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SUNDAYREVIEW | EDITORIAL
Willful Ignorance in Wyoming
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD MAY 24, 2014
The year has already produced three alarming reports involving climate
change.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
reaffirmed the overwhelming consensus among scientists that the planet is
warming, that humans and the burning of fossil fuels are largely
responsible, and that the world must take aggressive, concerted action.
The federal National Climate Assessment described frightening
changes, including unusually severe and persistent droughts, already
occurring in the United States. And two weeks ago, two groups of scientists
reported that the West Antarctic ice sheet had begun to disintegrate
irreversibly, a process that, over centuries, could cause a large and
destructive rise in the oceans.
Despite all this, many leading politicians continue to dispute the
science and resist any effort to regulate and reduce the emissions of carbon
dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. Among the prominent deniers are two
Floridians Senator Marco Rubio and Gov. Rick Scott whose state is
greatly at risk from even modest and relatively short-term increases in sea
levels.
Some of this is to be expected in a political season, when politicians
will do almost anything to prey on the publics fear of job losses. What is
truly depressing is the news that Wyomings State Legislature has become
the first in the nation to reject the new national science standards for
schools, standards that include instruction on the human contribution to
5/25/2014 Willful Ignorance in Wyoming - NYTimes.com
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climate change.
The legislators action arose from various motives, including hostility
to government regulation generally and, more specifically, any teaching
that seems to threaten the coal, oil and natural gas industries that are
important to Wyomings economy. But it seemed also to be a willful effort
to leave a whole generation of children in the dark about climate science.
This is more than standard-issue political posturing. It is madness.
Meet The New York Timess Editorial Board
A version of this editorial appears in print on May 25, 2014, on page SR10 of the New York edition
with the headline: Willful Ignorance in Wyoming.
2014 The New York Times Company