Bill Nye, Science Guy!
He gave a lecture last April at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs campus.
It was something really refreshing, listening to this wonderfully intelligent, enthusiastic, life-loving man who is near my own age, who refers back to things familiar to me, like the first Earth Day, and the Vietnam draft. And did I mention, sensible?
His message to the kids is this: There are problems in the world: find ways to fix them! Don't do less, or use less to conserve--Do more with less. He wasn't telling anyone, Make the solution... He was saying, Come up with solutions. Come up with ideas, and share them, even if you can't make them yourself.
Actually, it is his message to all of us, regardless of age: Share your ideas, stimulate awareness: Get out there and change the world!
He shot down a lot of the common misconceptions that question the value of the Space Program. He addressed also the politics of denying global warming, pointing out that the petroleum companies pay 'experts' not to prove global warming isn't happening, but to establish doubt about it in the minds of people who aren't trained or educated to know better, to see around the twisting and spinning of the facts.
The absurdity there is that we have proof that the world is getting extraordinarily warmer, not just a normal fluctuation, but a dramatic rise visible in, as one example, the ice-core samples that reveal Earth's climate going back, literally, thousands of years. We know what the surface temperatures were; we know--from the prehistoric and historic air within bubbles in the ice--what was in the atmosphere, over thousands of years. We know enough, to see that what is happening now is significant, and no fad, crazy notion, nor political agenda.
And we know that we have something to do with it, and therefore, that we can influence what is happening with some intelligent and responsible choices.
Bill Nye's message is to make those choices, to get out there, and--change the world!
One young woman behind me griped afterward that he had really been a downer, talking about all those problems... She wanted something to cheer her up. She didn't hear what he was saying that should cheer us up: We, ourselves, at any age, any level of experience and knowledge, education and money, WE have the power to make a difference, to make it better, to... quoting him: "Dare I say it...? CHANGE THE WORLD!"
__________________
The Science Guy is the CEO of The Planetary Society, invites everyone to visit the site and find out about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment