In light of the United States exiting the celebrated and voluntary framework of the Paris Agreement, and the unique phenomenon of viable denial of Climate Science in that country, here are some of my thoughts.
Science and Academia have the unfortunate burden of being esoteric. Many of the ideas are unknown, and even fewer are understood by the society at large. This has rightly been identified as a problem by the likes of Carl Sagan, Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, who work hard to keep the public interested in, and aware of, scientific matters. Careful attention should be paid and lots of support must be provided to the efforts of such people, because such efforts are essential to the survival of this post-industrial civilization.
Let me explain: As an example, the science of String Theory is extremely esoteric. For someone not active in the field of science, it may even seem like indulging a delusion. It can be very confusing to follow — Wait, why do they think that all matter is strings anyway? Where did they get this idea about the strings? Look, they seem to be disagreeing with each other. There seems to be some other rival theory called Loop Quantum Gravity. What’s that now? Apparently Einstein didn’t agree with Quantum Physics. This Loop Quantum Gravity must be some hogwash as well.
When we look at the idea of String Theory, observe that there are competing hypotheses, and hear that Einstein himself could not agree with Quantum Physics, it seems as though all science is up for debate. Which it is not. Successful science is never up for debate. And it is too boring to be on TV. At this point, this argument has come dangerously close to my pet peeve about the packaging of content in Media, which I would steer clear from.
It would take a lifetime of scientific study for anyone to understand a topic such as String Theory or Dark Matter the way scientists do. Of course, science does not stop a seemingly ridiculous hypothesis such as the one at the centre of String Theory from being considered; it merely demands that the hypothesis be proved in accordance with the Scientific Method. And that is what scientists are doing. They do not indulge delusions — they investigate hypotheses in accordance with the scientific method. The problem here is that this creates a natural disconnect between scientists and the masses, and the disconnect can be a breeding ground for cleverly planted suspicion.
Let us now return to climate science. For most people, climate science can seem reasonable if explained properly, as many from Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio have done. If the society at large accepts climate science, the issue can be taken at face value and acted upon. This is what has happened in almost all parts of the world. The science has been largely accepted and the world is acting on it. It is doing so under the framework of the Paris Agreement. Here in India, we have ambitious plans of phasing out cars that run on fossil fuels completely by 2030.
There is however, one exception. In the United States, as this video by Vox shows, climate change was largely agreed upon to be real and in need of action across both sides of the political spectrum. One of the most interesting things in the video is how the Republican politicians change their stance when Obama comes to power.
The answer to why they change their opinion has two parts: The first is the fact that Obama made the fight against climate change one of the hallmarks of his presidency at the peak of the great recession which he was also tasked to fix. This made him an easy target for Republicans. Mitt Romney tried to use this for some mileage, as can be seen in that video: “President Obama has promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”
Apart from the fact that a two-party system cannot but create polarization of this sort when it comes to any issue however important, we need to note that Obama was portrayed as callous and elitist for caring for a cause that seemed to be far removed from the everyday lives of American Citizens.
The second, as spelled out by John McCain, is special interests. Those who were on the wrong side of the issue, Oil and Coal companies, sought to discredit the science altogether by introducing actors that made it look like the science of climate change was still not settled and was under debate. This was an old trick for Big Tobacco and Big Oil, who have done this before. And on TV, one would see debates about whether or not climate change was for real, which created doubts about the real nature of the debate.
And everything finally came together when Donald Trump, the man who understands climate science extremely well, came in and made it a jobs issue. It is one thing to swallow the esoteric but harmless theories of dark matter and strings, and a whole other to sit back and let seemingly unsettled science supported by uncaring and elitist liberals to take your job.
This is a dangerous path. Unless this course is self-limiting, that is if the errors of the path can clearly be observed by walking upon it, our civilization may be saved. Else a pandora’s box may be opened that starts at with the door of climate science denial and leads to the deep hole of science denial in general.
PS: I always wondered why Sanskrit, an exquisite language that has the most logical structure of any of the languages I know, went extinct. I always thought that it was due to the hubris of the Brahminical (or priestly class) who refused to educate the lower classes in order to claim superiority over them. It has only now become apparent to me that an ancient economy demanded few literate people, but many workers. It made no economic sense to educate everyone. This is why the culture eroded.
We may again be at a point in history when we would be required to pull everyone up into the light of literacy and education, else we all risk being plunged into darkness.
