The launch of a climate change curriculum that teaches students how to tackle deniers and advises them to eat less dairy and meat has sparked a debate in New Zealand, where economic growth is hinged on the success of its milk, poultry and farming industry.
Libby Hogan reports.
New Zealand is known for its dairy and grass-fed meat - the backbone to its economy - but the launch of a new climate change curriculum in schools is rubbing farmers the wrong way.
The education ministry says students years 7 to 10 will learn the role science plays in understanding climate change, its impacts and how students can help to adapt to it.
The lessons also tackle climate change skepticism.
Dairy farmer Malcolm Lumsden disagrees with the curriculum: "Well climate change should be based on science and it's very convenient to take figures from a certain date to put your case to say that the climate is changing et cetera, et cetera.
But having been farming for over 55 years, we know we have a climate that changes all the time." Lumsden worries that a new generation could bite the hand that feeds them and unfairly target farmers with tighter regulations and rules as farmers face the dilemma of feeding a growing population yet struggling to trim methane emissions.
New Zealand's leader Jacinda Ardern introduced sweeping reforms to tackle climate change this year, including emission targets for agriculture, and a plan for the country to become carbon neutral by 2050.
Local parliamentarian in the same region as Lumsden, Tim Van De Molen sees no problem with the new modules so long as they cover a broad perspective and show the impacts on all individuals in society.
"If we are teaching that climate change is an issue, we need to be looking at the whole argument, we need to be clearly outlining the different perspectives so that the children can make as informed a decision as possible for themselves." Recent school graduate, 18 year old Lourdes Vano, local Greens Party candidate, welcomes the curriculum and its focus on the science and hopes it will shape how students feel about their future: "I think it would be massively helpful for it to be taught in schools because pretty much everything that I know now and a lot of the School Strike for Climate team knows now, is what we taught ourselves and what we read up on and learned through other people and word of mouth and going to talks and seminars.
Like none of it came out of our high school education and I think that's a really massive gap .
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And introducing that in a safe way would be really important and in a way where it doesn't scare a lot of our kids."
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