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Make America Great Again #2: Scientists Strike!

Lawrence Bush
January 27, 2017

by Lawrence Bush

To read #1 in this series, on voting rights, click here.

EVERYBODY WHO KNOWS ANYTHING knows that the overwhelming majority of scientists and scientific associations worldwide share a consensus that global climate change is underway and is, in the words of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2006), “caused by human activities.” NASA’s website names eighteen different major scientific associations that share this assessment, including the American Chemical Society, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the American Meteorological Society — and offers an additional list of 200 scientific groups the world over that have determined climate change to be real, human-caused, and a threat to humanity’s future.

Yet politicians of the right, and their business-owning backers, consistently deny this reality, belittle the consensus, muzzle scientists, and seek to bias how research is reported. The Trump Administration has already instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to remove from its website pages with climate-change data and climate-change educational resources -- and the EPA is now being threatened with personnel cuts of up to 50 percent!

It is time for scientists to go on strike on behalf of the planet. We need a week-long walkout, endorsed by as many of those 200+ scientific associations as possible and involving research scientists, academics, computer scientists, industrial scientists, government scientists, every scientist in every field but the actual delivery of medical services, under the rubric: LISTEN TO THE SCIENTISTS!

WE HAVE TRANSFORMED THE WORLD. NOW WE INTEND TO SAVE IT.

CREATION IS TOO PRECIOUS TO LEAVE IT IN THE HANDS OF THOSE WHO DENY THE FACTS.

The strike should begin with a one-day walkout on Earth Day, April 22, 2017. It should build to a week-long walkout in 2018. It should be supported with paid and public service advertisements, particularly on television, and massive demonstrations.

Lawrence Bush edits Jewish Currents.

​​​​Lawrence Bush edited Jewish Currents from 2003 until 2018. He is the author of Bessie: A Novel of Love and Revolution and Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist, among other books. His new volume of illustrated Torah commentaries, American Torah Toons 2, is scheduled for publication this year.