Chapter 1: Climate Epiphany
A Climate Epiphany That Changed Everything
It was around the year 2000 when two starkly different editorial pieces on climate policy left me questioning everything I thought I knew about science and politics.
I was about 40 years old when I read two articles in The Wall Street Journal and in The New York Times on the same day.
They were both editorial pieces talking about what climate policy the United States should have.
Each asked if the United States should sign the Kyoto Protocol, which was an international climate change treaty.
The New York Times was saying yes, we should sign it, and The Wall Street Journal was saying no, we shouldn’t sign it. They each provided a rationale that was based in climate science.
When I read those competing articles, my head exploded. You see, I have a little bit of scientific background, and both of my younger twin brothers are scientists.
The reason my head exploded was that basically the two editorials had totally opposite interpretations of what the science of climate was saying.
My view is that science is kind of black and white. So the science of climate says there’s a crisis or it says there’s not a crisis; it can’t say both.
So one of those newspaper positions is correct and the other is incorrect. How do we determine which is which?
Science Colored By Politics
As far as I was concerned, what was causing the different views of the science was politics. That the understanding of the science was being colored by political considerations.
I think science is interesting. I’m not afraid of science, and I’m a bit of a political junkie.
So I saw this climate issue as a problem in both public policy and science. It was an overlap of two parts of how humans think or how humans work, and it was a fascinating overlap.
You could see the impact of that overlap in these competing articles that said opposite things, even though allegedly they were both based on scientific interpretations.
Even though I’m not a scientist or a policy analyst by profession, those two articles were the beginning. I had this huge moment of “Oh my god. This is fascinating, I want to get involved in this.”
I saw it as a way for me to impact how the world thinks, by getting interested in and getting involved with this scientific/political question.
I Started Dabbling With Climate Change
I started reading a bit, just dabbling on the internet, which back then was very young, trying to find more information, trying to get more grounded in the basic scientific questions.
That was some 25 years ago. I’m still dabbling.
Keep the conversation going! Please share your comments, feedback, questions, additional information, funny anecdotes, or ideas for future blog posts in the Comments below. Thanks!