Since the reform and opening up, the Party and the state have attached great importance to ecological civilization education, and successively issued a series of relevant policies on ecological civilization education, forming a discourse system of ecological civilization education policy with Chinese characteristics. In this study, 267 policies related to ecological civilization education issued by the Party and the State from 1978 to 2023 were selected, and the policy discourse in the policy texts was deeply analyzed by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. The longitudinal study found that since the reform and opening up, China’s ecological civilization education policy discourse has experienced four development stages: initial exploration, consolidation and strengthening, scientific optimization and in-depth development. The horizontal research builds an analytical framework from four dimensions: value orientation, goal orientation, educational content and guarantee mechanism. The results show that China’s ecological civilization education policy discourse always adheres to the value position of ecological civilization, and the ecological civilization education policy discourse system is becoming mature and perfect in the continuous optimization and adjustment. It has gradually formed an ecological civilization education discourse system suitable for China’s national conditions and people’s needs. Ecological civilization education policy discourse not only leads the scientific development of ecological civilization education in China, but also provides constructive Chinese solutions for global ecological justice and sustainable development.