Photo/Molly Adams
Scientists to join September 20th Global Climate Strike: A Key Step Forward
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The March for Science (marchforscience.com), an international group of scientists, science advocates and teachers, has urged its members and supporters to stop work on September 20, leave their laboratories, classrooms, and field work sites, and to participate in the youth-led Global Climate Strike. According to the March for Science, tens of thousands of scientists from around the world have signed letters endorsing the climate strikers.
As scientists, joining the Global Climate Strike is a natural extension of our daily work and career goals. We collect facts, observe change, try to understand why change occurs and then develop new methods to stop, alter or speed up change. Our goal is to understand nature and to use this knowledge to fight disease and hunger, to help provide clean water, a safe environment, better housing, and, in general, to make the world a better place. These are the reasons that academic and governmental scientists sounded the initial alarm on global climate change; that Dr. Hanna-Attisha exposed the lead contamination in the water supplies of Flint and Newark; and that her colleagues continue to describe the growing poisoning of our water, soil and food. We are part of the struggle to preserve the Earth and to provide a future for our children.
The call for scientists to participate in the strike represents the ongoing integration of scientists and scientific organizations into the developing social and economic struggles. This integration reflects the growing collective understanding that we are in a battle for the very essence of science. As part of this assault, government scientists in regulatory agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Departments of Agriculture and Energy are being laid off and their work buried. Another anti-science campaign is the effort to discredit science and scientists. In the April 16, 2019 issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lyengar and Massey point out that the founding of the Americans for Prosperity (AfP) in 2006 by the Koch brothers initiated a campaign of fake news, misinformation and disinformation aimed at reducing government regulations by discrediting the scientific basis for these regulations (doi/10.1073/pnas.1805868115). The AfP’s campaign has been extremely successful. For example, in 2016 only 39% of US adults trusted scientists “a lot” on climate change.
The objective of the attacks on science is to help clear the way for the unfettered capitalist rape of the earth. The Global Climate Strike and programs such as the Green New Deal present an alternative path towards saving our planet and developing a peaceful and cooperative society. As scientists, we know that advances in the basic and applied sciences have laid the foundations for a society that provides housing, food, health care and necessities of life for all living beings. It is now our main task to share this vision of the future with the developing social and economic struggles. We cannot move forward unless we all move together.
