Bill Nye to Climate Change Deniers: You Can’t Ignore Facts Forever
Is theage of climate change deniers over? Let’s hope so. Because we’ve got serious work to do. If we no longer need to debate whether the Earth is flat, then we no longer need to entertain the possibility that man is not making an unsustainable impact on the planet. From the plastic seas swirling in the oceans to our depleting rainforests to killer storms, the evidence that we’re abusing the Earth can go on and on. At this rate, future generations will hate us, if they ever get the chance.
Luckily, the BBC took a stand against climate change deniers: reporters and producers were told to stop giving airtime to people wanting to spew lies against proven climate science. Bill Nye, a scientist and educator who stands up to the climate change deniers’ war on facts, welcomes the BBC’s commitment to report responsibly. In the below interview clip with Big Think, Nye discusses his famous debate with climate change denier Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee who raised around $200,000 from the oil and gas industry in her campaign for re-election.
Nye explains why the rest of media must follow the BBC’s lead on banning deniers and instead focus on solutions to climate change:
It’s not that the world hasn’t had more carbon dioxide, it’s not the world hasn’t been warmer. The problem is the speed at which things are changing. We are inducing a sixth mass extinction event kind of by accident and we don’t want to be the extinctee, if I may coin this noun. So, I mean as far as Miss Blackburn, sounded like she had been coached on denial bullet points or talking points. And I very much enjoy taking those people on, but meanwhile it breaks my heart because we got work to do. And the fossil fuel industry has really gotten in their ears and it’s really troublesome. We’re the world’s most technically advanced country, or if the U.S. isn’t the most technically advanced it’s certainly in the top ten. I mean you could say Japan, New Zealand are very sophisticated societies. But the U.S. is where iPhone’s are invented, what have you, the Internet; it’s still a significant place. And so to have a generation of science students being brought up without awareness of climate change is just a formula for disaster.
For more on Nye’s discussion on why we must put facts before politics and special interest groups and instead focus on diffusing the ticking time bomb humans created, watch this clip from Big Think‘s interview:
