Trust our science

Time to end the multigenerational Ponzi scheme
By Kim Stanley Robinson

First, we need to trust our science. We do this every time we fly in a jet or rush to the doctor in hope of relief from illness; but now there is some cherry-picking of science going on in the various kinds of resistance to the news about climate change, and this double standard needs to be called out.

Kim Stanley Robinson is an author who has thought deeply about the future of our planet (and any others we might visit or colonize), and this article on capitalism and environmental change is well worth a read. There’s plenty of doom-and-gloom out there, but not much with solid suggestions, no matter how difficult to implement.

KSR wrote a trilogy set in a near-future world struggling with climate change: Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below, and Sixty Days and Counting. I’m a sucker for any work of fiction that depicts scientists as regular people, and was extra-thrilled to find a good, interesting and thought-provoking novels about the National Science Foundation.

Edit: Concidentally, you can read one of KSR’s earlier novels, Red Marsonline for free (PDF download) at Random House’s new online library, Suvudu.