Robert Mitchell Jr.

Thanks to my son for pointing me to this must-read article at Scientific American.  It explains the history behind the current state of affairs — climate change denial, vaccine phobias, the ‘marriage of industrialist money with fundamentalist values,’ etc., and explains the dangers it poses to us all.

Reading the article I wonder, as I have many times before, why people like me (occultists and practitioners of alternative religions) are so pro-science.  I have friends of almost every alternative stripe — Occultists, Voodooists, Wiccans, you name it — and they seem much more pro-science than the mainstream.  How can believers in magic ally with the enemies of ‘magical thinking?’  And yet I very rarely find climate change denial and opposition to stem cell research among the alternative crowd.

I don’t worship science or believe that we can ‘science our way out’ of climate change because I think population growth and social issues will outstrip scientific reductions in carbon emissions.  But denying the validity of science isn’t helping anybody.