Politics and Science

When did the environmental movement gain its first traction in the United States and abroad? It's not so much when chronologically but when politically. The first Earth Day was celebrated to focus attention on continued degradation of our environment due to population growth.

Few among us knew then that a political transformation was under way in research communities world wide. A concerted effort was mobilizing to politically and religiously cleanse our educational and research institutions. And it has been breathtakingly successful. Today fewer than 5% of all university level professors, researchers, and scientists say they believe in God and even fewer say they are moderate or conservative politically.

Why is this wrong? We live in a country struggling to provide opportunity for all. And we seek to offer freedoms like education and economic opportunity to the rest of the world. We achieve these noble goals by embracing diversity. Diversity strengthens organizations and governments because spirited debate results in sound policy. Yet our elite institutions are not diverse. In fact they are today more segregated than at any time in our history.

And so it is for climate and environment. Diverse voices were silenced by political extremists using methods of extortion and terrorism that only Saddam and Osama might feel are reasonable. It might not be out of the realm of possibility that this cleansing broke racketeering laws. A politically balanced scientific community seems reasonable but it became one way politically. In fact, climate and environment are now so incestuous that some in Arkansas might feel right at home.

There is little doubt that a free and open climate and environmental community can identify real and honest challenges and can then propose reasonable solutions. So it's only reasonable to encourage diverse political and scientific perspectives that can bring some sense of trust back to their often discredited community. And it's time to drop the "God is dead" crap that seems to overshadow any reasonable research. Leave religion out of science. And that means the atheist religion too.