Students, Schools, and Our Climate Moment: Acting Now to Secure Our Future

by Laura A. Schifter and Jonathan Klein, 2025. Paperback, 232 pages.

A call to action that promotes K–12 schools and students as key contributors to climate solutions

Students, Schools, and Our Climate Moment highlights the many ways in which K-12 schools and students have tremendous potential to advance solutions on environmental issues, and provides frameworks for enacting change. The effects of climate change intersect with US public schools on multiple levels—schools must prepare students to face the challenges of an uncertain future, accommodate disruptions brought about by extreme weather conditions, and evaluate their systems’ energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Through rousing case studies of climate efforts in schools across the United States, Schifter and Klein show what it means to center children and young people in climate solutions and illustrate how educators and institutions can take comprehensive action. They share step-by-step plans for applying the lessons of these situations to future action, rooting their frameworks in the climate action plan of the Aspen Institute’s K12 Climate Action Commission and the Coherence Framework developed by the Public Education Leadership Project at Harvard University.

The tools and key takeaways offered here can help raise climate literacy among students and also foster a climate collaboration mindset within districts, inspire community mobilization toward equity and sustainability, and enact policy change to shift society and mitigate the climate crisis.

About the Authors

Jonathan Klein is CEO and co-founder of UndauntedK12, which supports America’s public schools in making an equitable transition to zero carbon emissions while preparing our youth to build a sustainable future in a rapidly changing climate. Jonathan has experience teaching, developing new schools, and working within large urban school districts, and he has led campaigns to change policy, elect equity-focused leaders, and generate new resources for children and public schools throughout the country.

Laura A. Schifter, EdD, is a senior fellow with the Aspen Institute where she founded and directs This Is Planet Ed, an initiative to unlock the power of education as a force for climate action, solutions, and environmental justice to empower the rising generation to lead a sustainable, resilient, and equitable future. She is also a lecturer on education with the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she teaches courses on education, climate change, and policy.