Photo by Clark Van Der Beken on Unsplash.
During the September 8, 2020, meeting of the Texas state board of education, "testifiers ranging from a pastor to a graduate student to a former climate change denier addressed the importance of incorporating climate change in science standards for the four high school core science courses — biology, physics, chemistry and integrated physics," the Dallas Morning News (September 9, 2020) reported.
Carisa Lopez, political director at the Texas Freedom Network, was quoted as saying, "The scientific evidence that human-caused climate change is real and a serious threat has become even more overwhelming. Climate scientists have declared this a global emergency." She pointedly added, "But you won't even find the words 'climate change' anywhere in the draft standards for these four high school courses."
The board is expected to hold a final vote on the revised science standards (as well as revised health standards) in November 2020. As recently as 2009, a conservative faction on the board took it upon itself to tamper with the treatment of evolution and climate change in the version of the state science standards then under consideration, as NCSE reported, although these changes were largely reversed in 2017.
