A Popular College Textbook Teaches Global Warming Denial

Think slowing climate change will cost a lot of money? Think again. As most economists will tell you, the costs of not acting to slow climate change are far scarier.

Unfortunately, you might not realize that if you are a college economics major. In fact, you might not even believe that climate change is happening at all. At least that's true if you are studying from one of five popular college economics textbooks that recently received a "Not Recommended " grade in The Sightline Institute's review of 16 major texts used on college campuses nationwide.

The think tank's climate economics "report card," written by Dr. Yoram Bauman, a University of Washington environmental economist, turns the tables on academic textbook authors, grading their efforts to introduce crucial climate questions to the budding business and finance leaders who sit in their classrooms.

The results are not heartening. According to the report, these five books—all recent editions— contain either misleading or flat-out wrong information about climate science and policy. One, “Economics, 18th ed.” by Campbell McConnell, Stanley Brue, and Sean Flynn," a book that commands 20 percent of the college economics textbook market, received a "C-" grade for its use of climate science dated 15 years ago, back when its current readers were in elementary school.

That use of old-school data lies in stark contrast with these textbooks' rapid inclusion of new information about the global financial meltdown. Yet just as it's important that  students are getting the most contemporary understanding of the recent economic upheaval, it's truly sad the same thinking doesn't apply to climate change.

That's because, if present trends continue, the total cost of global warming for the U.S. could be as high as 3.6 percent of the gross domestic product, according to NRDC, which is nowhere near the cost of taking action to reverse these trends. Now there's an economic crisis just waiting to happen.

By while "Economics, 18th ed." may be bad, the worst is the deliberately misleading content of “Economics: Private and Public Choice, 13th ed.” by James Gwartney, Richard Stroup, Russell Sobel, and David Macpherson. This book is the only one to receive an "F" grade, for its inclusion of gems such as "the current warming trend may well be unrelated to the emissions of carbon dioxide” and its allusions to a climate change "conspiracy." Bauman notes that even the ultra skeptic think tank, The Cato Institute, acknowledges that warming is related to carbon dioxide emissions.

“The authors did not just omit the latest in climate research; they blatantly ignored the consensus of the climate science community,” said Bauman. “Schools and students shouldn’t be using this book," he said.

If you agree with Bauman and The Sightline Instistute, you can sign this petition to the books' publisher, Cengage, asking that they either drop the textbook or demand significant improvements in a new edition. The petition will also be sent to the authors of the text book.

Economics is a hard discipline. Too bad these textbook authors are ensuring that many students fail.

Photo credit: Plutor via Flickr

Follow Change.org's Environmental page on Facebook and Twitter