I
am happy to post a guest essay from my botany student Matt Spears! It is his
story of how his father finally came to admit that humans are causing global
warming. I think it is interesting that his Dad’s reasons for rejecting global
warming previously had more to do with political identity than with an
understanding of science. Working against science denialism is an uphill fight
but we can be happy for little victories!
(Beginning
of guest essay)
My 70 year old father considers
himself a conservative. He calls me a
liberal. I am 31 now, but when I was
about 18 years old I began to learn about things that at the time “blew my
mind.” I was learning about things I had
never heard from my parents. I was so
excited to share these new ideas with them, but quickly discovered why my
parents never talked about these things.
My dad called my new realizations about the world, which included global
warming, “horse shit” and no matter what evidence I presented to him I was
wrong. It used to make me so angry. It seemed like all of our time together
consisted of arguments, but I was young, full of energy and very passionate so
I persisted until years later when I got tired and gave up trying to get
through to him. I read a study where
“permanent” changes were observed in the brains of people who would play
violent video games every day. My dad
listens to conservative talk radio and watches FOX “so-called” news every day
so I assumed that, for the most part, he has literally been brain washed to
only believe what the talking heads of conservative media tell him.
Two weeks ago, while I was at my
parents’ house, I saw a flyer about a discussion on climate change that would
be held at a popular local bar. The
flyers were passed out at the Rotary group he attends every week. I couldn’t believe that in my very
conservative home town of Sherman, Texas a discussion on climate change was
happening outside of a college or university and, most of all, my dad had
brought home the flyer. He agreed to go
and met us there at the bar. Two
professors from the environmental science department at Austin College and the
head meteorologist at the news station KXII were there to answer questions that
those of us in attendance would ask. It
was obvious nearly everybody there already understood global warming, but there
were two whom I recognized that did not.
One of those was the owner of the bar who made a short rant about his
freedom to do whatever is in the best interest of business. I just happened to be in the rest room for
that and only heard the end. After a
couple of pints I began to chime in with comments and my dad followed. He didn’t have much to say and was really
just there to listen. The speakers were
all very thorough in their explanations of global warming. It couldn’t have been any clearer to all of
us who attended, no matter what our views had been walking in there, that
global warming is real and our actions are making it happen at an alarming
rate.
So, on the way home I called my
mom to tell her all about it. While we
were talking I heard a click like somebody else was on the line. My mom said it was my dad. I said “Dad, what do you think?” He replied “We’re doing it.” That’s all I
needed to hear and I guess that’s all he needed to say because he just hung
up. I almost couldn’t believe it after
all these years. I want to gloat and
tell him I was right all this time, but I know better. Now, I hope he realizes that it’s not me
who’s full of shit, It’s Bill O’Reilly.
(End of guest essay)
No comments:
Post a Comment