Generation Z: Does Climate Change Concern Match Knowledge?

by Andrew Isaacs and Natàlia Costa i Coromina
01 Apr 2022

In Fall 2020, researchers tested how much graduate students at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business understood about climate change science. 144 MBA students took a 4-minute 'pop quiz' with eight short questions gauging their general familiarity with climate change. While the quiz was not comprehensive, the results indicated students’ basic knowledge was limited. The implications were stark: if well-educated students at an elite institution were uninformed about the causes of climate change, how effectively could they address climate-related issues as future leaders? Why was there a disconnect between caring about the environment and lacking knowledge of how it was threatened?