US college biology textbooks failing to address climate crisis, study says

US college-level biology textbooks miss the mark on offering solutions to the climate crisis, according to a new analysis of books over the last 50 years.

Fewer than three pages in a typical 1,000-page biology textbook from recent decades address climate change, according to the new study, despite experts warning it is humankind’s biggest problem.

While the coverage of the topic has expanded since the 1970s, and sentences focused on climate solutions peaked in the 1990s, that emphasis declined by 80% in recent decades.

The average coverage of climate change in biology textbooks from the past decade was 67 sentences, a step up from 51 sentences in the 2000s.

Researchers said that was not enough given the scale of the crisis.

“Climate change is affecting life all over the globe,” said Jennifer Landin, author of the study and an associate professor of biology at North Carolina State University. “And we are not covering it to nearly the degree it needs to be.”

The researchers analyzed a total of 57 US college biology textbooks published between 1970s to 2019 for the new study,