Since ancient times, man has forged explanations for the unexplainable. The ancient Mongolians claimed earth rested on the back of a giant frog whose movements caused earthquakes. The Igorot people of the Philippines believed the eldest son of Lumawig, the Great Spirit, formed mountains when he sent water flooding over all of earth, forcing the ground to rise.
People create stories to make sense of their surroundings. As time and technology progressed, the scientific method replaced mythology and the scope of discovery globalized. Curiosity drives people to understand and moderate the environment, enabling us to learn, make calculated decisions and ultimately survive.
Yet curiosity lacks in recent times. Scientific evidence is met with disdain and disbelief from the public and elected leaders. Despite the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that “scientific evidence for the warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” our own president has called the phenomenon “nonexistent.” It seems that what people believe to be true is held in higher regard than what is actually true.
The hot button topic of climate change reentered the limelight again this month after two major hurricanes left much of Houston and Florida dilapidated and waterlogged. And while scientists agree that no single weather event can be attributed to climate change, warmer waters provide storms with more energy to grow substantially and rapidly, causing more dangerous weather conditions.
Despite current partisan divisions, science has not always been a partisan issue. So much has changed since Republican Sen. John McCain ran for president in 2008 on a stronger climate platform than his opponent, Barack Obama. Since then, top Republican lawmakers have gone from publicly endorsing climate science to being silent on the topic.
One of the explanations for this shift is big political money. Koch Industries, the giant frog atop of which the fossil fuel industry precariously rests, gave nearly $2 million to Republican congressional campaigns in 2016. Additionally, representatives from the coal-mining states of fill top Republican leadership positions, and are more likely to vote against measures that monitor carbon dioxide emissions and fund clean energy projects.
But while scientific curiosity may bring us to unsavory conclusions that threaten jobs and traditions, we must allow it to guide us toward truth, and adapt. Unfortunately, President Trump has not embraced this approach.
His administration has responded to climate change by instating Scott Pruitt, who refuses to admit that carbon dioxide is a harmful pollutant, as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and scrubbing any mention of climate change from the EPA’s website.
Others have taken actions contradictory to their stances on climate change. Florida Gov. Rick Scott strongly and repeatedly warned Florida residents of the wrath of Hurricane Irma, calling it “a catastrophic storm that our state has never seen before.” Ironically, climate scientists have been predicting storms like Irma for years now, yet Gov. Scott continues to say he is “not convinced” that global warming is a reality.
Irma was the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin. Hurricane Maria, which devastated Dominica and Puerto Rico, strengthened from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in fewer than two days.
If these were ancient times, people would wonder what they did to anger the deities. But we live in the information age, not the era of blind conjecture. Asking "Why?" is more important than ever. If elected officials continue to assert that the growing severity and frequency of natural disasters is utterly incidental, the nation will face dire consequences.
People must take collective action to limit our impact on the planet, refocus attention on data and facts and stifle the plague of incuriousness that—unlike all plagues that have so far beset us—may be our own undoing.