(indistinct chatter) - [Reporter] It's mid-May, and high school freshman Dwayne Murphy is pitching a big idea to climate scientist Ben Kravitz.

- There's gonna be a tank, and it's gonna be like a big giant metal tank.

You fill it up with water, and the tank's just gonna heat up, I guess.

- [Reporter] That tank feeds a steam and solar powered car, but it has some potential drawbacks.

- It's not really designed to take any damage like at all, so you have to be like really gentle with it usually.

You can't like hit things like, all right, like of course this will hit anything with your car.

(Ben laughing) - [Reporter] This conversation is part of a larger lesson about developing technologies that reduce planet heating pollution.

Kirsten Milks is Murphy's teacher at Bloomington High School South.

She's been refining this lesson over the last three years with help from Ben Kravitz and other scientists at Indiana University.

- The fact is that climate change is the story of these young people's lives.

It is already the story of where we live.

It is the story of a state largely supported by agriculture.

Climate change is here and now, and students need to know not just the stuff about it that is challenging and difficult, the stuff we hear about in the news, but also they need to see how change can happen.

They need to feel like they understand and can actually make a difference in our shared future.

- [Reporter] Indiana recently approved new standards that now require high school students in Earth and Space Science to learn about human-caused climate change.

Many educators report they lack the resources necessary to teach climate change.

That's according to a 2022 survey of more than 700 teachers by the National American Association for Environmental Education.

- In a high water area, the extra runoff would run off the roof.

- [Reporter] Milks and climate scientists at Indiana University developed a climate change lesson plan to help fill that gap.

- Climate change is happening.

We're not doing enough to stop it.

- [Reporter] The only permanent solution to climate change is to stop using fossil fuels like oil, coal, and gas.

Scientists already know technologies that could do this, like using batteries with solar and wind energy.

But Kravitz says the world isn't moving fast enough, so he and other scientists are studying strategies to temporarily alter the Earth's climate to reduce the effects of climate change.

It's known as climate engineering or geo-engineering, and that's what students in Milk's classroom are learning about.

- The people who are going to be voting on whether to do it or even leading the charge, are sitting in high school classrooms right now, or maybe junior high classrooms, so if they don't know what this topic is, that's a real problem, so that's why we developed a lesson.

(indistinct chatter) - So today is the day that you're gonna really work on creating your engineering design, and then remember, we're gonna share it using a presentation.

You're not gonna stand up in the front and present.

Instead, you're gonna use this presentation tool to make sure that you've answered the questions that real-life engineers answer when they're designing and refining solutions to problems.

That's why it says climate change.

- [Reporter] Milks says creativity is the core of this exercise.

Students are encouraged to think of out of the box ideas to reduce planet warming pollution.

- So you're gonna find places where people should specifically target planting trees.

- Yeah.

- That's so cool.

- Got a vent in the front and a vent in the back, and a filter in between.

- [Reporter] Junior Campbell Brown came up with an idea for a flying air filter that sucks up carbon dioxide and turns it into a harmless byproduct.

- So you wanna know something?

It does work.

- Heck yeah.

- Yeah.

There's a guy named Klaus Lackner at Arizona State University who's building these.

His are a lot bigger and a lot more expensive.

- Yeah.

- But the waste product that you get out of it is baking soda, essentially.

- Oh yeah.

- [Reporter] Other ideas included artificial trees filled with water that could help fight wildfires, solar powered helicopters, and lots of ways to reflect light back into the atmosphere, (can spraying) including covering the desert in glitter.

Milks encourages students to think about the potential downsides to their ideas.

Take glitter in the desert, for example.

- That's a cool idea.

What other challenges will you need to face, do you think?

- [Student] Wildlife.

- Tell me more about wildlife.

- [Student] They'd like eat the glitter.

- How are we gonna make sure that the glitter doesn't get eaten by the rock pocket mouse, other herbivores that live and might be eating, or like snakes and stuff?

- [Reporter] For Kravitz, hearing ideas and conversations like these always makes him feel better.

- The neat thing about seeing all of these ideas come out of the classroom is it's not I can't do it.

It's we can do it.

Humans when they get together can do amazing things, and that's what gives me hope.

- [Reporter] Brown, the junior who came up with the flying air filter idea says she knew very little about climate change before this lesson.

- I've really enjoyed this class because I've learned things and those things have actually allowed me to like think about what I'm doing to our Earth.

And I'm glad that it's actually become a requirement so that others can actually take steps and think about what they're doing as well.

(indistinct chatter and laughter)