heinonen is the director-general of the International Baccalaureate