For Science, For The Future
As we prepare to March for Science, as citizens, it is essential that we see strong and unified support from our leaders in government; we must stand for the scientific, technological, and academic institutions that create and drive our economy, create the tools of our security, have been the source of our historical prosperity, and remain the only hope for our future.
We are facing serious, existential threats to our world. Climate change is already wreaking havoc on our poles and oceans. Rising acidity and ocean warmth is killing the Great a Barrier Reef, and changing biodiversity could become a threat to our food chain. Rising ocean levels will cause chaos around the world, including right in my home city of Boston. The Governor of Louisiana has recently declared a state of emergency over rapidly disappearing coastlines, and Miami has had to invest enormously in engineering efforts to try and protect the city from an ongoing growth in sunny day flooding. As the situation worsens over the coming decades, we should expect great waves of desperate migrants throughout the world, creating massive social and political chaos, as climate change creates millions of refuges, especially in less advantaged countries that do not have the resources to invest in the engineering efforts needed to mitigate damage.
The world is in peril. The climate crisis is a slow-motion catastrophe, and scientists have been trying to warn us for decades. And today, Trump and members of his administration maintain that climate change is not real, and are threatening to stop all mitigation efforts, including pulling out of the Paris Agreement. Fundamentally, those positions are tantamount to acts of violence against the people, and represent a genuine emergency.
As millions march in demonstration of a determined conviction for the necessity and criticality of a free and open scientific community, it is essential that we see the same sentiment from our leaders. The world is in danger, and it requires a full-throated defense. Members of Congress, and members of state and local governments throughout the country, please make your voice heard, get louder all the time, and do absolutely whatever is necessary to protect our country, and our world, from the lethal positions of the current administration. Defend and protect the country, listen to the learned masses of the science community, and work to mitigate this crisis.
For science, for the future, let reason reign.
