KENNEBEC JOURNAL • October 3, 2022
The success of a NASA test last week has been an astonishing scientific feat with the goal of protecting humanity. Back on Earth, exactly the same can be said of the lightning-fast development of coronavirus vaccines, and the continuing efforts by scientists to quantify and address the looming threats posed by human-caused climate change. Yet in too many corners of American politics, these steady societal servants of fact-based expertise have been trashed as anti-industrial zealots or vaccination conspirators. One example of this toxic phenomenon is that more than 95% of scientists agree human activity has caused the destructive climate change that is more obvious by the year — yet more than 100 members of Congress continue to deny it. Whether the threat is from space, or a virus, or humanity’s own environmental shortsightedness, the solution is to trust the science — and to reject the know-nothing extremism that afflicts too much of a nation’s politics today. ~ Editorial by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch