Editorial: The climate crisis so many deny

First in a series

The Daily Herald Editorial Board

Nobody believes anymore that the earth is flat and that if you take a ship far enough out onto the ocean, you're in danger of falling off.

At least, we hope no one believes that myth anymore. Given the enormity of the earth's population, somewhere on the globe, a few eccentrics probably do. But science, confirmed by our actual experiences, has persuaded the vast thinking majority of us that Earth is, in fact, a sphere.

Over the years, science has taught us that some of the old notions are false. The sun doesn't revolve around the earth. The earth isn't the center of the universe. An eclipse has an understandable explanation that has nothing to do with the coming harvest.

We trust science on all these things, although when scientists first revealed them, the initial public reaction was to reject the ideas as heresy.

Why then, we might ask, do so many of us distrust scientists now when it comes to the substantial scientific evidence that our climate is changing and the clearly supported fact that human behavior has played a role in that global warming?

Perhaps, given our earlier examples, the opposition shouldn't be all that surprising. The reflexive resistance to bothersome evidence apparently lies somewhere in the nature of us all.

Don't misunderstand us. Faith in things that can neither be seen nor proved is something to be cherished, and it is neither our mission nor our wish to discount it. Our folio, after all, declares in our founder's words our aim to fear God.

We've always argued, for that matter, that the atheist's belief that there is no God is no more provable than the believer's faith that there is. Everyone believes something by faith alone.

But faith that ignores physical truths is no more defensible than a sea captain who won't leave port out of fear of dropping off the edge of the earth.

Facts, as we so often say, matter.

Why, in our politics, would we treat the awesome threat of climate change as if it were a subject of religious debate?

Global warming is not a matter of belief. It is not something to be accepted or rejected as a matter of faith.

Facts matter.

And in this case, the facts don't even conflict with the teachings of the world's great religions.

So what's the debate?

Global warming is real. It is a looming calamity documented by science. It threatens us and our children, all of our posterity.

We must stop denying the evidence and the science.

We must be thinking beings.

We must deal with it.