Last year, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead signed legislation forbidding state public schools from teaching that climate change is caused by humans. This week, Wyoming’s House of Representatives voted to repeal that measure, the first step on what still could be a long road toward a climate science curriculum in the state.
Wyoming’s House on Monday voted 39–21 to pass a bill that would reverse the ban on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a set of academic guidelines that require science instructors to teach the reality of human-caused climate change starting in middle school. The NGSS was developed with input from The National Research Council, the National Science Teachers Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as input from 26 states.
The NGSS covers many scientific topics, but the biggest reason the standards were rejected in Wyoming was because of its mandate on teaching climate change as settled science. The original effort to ban the standards came from former Rep. Matt Teeters, a Republican, who disagreed with the “social implications” of teaching climate science. State Board of Education Chairman Ron Micheli agreed, saying the standards were “very prejudiced in my opinion against fossil-fuel development.”
“I don’t accept, personally, that [climate change] is a fact,” said Micheli, who is still at the helm of the state Board of Education. If that doesn’t sound like an obstacle enough for the ban on climate teaching to be repealed, the bill passed Monday still needs to be passed by the Senate, and signed by Governor Mead.
On climate, the NGSS teaches that human activities have altered the biosphere; that burning fossil fuels is a major factor in the current rise of Earth’s mean surface temperature; and that future outcomes of climate change depend on how much human-generated greenhouse gases are emitted in the future. A vast majority of climate scientists agree with these points — public opinion, however, is much more divided.
Since banning those standards, Wyoming has received a fair amount of backlash from environmental, parent, science, and even religious groups. The Wyoming Association of Churches, which represents about ten Protestant denominations in the state, said teaching climate science would benefit students by encouraging them to “think critically, and through greater knowledge, foster stewardship of the created order.” A group of 46 current and former science and math professors at the University of Wyoming chastised the government for prioritizing political and economic interests over real science education.
“When someone argues, ‘The science standards must reflect the role of energy and agriculture in our state’s economy,’ that person does not understand the nature of science,” the professors said in a 36-page paper titled “Why the Critics of the Next Generation Science Standards are Wrong.”
The NGSS represents the first major overhaul of science education in the U.S. in more than a decade, and has so far been adopted in 13 states so far, as well as the District of Columbia. Wyoming was the first state to reject the standards altogether, and states such as Oklahoma and South Carolina have also taken steps toward banning them. West Virginia adopted the NGSS, but then altered it so that the curriculum would cast more doubt on climate change as a settled science. West Virginia eventually reversed its alterations to the standards, however, after intense pressure from parents and other groups.