ABSTRACT
The team of researchers in this project designed a survey that was administered to 1000 senior high school students in our target schools. All of the students had been exposed to some form of EE. Our survey showed that almost 82 per cent of students self-identified as environmentalists. However, when we asked about their perceptions of environmental problems in the world, their responses were not well-informed. Further, when asked about their pro-environmental behaviours, it became clear that, while theoretically students are happy to identify as “green”, in practice they are not. Finally, when asked who they thought is responsible for caring for and cleaning up the environment, students overwhelmingly answered “society”, showing no indication that they expected their government or industries to contribute, nor was there any sense that overweening consumption or development was to blame. Thus, young people have absorbed the neoliberal message of small government and have assigned responsibility to “society”: those who are least aware, most ignorant, and most poorly equipped to meet the challenges of environmental destruction.
