From Misinformation to Understanding:
Helping Educators to Teach Climate Critically
Author: Pippa Thompson
Published: 18/02/2026
With climate change and environmental stories dominating news feeds and social media, it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. Understanding climate change is challenging enough – and the sea of misinformation surrounding it can make it even harder to distinguish between reliable evidence and misleading claims. For this reason, it is no longer enough to simply teach environmental education. Educators need guidance and resources to help equip their learners with critical thinking skills that allow them to question sources, evaluate arguments, and understand how misinformation spreads. In doing so, adult educators can help build informed communities ready to make sustainable choices grounded in reason and evidence.
Misinformation comes in many forms, and we can often be caught in a “no man’s land” between conflicting claims . Take, for example, the strong storms that struck the United States at the beginning of 2026: some narratives pointed to the cold conditions as evidence that global warming cannot be real, while others linked the events to disruptions in Arctic weather patterns driven by warming oceans. Added to this are inflammatory headlines, emotional appeals, and oversimplified interpretations of scientific studies, leaving non-scientists unsure what to believe. In a landscape such as this, learners need guidance not only on the facts, but on how to navigate competing narratives critically.
So, what can be done? We need to go beyond passively memorising climate facts and develop higher-order thinking skills: analysing information, synthesising evidence, applying knowledge to real-world contexts, and evaluation claims (essentially, the upper levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy). These soft skills are challenging to teach, and it’s often easier to default to simple messages like “plastic is bad” which give us a neatly wrapped-up narrative that is easy to digest and understand instantly. Yet, such simplifications ignore nuance and fail to prepare learners for the complexity of climate-related decisions.
Our experience over the past two years in the ACCESS 2.0 project has focused on developing and testing resources to help educators foster environmental critical thinking skills. Although the project targeted younger learners, during testing we discovered that adults participating in these activities benefitted greatly. For instance, in a “Spot the AI” activity, where participants had to identify AI-generated images, our team struggled (greatly) to distinguish real from fake, highlighting just how difficult this task can be – even for those of us who like to think we’re digitally savvy. Another valuable exercise asked members of our team to take a blanket statement like “palm oil is bad” or “flying should be banned” and argue the opposite perspective. The exercise revealed how often we perceive issues in black-and-white terms, and how exploring multiple viewpoints is a crucial element of critical thinking.
The resources developed for ACCESS 2.0 include practical, adaptable activities such as Fake News Finder, where learners analyse misleading social media posts; Social Dilemma Game, illustrating the trade-offs between personal gain and collective climate action; and Six Thinking Hats, encouraging exploration of climate challenges from multiple perspectives. These are all included (along with detailed implementation instructions) in our Teachers’ Toolkit, which also contains concrete strategies to embed critical thinking into education. While originally aimed at school contexts, the activities and principles translate seamlessly into adult learning.
Teaching climate critically is more important than ever. As the European Union pushes forward with initiatives such as the European Green Deal, aiming for climate neutrality by 2050, and ambitious renewable energy and energy efficiency targets, citizens of all ages need to understand the complex, interconnected realities of climate change. Equipped with critical thinking skills, adult learners (and all learners for that matter) are ready to navigate misinformation and participate fully in building a greener, more sustainable Europe.
Find all the environmental and critical thinking focused resources mentioned within this article at: www.eco-bits.eu/access2-teachers-resources.