Climate Generation's 16th Summer Institute for Climate Change Education opens with a keynote by Raven Baxter

Raven Baxter gave the opening keynote of the 16th Summer Institute for Climate Change Education on July 28, 2021. The three-day institute, run by the Minneapolis nonprofit Climate Generation, was held online for educators across North America.

Baxter spoke for about half an hour and took questions. "My message today is about how I found my voice as a self advocate but also as an advocate for science and, over the years, an advocate for the planet and advocating for climate justice," she said.

The institute opened after weeks of extreme weather. In mid-June, a heat wave broke all-time records across the U.S. West, according to NOAA. On July 7, scientists with World Weather Attribution found the Pacific Northwest heat virtually impossible without human-caused climate change. NOAA reported that June 2021 brought the warmest June on record for global land temperatures. Two weeks before the keynote, floods in western Europe killed more than 200 people, at least 184 of them in Germany. The host's opening remarks named the same heat, fires, drought and floods.

Baxter opened with answers she had collected on Twitter about what holds young people back from climate advocacy. Respondents named a lack of buy-in from school leaders and the risk of being "labeled as radical" for pointing out a problem.

She tied those answers to her own high school years. She started a student club as a safe space for classmates. Her principal threatened to suspend her if it kept meeting. The students kept meeting, and the administration gave in. The club still exists. "No student should have to face such grand challenges simply to create an environment that they feel that they can thrive instead of survive," Baxter said.

"Advocating for the survival of the planet really shouldn't be seen as radical," she said.

Her central case was that climate education belongs in every subject. She cited a 2020 study in PLOS ONE that followed graduates of a college climate course. They cut their own emissions by 2.86 tons of carbon dioxide a year. Applied at scale, the authors wrote, climate education could cut emissions on the order of rooftop solar or electric vehicles.

Baxter then went subject by subject. English teachers could team with science teachers on science communication and social media campaigns. "We need to produce students who can not only understand what's happening with our planet but also write about what's happening with our planet, educate others," she said.

She asked business teachers to teach green investing. "Capitalism is not going to just evaporate and go away," Baxter said. "So let's equip our students with the knowledge and how to take advantage of the systems that are already in place." Art classes could picture the future students want, and math classes could teach the units of climate, from kilowatts to tons of carbon. Students could write letters to local governments and to wealthy donors, asking them to fund a zero-waste policy at their school.

"You can do something and everything matters, and I think the more that you believe that as an educator, the more your students will believe it as well," she said.

In the question period, she described making science "real" for students. She once set aside a lesson plan to explain the chemistry of a drug a student had heard about in a rap song. Teaching human biology and microbiology at a community college, she paired exams with an end-of-term creative project. Students made a digestive-system board game and a spoken-word poem about the circulatory system. She said the projects eased test anxiety.

Asked how she stays inspired during the pandemic, Baxter pointed to Wipe It Down, a song about hand hygiene she made about a week into the 2020 lockdown. "We still have a responsibility as adults to feed into that child's optimism, to feed into the hope for their future," she said. "If we lose hope, then how are we going to inspire the next generation of scientists?"

On making space for herself as a woman of color in molecular biology, she said, "I am a person with a message at the end of the day."

Climate Generation was founded in 2006 as the Will Steger Foundation. Steger, a polar explorer, led the first confirmed dogsled trip to the North Pole without resupply, in 1986. By 2021 the group had trained more than 1,000 educators through its institutes, and more than 10,000 had downloaded its curriculum. The 2021 theme was "A Regrounding in Truth," with more than 60 sessions planned on topics from science denial to shifting power to youth and frontline communities.

The host's recap counted more than 330 educators, presenters and cohort leaders, who documented more than 480 climate solutions. Climate Generation closed in February 2026, after 20 years, and most of its education resources moved to EcoRise.

The moderator called the keynote "such an amazing and vulnerable presentation." In a live poll afterward, attendees shared what they would remember. "Use your voice to empower your students," one wrote. Another wrote, "Don't be afraid to speak out. Be yourself."

Baxter, a molecular biologist and science communicator, was then a doctoral candidate at the University at Buffalo. She had taught biology at SUNY Erie.

The opening session and keynote are on Climate Generation's Facebook page, with an archived copy on the Wayback Machine.