A MESSAGE FROM THE "FLAT EARTH SOCIETY" - MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO....

One of my favorite plays based on historical fact (notably, not "alternative" facts) is "Inherit the Wind", a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee.  The play is based on the Scope's "Monkey Trial" as it came to be known - a courtroom trial involving a high school teacher, John T. Scopes - who was found guilty of violating the law in teaching human evolution and sharing other science-based information with his students in Tennessee in 1925. The trial was closely covered by newspapers across the nation as a philosophical combat with scientists on one side of the debate and science-deniers (in this case on the theory of evolution) on the other.  From that time to this - nearly a century - we have not seen the emergence of non-science, science deniers, and uninformed critics of proven FACTS until the rise of CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS.  Those denials were viewed as fringe voices in the non-science wilderness - until the carbon-fuel-based industry (coal, oil, and gas) funded campaigns of disinformation and phony science-based "alternative facts" that paid for many political campaigns for office and the spread of considerable "disinformation."  Still, these views were seen as a small minority of the uninformed or the misled.  Even oil men like former President George Bush finally came around to subscribe to the fact that the earth's climate was warming at a record pace and that human activity was contributing to the rise in temperature, essentially through the production and use of carbon-based fuels and their emissions.  Then came a major milestone - the Paris Accords on Climate Change. With this 2015 global agreement, all the 195 nations of the world - but for 2 - Nicaragua and Syria - agreed to do their part to reduce carbon gas emissions.  For the first time in history, China and India joined with the US and others in pledging to comply with carbon reduction targets in an effort to slow the ever-increasing impacts of rising global temperatures, rising sea levels, and increased storm intensity.  And, then came Trump......

Against the advice of more than 97% of the world's scientists, the vast majority of Americans, corporate leaders, members of Congress, Secretary of State and former CEO of Exxon Rex Tillerson, members of his own family, and every nation on earth, except for two, Trump chose to pander to the voices of nonsense, the alt. right, and the science deniers, and, instead, join with Syria and Nicaragua in withdrawing the United States from the Paris Accords.  It makes me wonder just where Donald Trump was in high school science classes... or, at college... or the Wharton School?  Perhaps he was in the lap of William Jennings Bryan who prosecuted Scopes in 1925, or, could it be that his incipient racism - "Birther-ism"- that claimed that President Obama was a Kenyan (Trump withdrew the claim last year) - can now be found in his burning desire to erase Barack Obama from American history by reversing every achievement completed under his 2 terms as President? You be the judge.....

I just came across an interview with Vice President Pence.... on Trump's Climate Agreement withdrawal. Pence said he found it a surprise that "the left wing" has focused on and taken up the climate issue "across the globe." WHAT? A surprise?  192 other nations are a part of the Paris Climate Accord.... including conservatives, liberals, dictatorships, autocracies, and democracies of various sorts... The two nations on the planet who are now "allies" of the US in climate change deniers - Syria and Nicaragua - are certainly strange bedfellows for the USA. Why, even ultra-conservatives around the globe see the value of saving the planet and recognize that climate change is real and that there is no "Planet B." This has nothing to do with "liberal" or "left-wing" agendas and has everything to do with recognizing that climate change is real, is happening, and that human activity - especially the release of fossil fuel gases into the atmosphere - adds to the warming of the planet, changing climate patterns, and erodes our air quality. This has to do with SCIENCE and not science denial. The denial of scientific fact is not a basis for good public policy decisions. Facts, in the end, do matter. Perhaps Trump and Pence believe that they are appealing to their base?  Do they really think that their conservative voters are wholly uneducated?  I frankly think that the Trump voters are much more informed and smarter than that.  I may disagree with them on a broad variety of issues, including their support for Trump, but I have confidence that most Trump supporters - just as most Republicans - agree with me and the legions of scientists on the planet along with virtually all other nations regarding the reality of climate change. No, Mr. President.....Climate change IS NOT A CHINESE HOAX. And, there is no PLANET B..... And, just in case you have missed this breaking news....the EARTH IS NOT FLAT!

And, no matter what you say or who you fire, John T. Scopes is still not guilty!

Stand Up!  Speak Out!  March On!   Bobby J