(dramatic music)
- How did America rise up
from a back woods country
to be one of the greatest
nations the world has ever known?
We pioneered industries.
And all this required
the greatest innovations
in science and technology in the world.
And so, science is a fundamental part
of the country that we are.
But, in this the 21st century
when it comes time to make
decisions about science
it seems to me people
have lost the ability
to judge what is true and what is not.
What is reliable and what is not reliable?
What should you believe and
what should you not believe?
And, when you have people who
don't know much about science,
standing in denial of
it, and rising to power,
that is a recipe for
the complete dismantling
of our informed democracy.
- Let us demand, that
educators around America
teach evolution, not
as fact, but as theory.
- [Reporter] Increasing number of parents
showing skepticism about vaccinations.
- [Reporter] Voters have
approved a ban on GMO's.
- [Reporter] Call climate
change, unproven science.
- It's not the country I
remember growing up in.
Not that we didn't have challenges.
I'm old enough to remember
the 60s and the 70s.
Got a hot war and a Cold War,
the Civil Rights movement,
and all this was going on,
but I don't remember any time
where people were standing in
denial of what science was.
One of the great things
about science, is that,
it is an entire exercise
in finding what is true.
You have a hypothesis you
test it, I get a result,
a rival of mine, double checks it.
Because they think I might be wrong,
they perform an even better
experiment than I did
and they find out, hey,
this experiment matches.
Oh my gosh, we're on to something here.
And out of this rises
a new emergent truth.
It does it better than anything else
we have ever come up with as human beings.
This is science.
It's not something to toy with.
It's not something to say
I choose not to be believe
E=MC squared, you don't have that option.
When you have an established
scientific emergent truth
it is true, whether or
not you believe in it,
and the sooner you understand that,
the faster we can get on with
the political conversations
about how to solve the
problems that face us.
So once you understand that
humans are warming the planet,
you can then have a political
conversation about that.
You can say, well should we,
are there carbon credits?
Do we do this, do we put a tariff on this?
Do we fund, do we subsidize?
Those have political answers.
And every minute one is
in denial you are delaying
the political solution that should
have been established years ago.
(dramatic music)
As a voter, as a citizen,
scientific issues
will come before you and,
isn't it worth it to say,
"All right, at least let me
become scientifically literate
"so that I can think about these issues
"and act intelligently upon them."
Recognize what science is
and allow it to be what
it can and should be
in the service of civilization.
It's in our hands.
