The dangerous trend among a disturbingly large group in this country to replace truth, fact and science with accusation, assumption and unsupported opinion is spreading across multiple sectors of American life.
Unwillingness to accept the verifiable results of a legitimate election was the catalyst for the recent attack on the U.S. Capitol. Refusal to wear masks and adhere to proven precautions against COVID-19 enables the spread of the disease. Unfounded — and in some cases outrageou s— claims about coronavirus vaccines will keep many Americans from being protected.
There is certainly nothing new about substituting belief for fact or lies for truth. The world has been doing it for millennia, and it almost always ends badly. One of the longest running recent examples is the denial of climate change as a fact, a reality that is wreaking realtime havoc here and abroad.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:
“In 2020, there were 22 weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each to affect the United States. These events included 1 drought event, 13 severe storm events, 7 tropical cyclone events, and 1 wildfire event. Overall, these events resulted in the deaths of 262 people and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted. The 1980–2020 annual average is 7.0 events (CPI-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2016–2020) is 16.2 events (CPI-adjusted).”
The lines on America’s disaster graph are clearly and consistently rising like sea levels everywhere, including in our Delaware. Globally, European climate researchers recently announced that 2020 was the hottest year on record, tied with 2016.
Former President Donald Trump and others, often supported by self-interested and profit-obsessed billionaires and corporations, have used their pulpits to deny climate change and to label its science as “fake.” One short sample of Trump tweets on climate change: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
Bill Gates, a billionaire who is using much of his fortune to help solve problems around the world, sees a similarity between the effects of COVID-19 and climate change: “If you want to understand the kind of damage that climate change will inflict, look at COVID-19 and spread the pain out over a much longer period of time. The loss of life and economic misery caused by this pandemic are on par with what will happen regularly if we do not eliminate the world’s carbon emissions.”
Locally, Delaware Interfaith Power and Light (delawareIPL.org), a non-profit, is working diligently through faith communities and partners to address both the causes and consequences of climate change, which they consider to be “the defining moral issue of our times.”
According to Lisa Locke, Director of Programs, “The greatest and most imminent threats, as we’ve already seen, are to low-income, the young and the elderly, and communities of color, who are often most vulnerable to the impacts, least prepared to withstand the effects, and least responsible for their causes.”
Delaware Senate Environmental & Energy Chair Stephanie Hansen told me: “As a low-lying state, the impact of sea level rise driven, at least in part, by climate change is felt dramatically by our residents not only in our coastal areas by the loss of land, structures, and infrastructure such as roadways, but inland as well with the increase in the height of the water table. The increase in the height of the water table leads to flooding, structure damage, and the loss of agricultural land among many other things.”
These are verifiable facts, not opinion.
We know that faith can move mountains. We also know that, unbridled and untested, it can distort people’s thinking in damaging ways and blind their ability to reason.
President-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, board a plane at New Castle Airport, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021, near New Castle.
In my own neighborhood — just north of the Delaware and Chesapeake Canal, a family has been using their home twice weekly to hold what they describe as church services. Many men, women and children, ignoring rules against large gatherings, have attended these services, sitting cozily next to each other without any masks. The routine continues even after one of the leaders died of COVID-19.
Rep. Eric Morrison, a newly elected legislator from the area, who has been working to stop it, said, “First, it is a violation of county code. Second, they are flagrantly defying the orders of the governor regarding Covid and public health.”
The behavior of this group is not altogether surprising nor limited to my neighborhood. Just look at the members of Congress who refused to wear masks during their confinement at the Capitol while under siege by insurgents. Shortly thereafter, several people who shared their space contracted COVID-19.
Whether it is dealing with a human pandemic or the physical fate of our planet, it is painfully obvious that a refusal to accept fact and science usually brings tragic results. So, when President Joe Biden says he wants to restore the soul of America, let’s not forget to bring the mind along with it.
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This column was published online by the https://www.delawareonline.com/ on Feb. 05, 2021.
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