Scientists for the Party…That Supports Science and the Environment

Like many of us, I have been mildly obsessed with the presidential campaign.  Along these lines, I have been pondering about whether people whose major issue is the environment and science that supports understanding our world really have much of a choice in this election.  If “science and environmental issues” are your voting priority, are there really two choices?  Supporting good environmental stewardship is apparently enough of a joke to one party and its following that their nominee, Mitt Romney, will say at the Republican National Convention “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans to heal the planet.  My promise is to help you and your family.”  This plays to the “climate science is a hoax” crowd, and seems to miss the point that all of our well-being is intimately tied to the planet from extreme weather events to our health and food.  

Imagine a country where the political parties had scientific debates about the best ways to solve the problem of climate change, supporting renewable sources of energy, or environmental issues associated with fracking and drilling for oil using the best available science rather than whether or not climate science is valid or a hoax or why we shouldn’t invest in renewable energies (not to even mention whether evolution is valid!).  How we deal with issues—what the policies should be—is definitely complicated and requires balancing many variables, and politicians would have a lot to debate there.  Coming to conclusions about *what is going on* from the best available science is typically a lot more straightforward.  If you lay out and evaluate all the data, then you should be able to come to a general consensus based on the data, as climate scientists have done.  If new data contradicts the consensus, the framework has to be reevaluated—this is the way science works from evolution to astronomy.  In good science, there is no cherry picking of the data. 

The group Science Debate has been advocating for our elected officials to have a, you guessed it, science debate.  So far that has not been a priority for either party, although the presidential nominees have agreed to answer these questions in writing although only two congressional candidates have.  Why?  Do they not know enough about science to have this debate?  Do they not believe the public knows enough about science to evaluate such a debate?  Do they not think science and what it is telling us about the world is as important as the economy or foreign affairs? Do they realize a debate would make political cherry picking of the data more obvious?

Using the best available science or being environmentally friendly doesn’t have to be the MO of one party, and in the past it hasn’t been.  Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton have all made positive environmental and scientific impacts during their administration.  Democrat or Republican shouldn’t matter when it comes to supporting science and using the data responsibly.  But right now it seems to, and there is a high price to pay when a party that doesn’t support science or use its results responsibly wins elections.