Climate denial in the classroom is the focus of this review, which provides a summary of the climate-denial organizations that are the leading offenders in manipulating climate education in schools.
Climate change awareness is floundering across the globe despite climate change education being embedded in international treaties to address the climate crisis โ the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC) and the subsequent Paris Agreement. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) acknowledges forces hostile to climate awareness and education โ namely, climate denial sponsored by the energy-industrial complex. Climate change is studied by the physical sciences, but climate denial is the purview of the social sciences; the latter has revealed the why and how of climate denial. Climate-denial organizations (which directly deny aspects of the scientific consensus on climate change) and the related petro-pedagogy groups (which teach that oil is a benefactor to humanity, but say little about the connection of fossil fuels to the climate crisis) have arisen to attempt to interfere with the teaching of the science of climate change in school classrooms. These organizations were found in the United States, Canada, and some European nations (this review is mainly restricted to English-language sources). This review aims to (1) provide an overview of climate denial, promoted and funded by the energy-industrial complex; (2) identify and examine organizations involved in climate denial in schools; (3) summarize the strategies of climate-denial organizations in school classrooms; and (4) put forward recommendations for further research and action.