In “The Crisis in Education,” published in 1954, Hannah Arendt suggests that adults who refuse to take responsibility for the world should not be allowed to educate children or to have children of their own. Her text describes the “general crisis,” which, according to Arendt, “has overtaken the modern world everywhere and in almost every sphere of life,” including education (Arendt, 2006, p. 170). Written for another time and with different problems in mind, her words were not meant to describe our present situation. Indeed, in light of the evolving ecological crises where the very conditions for life on earth are in peril (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2018; Steffen et al., 2015), Arendt's use of the term crisis seems quite overblown. Nevertheless, her warning can help us to explore some of the important dilemmas that face educators of today, in a time where a range of unfolding, interlocking crises (ecological, social, and political) are on the horizon. Insofar as the child is not yet acquainted with the world, he must be gradually introduced to it; insofar as he is new, care must be taken that this new thing comes to fruition in relation to the world as it is. In any case, however, the educators here stand in relation to the young as representatives of a world for which they must assume responsibility although they themselves did not make it, and even though they may, secretly or openly wish it were other than it is. This responsibility is not arbitrarily imposed upon educators; it is implicit in the fact that the young are introduced by adults into a continuously changing world. (Arendt, 2006, p. 186) In this context, being an educator means to take a position of authority, which for Arendt means to assume responsibility for the world as it is. It means to stand before the child, “as though he [the educator] were a representative of all adult inhabitants, pointing out the details and saying to the child: This is our world” (p. 186). Accordingly, adults who resign from the authority that is theirs as parents and educators also refuse to take responsibility for the world—for the purpose of authority is not authority in itself, but setting free the child's ability to act on its own, to create and to “set the world right anew” (p. 189). In other words, what is ultimately at stake in education are the conditions for political (re)creation. This is the basis for Arendt's astonishing conclusion that “[a]nyone who refuses to assume joint responsibility for the world should not have children and must not be allowed to take part in educating them” (p. 186). Arendt's critique was set forth at a time when the Western type of society had undergone a period of transition into what has later been described as “post-traditional society” (Honneth, 1996). The societal forms in question differ with respect to their modes of social reproduction. Where a traditional society reproduces itself through educational practices (formal and informal) where the norms and values of one generation are transferred to the next in a similar or slightly adjusted form, the members of a post-traditional society cannot take for granted that the norms and values of one generation are valid for the next. Consequently, each new generation of parents needs to question the instituted norms and significations of their societies to find out whether they can justifiably serve as norms for education.2 If Arendt's requirement for educators is demanding as a general principle, it is even more so in a post-traditional setting; but under current conditions the logic itself seems close to breaking down. For how can educators represent, in a responsible and authoritative manner, a life-form—globalized, resource-intensive capitalism—whose basic functions are depleting its own support systems? A precise framework to describe for our current situation is the nine “planetary boundaries” identified by the Stockholm Resilience Centre to define the limits for a “safe operating place for humanity” (Steffen et al., 2015; see also Randers et al., 2018). This framework identifies the different levels of emissions, depletion, diversity and so on that must not be overstepped if an inhabitable biosphere for humans on the planet is to be preserved. At the time of writing, two of these boundaries have been overstepped and two more are very close to being so (Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2019).3 In May 2019 the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services found that one million species—25% of the total number of species when insects are excepted—are at risk of extinction.4 Such are the conditions of the world that educators, according to Arendt, must assume responsibility “even though they may, secretly or openly wish it were other than it is” (2006, p. 186). However, in the geological epoch called Anthropocene where the earth system itself has been irreversibly changed by human activities, how can a parent be expected to stand before the child, “pointing out the details” of the world without invoking fear, guilt, despair or denial? And to what extent are the dominant social structures experienced as something worth defending—as our world—for the coming generations? In a time of anthropogenic climate change, mass extinction and possible ecological crises the question of what it means to take responsibility for our common world seems more pressing than ever before, yet almost impossible to grasp. This article attempts to explore some of the challenges—as well as some openings—for educational and political theory that emerge with anthropogenic climate change. Inspired by Hannah Arendt's call to educators, the article is loosely structured around the three basic questions that, according to Immanuel Kant, guide all philosophical investigations, namely: what can we know; what ought we to do, and what may we hope for? While none of these questions is easily settled in relation to climate change and ecological crises, hope is arguably the most crucial factor. Hope—the belief that there can be a future worth our while, for humans and other living beings—is a fundamental condition for being able to invest in the kind of psychological energy that leads from knowledge into action. As a political (and moral) category, hope seems to be especially important for children and young people; nevertheless, I would argue that hope can be productive in the long term only when based on realistic assumptions and truth knowledge. In this respect, I am critical of much of the wishful thinking on climate change communication which, at least in the wealthier parts of the world, include the assumption that climate change can be “solved” by some kind of hitherto unknown technological innovation or that we already have the means to combat climate change and all we need to do is to implement them. On the contrary, my starting point is that deep alterations of the earth system are already taken place and that some of these processes are irreversible and escalating toward their tipping points. Climate change and other ecological problems have simply become part of the conditions for life on earth. Consequently, among the questions that should be discussed is whether it will be possible for the children of tomorrow to live reasonably well under these prospects, and not least, whether a common world is attainable in a future where great changes will be taking place not only in the physical environment but also in the social infrastructure (O'Brien & Selboe, 2015) and the geopolitical world order (Welzer, 2012).5 My aim in this article is not to settle or conclude these questions, but rather to elucidate some of their implications, especially on the relationship between politics and education. Like Arendt, I believe that politics, freedom, and a common world are worth defending and that education is key in this respect, although my emphasis and conclusion is different. Moreover, and in opposition to the OECD-dominated educational policies in many parts of the world today, I hold that the fostering of political agency (or, with Arendt, renewal of our common world) is a legitimate aim for educators, justified (a) by the premise that no education can be politically neutral or independent from power relations and (b) by the conviction that the current economic and political development is unsustainable. With this in mind, let us now turn to climate change as a topic in education and public discourse and look at some of the reasons why it has taken so long to integrate concerns for the climate in various educational settings. Anthropogenic climate change can be a challenging topic for various reasons. The science is complex, involving many disciplines and modes of knowledge and the expected consequences range from the serious to potentially devastating. As a topic for discussion—in schools, in public discourse, in politics, and everyday life—climate change may trigger reactions of guilt, denial, anger, and resentment. When these concerns are brought into an educational setting the consequences are far from straightforward. In the following paragraphs I concentrate mainly on the Kantian questions of what we can know and what we ought to do in relation to climate change. The question of hope will be considered in later sections. The scope of the discussion is quite general, relating to both formal and informal education rather than specific institutions such as schools, which would require a more detailed and contextually specific analysis. However, my examples, in the form of studies, scientific reports, and tendencies in the public media are mainly drawn from Scandinavia, northern Europe and the UK.6 This has contextual implications. In Scandinavia especially, the relationship between children and adults is relatively egalitarian and is governed by the central educational ideals of openness, inclusion, autonomy, and secularism. It is also a region with high standards of living, high levels of trust in authorities and small (albeit increasing) differences between social classes. All these attributes of a welfare society are currently under various forms of pressure, as in many other parts of the world. In view of this, the topic of climate change presents itself as something more than a neutral, geophysical fact. The first reason why climate change is a difficult topic is that extremely serious consequences can be expected from climate change—consequences that are still, for the most part, in the future.7 Kari Marie Norgaard, an American sociologist who studied how climate change was not addressed in a small Norwegian town, noticed that whenever she tried to talk to her informants about climate change “it often killed the conversation” (Norgaard, 2011, p. 55). Even though the townspeople were in some respects environmentally aware, they actively tried to “avoid acknowledging disturbing information in order to avoid feelings of fear, guilt and helplessness” and to “maintain positive conceptions of individual and national identity” (Norgaard, 2018, p. 4). The problem was not so much that people were unaware of—or did not care about—climate change and its consequences, but that they did not want to have this knowledge and certainly not to relate to it in a way that would affect their own lives. This mind-set, which Norgaard labels as a “double reality,” indicates individual and collective denial—not of the facts themselves, but of their implications.8 The doubling of reality makes it possible both to know and not know at the same time and thus to avoid being affected by this knowledge in one's own daily life.9 While the parents in Norgaard's study said they did not talk to their children about climate change as “they had it at school,” the teachers were also reluctant to address the issue as it was “somehow too much” (Norgaard, 2011, p. 55). Under this constellation, neither parents nor teachers lived up to the educational authority called for by Arendt, saying: this is our world, for which we are responsible. One might say that, as role models for political agency, the adults in the study had failed their children.10 When climate change is represented in public discourse it is rarely described as a physical fact or a condition for life that can be accepted as such. On the contrary, politicians, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the public media (at least in northern Europe and the UK) typically frame climate change as an intolerable problem that calls for remedial action, even a “solution.” This narrative has normative implications, as this example from my own country shows. When a new report is released from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the Norwegian public media almost always accompany the presentation by asking why so little is being done to remedy the escalating changes. The alarming results of the reports are typically combined with national and comparative surveys of people's attitudes toward climate change, where the lack of remedial action is more or less directly related to citizens’ lack of concern (see, e.g., Stoknes, 2014, 2015). This particular framing suggests that the lack of adequate action is a result of individuals’ psychological or moral predispositions such as their lack of belief in or fear of climate change (Shove, 2010; Straume, 2017).11 There is a growing academic field called climate communication, whose key disciplines are psychology, behavioral economics and media studies (Ytterstad, 2014). Interestingly, the primary target for this type of communication is not political parties or global actors, but individuals framed as consumers (who should alter their preferences) or citizens (who should vote differently). Again, this individualistic framing has depoliticizing consequences through the implication that the root of the problem is to be sought in people's beliefs or values rather than in the politico-economical system. The narrative is problematic enough in the public sphere, where it generates the impression that people—neighbors, others—do not count as political subjects in these matters. When the same notion is applied in an educational setting, however, there are additional problems. For in so far as (or insofar as) the narrative of climate change implies that somebody has failed to act while referring to the faulty moral or psychological dispositions of ordinary people, these individuals are no other than the parents, neighbors and educators of children and young people themselves. At this point, the problem of authority pointed out by Arendt becomes acute; for how can a child develop a healthy psychological relationship with a role model who refuses to take responsibility for the world and continues to destroy it? This leads to the question of who has the rightful, legitimate educational authority in case of conflicting opinions and values. In a Swedish study of teachers in eco-schools and eco-teacher education (Stagell, Almers, Askerlund, & Apelqvist, 2014), teachers were asked what kind of actions they would encourage their young students to undertake, and conversely, which types of actions were regarded as inappropriate according to their mandate as educators. The results were clear. Actions connected to the private sphere such as household, consumption, and recycling were considered as appropriate for the school context, while actions that could be considered as political were not. For example, most of the teachers did not endorse an encouragement to join NGOs, contact politicians or engage in party politics. In fact, even though the teachers might privately endorse these activities they considered them as inappropriate in the classroom (Stagell et al., 2014).12 Teacher educators, on the other hand, were more willing to encourage students to engage in political activities, and expressed surprise when learning that teachers stopped at the point where it would actually have become possible to influence the socio-political structures that frame the daily life activities of students. There is a range of possible explanations for these teachers’ reluctance.13 One of the problems anticipated by the teachers in this study—and for Norgaard's informants who said that climate change was “somehow too much” for the classroom—could be that children who learn too much about anthropogenic climate change could become torn between what they learn at school and what they observe in their families and local communities. For the topic of climate change looks very different to various social groups, and some families will certainly have larger carbon footprints than others. Many conscientious teachers would probably be reluctant to sow seeds of conflict, guilt, or confusion into the alliance between children and their families and also to put the important relationship between the home and the school at risk. This brings us to the next question which concerns what Foucault (1981) would call knowledge-power: forms of knowledge connected to social class.14 The problems connected to climate change and environmental issues in general look rather different depending on one's position in the social web. In the history of Western modernity, environmentalism has traditionally been an interest of the upper and upper-middle class.15 Similar differences can be observed in relation to climate change, where concerns about climate change typically increase with one's level of education. A study comparing attitudes to climate change vis-à-vis other environmental problems in 33 countries found that respondents who had higher education and politically liberal (centrist or leftist) sympathies are significantly more concerned about climate change than other groups (Smith, Kim, & Son, 2017). Indeed, in order to understand the complexities of climate change science a fairly advanced, broad education is needed in addition to time and opportunity—and even with a high level of education it is not clear what the correct approach to the problems should be.16 For a long period there was a tendency in the Western public media to present climate change as an issue surrounded by doubt and uncertainty, conflating as it were the reality of climate change with the uncertainty of its consequences (Smith, Tyszczuk & Butler, 2014). Even though this tendency is now on the decline, many citizens find it hard to understand how leading politicians can speak about climate change as the greatest challenge of our time and still continue with business as usual.17 Indeed, one may argue that it is unreasonable to expect that every ordinary person should know which actions will benefit or harm the climate. Just leading an ordinary Western type of life, doing what everybody else does, unavoidably leads to environmental damage. Nevertheless, as pointed out by journalist George Marshall (2014), climate change is typically framed as a “perfect crime” where everybody is guilty, yet no one has a motive. Against this background it is quite understandable if some groups and families feel alienated by a discourse that is both difficult to decipher and in addition demands that they should do something about the problem without a clear understanding of how and what should be done. In recent years many climate change researchers have argued that issues of climate change cannot be properly addressed through techno-scientific approaches alone. In addition, and more importantly, they argue, we need to turn the lens to study how we think and speak about ourselves in relation to climate change (Hulme, 2009; Norgaard, 2011). In this perspective, coping with climate change is most of all a question of what Cornelius Castoriadis (1987) calls social imaginary significations. The term refers to the ways a society institutes itself as meaningful to its members—that is, to itself. As it has proven so difficult to control emissions within the current socio-political order, many have argued that the social institution as a whole should be put into question, and not simply its elements, such as individuals’ beliefs or attitudes (Klein, 2014; Vetlesen, 2015). Along similar lines, a growing body of educational literature points out that it is not sufficient for students to learn about the environment and its problems: what is needed is “transformative learning” aimed at a shift of perspective (Sterling, 2009a, 2009b). Importantly, Sterling argues, students should not only learn about sustainability but also experience what it is like to lead sustainable lives. Sustainability, according to Sterling, “is not just another issue to be added to an overcrowded curriculum, but it is a gateway to a different view of pedagogy, of organizational change, of policy and particularly of ethos” (Sterling, 2004, p. 50). Richard Kahn (2010) goes even further in his endorsement of a “radical ecopedagogy” where students progress from learning about problems in their local environment (mapping species, taking samples of pollution, etc.) to taking action by contacting the source of pollution, informing local authorities and the press, and exerting an influence where they can. At this point, if not before, we have certainly transcended what Arendt (2006) implied in her appeal to the responsibility of educators; one of her principles being that politics is an activity for the public sphere where schools are not included. Nevertheless, the theories of radical educationists like Sterling and Kahn respond to a need expressed by many students of today; namely, the desire to learn about what they can do and how they can act in response to the problems of the environment; and not least, how to engage in politics (Flöttum, Dahl, & Rivenes, 2016; Selboe & Säther, 2017). I return to this question shortly. Up to this point we have seen how a range of dilemmas, controversies, and fundamental political questions are ready to be aroused when the topic of climate change is addressed in schools and in the public sphere. Many of the problems described in Sections 2.1–2.5 have a predominantly social basis connected to significations of knowledge-power, framing, and social positioning or, class. Thus, the first step toward answering the question of what we can know, and what we ought to do about climate change could be to acknowledge that the political apathy that is often noted in relation to these issues should not simply be explained in individual terms—such as citizens’ lack of belief in the science of climate change, or our insufficient fear of expected consequences—but should also be viewed in a socio-political perspective where the social institution as a whole is brought into relief question. When we take into account the fact that different groups and social classes have very different experiences with the political-economic system, and that many climate policy measures (e.g., fees and taxes) tend to lack a social profile, it is not surprising that questions of justice, identification, and political disillusionment are stirred in the public debate about climate change, making it a major trigger for social conflict. Indeed, the combination of worry about the future and a perceived lack of political agency—in addition to the intricate and somewhat intimidating science of climate change—may explain why climate change is a topic that excites big groups of the population and makes it one of the main topics for conspiracy theories online. However, even though many people do not know all the ins and outs of climate change, such as the difference between ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect, a large majority in most of countries are aware of, and concerned about, climate change, and among them young people are the most concerned (Pidgeon, 2012; Smith, 2014; Smith et al., 2017; Stokes, Wike, & Carle, 2015). At the same time, the established political system in many Western countries is suffering from a crisis of its own, with low participation at elections, especially from young voters, and with decreasing trust in the traditional parties, especially the social-democratic parties and those of the center (Amnå & Ekman, 2014). Indeed, there is an increasing political mismatch where the political system of the 20th century seems unable to channel young people's worries about the future into adequate practice. Even though there are no guarantees that more radical, inclusive forms of democracy will produce social arrangements that are ecologically sound, there is some evidence that citizens’ involvement in agenda-setting and decision-making could lead to more sustainable policy-making than what is the case in a neoliberal world order where environmental regulations are considered impediments to free trade, and are actively undermined.18 Citizens’ panels in the preparation for climate summit meetings is one example of how deliberation between participants with diverse viewpoints can produce deeper understanding and the will to push for more radical political measures (Pidgeon, 2012; see also Klein, 2014). Certainly, under the current circumstances, where many citizens in Western democracies are distrustful of government policies, there are good reasons to expect that environmental reforms from above are likely to generate protests, as we have seen with the Yellow Vest movement in France and similar initiatives in other countries.19 To overcome these conflicts, whose roots are due to hierarchies and injustices, I would argue that it is necessary to posit a new ground for political action, and along with this, a new mandate for education. In sum, then, I argue that the topic of climate change is most of all a question of politics—even “extraordinary politics” (Kalyvas, 2008)—related to young people's agency in the world as it is today. Arendt's concern, as we have seen, relates to introducing newcomers to a common world and allowing them to take part in its renewal (Arendt, 2006, pp. 186–189). In this respect, it seems important to point out that in order to create something good for the future we need to believe that there is a future worthy of our psychological investment. In short, we need something to hope for. Children in particular need to believe that there is a future existence for humans and other animals on earth. They need this in order to develop healthy selves and to stay creative in more than a private sense, as future political citizens. Adults, on the other hand, may have difficulties finding reasons for hope in an extremely challenging situation, environmentally as well as politically—a situation where placing one's hope for the environment in the normal political procedures could be seen as a recipe for disappointment and disillusionment. These final sections, then, explore the question of what we may hope for in the domain of education in times of climate change. Once again, I start out with some general considerations related to climate change and the political—this time connected to notions of agency and the production of new meaning/significations—before turning to some contemporary examples of what I see as extraordinary political agency that will have consequences for how we see the notion of authority in education. With rapidly rising temperatures, especially in the arctic regions, ocean acidification, changes in the weather system, and species extinction, it has become increasingly clear that climate change is not a problem that can be solved, and the natural world cannot be saved—climate change is already a fact that will continue to develop even if all emissions of climate gases should stop today (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2018). This means that the existing social structures will also be transformed; as pointed out by geographers O'Brien and Selboe (2015). The question is no longer whether societies will change, but whether they will do so consciously and deliberately, or eventually be forced to adapt, with added costs and consequences. Notwithstanding more than 25 years of international negotiations in the UN, however, nation-states have so far been reluctant to respond to the need for self-limitation, not least in terms of their economic dependence on oil and gas (Klein, 2014). Consequently, many climate activists place their hope in social movements, which are more flexible and dynamic than political parties. Their modus operandi is not implementation, as with government policies, but what Arendt (1998) called action, where transformations are set in motion in the social fabric, often in uncontrollable ways. The action put in motion by social movements is often concerned with altering meaning and producing new significations. However, their effects, as pointed out by Norwegian media researcher Andreas Ytterstad (2014), cannot be fully understood when analyzed in terms of manifest, established meaning, as they formulate new ideas whose meaning is mostly latent. Ytterstad's Gramscian perspective elucidates what it means to create and posit new meaning that challenges the existing social order. The new is not there, in its fully formulated form, but in order to become itself it needs a space in which to give itself shape. Accordingly, social movements—or with a concept from Alain Touraine (2001), societal movements whose object of transformation is society as a whole—are able to generate social critique and political questions that sometimes force their way into the workings of ordinary political channels.20 Another domain where new political imaginaries may be explored is of course education—especially in universities—where beliefs and imaginaries that are taken for granted in everyday life can be elucidated, analyzed and put into question. As far as primary and secondary education is concerned, there is a large and growing body of literature on education for sustainable development, environmental education, and ecopedagogy (Hume & Barry, 2015), but for higher education the field is considerably less developed. This is understand