When I was young, the hard work of removing books from school libraries and curricula was focused mostly on books with an overly developed sexuality, lest they needlessly stir up simmering adolescent hormones. Which was a fairly significant challenge in and of itself.
Classic book burners went after writers with radical social outlooks, agitators, communists all. But that was then and this is now. Having lost the battle against ideas, I guess it’s time to go after the scientists.
A local school district is being pressured by a few parents to remove the dangerous tome The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming and its companion video because it dares to present carbon-pollution-driven global climate change as science, even as scientific fact, when everyone knows “scientists disagree.”
Now, is that “scientists” who disagree, or just oil and coal company lobbyists? And is it truly actual disagreement, or just nit-picking over data and detail? I’m skeptical of the skeptics.
That this protest is being made by the wife of a Congressman who has voted for the oil companies and against clean energy legislation is probably noteworthy, but oversimplifies this conversation.
Then again, when has it ever been simple? What are the forces, not of nature but of human power and corruption, that have always stood against the pursuit of knowledge, that have disputed fact when it challenged institution, that persecuted Copernicus and Galileo, that shunned and still shun Darwin? When has the world ever accepted as truth proven fact when it was difficult or costly so to do? The answer is mostly never, especially when such truth calls out the sin and stupidity and corruption of the powers that rule us and the way we’ve always done things.
Undoubtedly, the real danger of Laurie David’s book is her portrayal of the “big corporations” who are accumulating untold wealth at the expense of the environment. One ought not expect such powerful giants to stand idly by, or not pour their considerable resources into the work of contesting this smear to their reputation. Luckily for them, they own plenty of Congressmen and Congressmen’s wives to aid their cause.
But Ms. Terry is right about one thing. The oil companies are not the enemy here. At least not the only one. We are. It is our dependence on cheap energy, our addiction to the road of least resistance, our unwillingness to change our habits and give up our indulgences that pollutes the earth. Oil is pouring into the Gulf of Mexico because we desire it, we demand it. Tarred beaches and destroyed marine life are the inevitable outcome of the battle for cheap gas in my SUV.
We are willing to bear the consequences of using oil because we are unwilling to do the hard and expensive work of converting to clean energy and changing the way we live. Whatever happens to the environment in the meantime, well, that’s a problem for some other day, some other generation.
All of which points to the greater and even more indisputable truth which has little to do with science. The despoiling of our plant, of God’s planet, is a serious moral failure, a great sin, a human catastrophe. Challenging the science is a great distraction, a way to not face up to the significant crimes we have been and are still committing every day against ourselves and generations to come. We have failed as human creatures, and we are bearing now the cost of our wrongdoing.
It must stop.
Congressman and Mrs. Terry, we should communicate that to 6th graders and 60 year olds in whatever way, by whatever book or video, we can.
Classic book burners went after writers with radical social outlooks, agitators, communists all. But that was then and this is now. Having lost the battle against ideas, I guess it’s time to go after the scientists.
A local school district is being pressured by a few parents to remove the dangerous tome The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming and its companion video because it dares to present carbon-pollution-driven global climate change as science, even as scientific fact, when everyone knows “scientists disagree.”
Now, is that “scientists” who disagree, or just oil and coal company lobbyists? And is it truly actual disagreement, or just nit-picking over data and detail? I’m skeptical of the skeptics.
That this protest is being made by the wife of a Congressman who has voted for the oil companies and against clean energy legislation is probably noteworthy, but oversimplifies this conversation.
Then again, when has it ever been simple? What are the forces, not of nature but of human power and corruption, that have always stood against the pursuit of knowledge, that have disputed fact when it challenged institution, that persecuted Copernicus and Galileo, that shunned and still shun Darwin? When has the world ever accepted as truth proven fact when it was difficult or costly so to do? The answer is mostly never, especially when such truth calls out the sin and stupidity and corruption of the powers that rule us and the way we’ve always done things.
Undoubtedly, the real danger of Laurie David’s book is her portrayal of the “big corporations” who are accumulating untold wealth at the expense of the environment. One ought not expect such powerful giants to stand idly by, or not pour their considerable resources into the work of contesting this smear to their reputation. Luckily for them, they own plenty of Congressmen and Congressmen’s wives to aid their cause.
But Ms. Terry is right about one thing. The oil companies are not the enemy here. At least not the only one. We are. It is our dependence on cheap energy, our addiction to the road of least resistance, our unwillingness to change our habits and give up our indulgences that pollutes the earth. Oil is pouring into the Gulf of Mexico because we desire it, we demand it. Tarred beaches and destroyed marine life are the inevitable outcome of the battle for cheap gas in my SUV.
We are willing to bear the consequences of using oil because we are unwilling to do the hard and expensive work of converting to clean energy and changing the way we live. Whatever happens to the environment in the meantime, well, that’s a problem for some other day, some other generation.
All of which points to the greater and even more indisputable truth which has little to do with science. The despoiling of our plant, of God’s planet, is a serious moral failure, a great sin, a human catastrophe. Challenging the science is a great distraction, a way to not face up to the significant crimes we have been and are still committing every day against ourselves and generations to come. We have failed as human creatures, and we are bearing now the cost of our wrongdoing.
It must stop.
Congressman and Mrs. Terry, we should communicate that to 6th graders and 60 year olds in whatever way, by whatever book or video, we can.
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