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Death Taxes and Science Denial
Indelible in my memory is that day that I lost my political virginity. In March 2007 I was just beginning to deliver an invited talk on the science of climate change to a joint committee of the Florida legislature when a conservative senator rose from his seat and called me a charlatan and demanded that I be dismissed. I was asked to step down.
The good news is that I finished my talk on time. The bad news is that the Florida legislature made it abundantly clear that the topic of my talk would be censored. Only one newspaper in the state carried the incident, and the denial of science in Florida became even more extreme under the administration of Rick Scott, who banished the term “climate change” from official business.
The current administration under Ron DeSantis seems finally to be taking environmental issues seriously, but this is largely because they can no longer be swept under the rug. The consequences of climate change and widespread despoiling of Florida’s freshwaters are abundantly apparent to even the most hardened denier. The public is demanding a response from Tallahassee.
Like death and taxes, the denial of science is a constant. The current denial of science with respect to COVID-19 is essentially the same story as the denial of climate change, but it is playing out much more rapidly. Climate change has unfolded over…
