Dangerously in Denial on Climate Change
In recent weeks, West Virginia has snatched national headlines for its attempts to doctor school science standards to discredit climate change. The sixth-grade science curriculum, for example, was amended so that, rather than having students “clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century,” they would examine causes behind the rise “and fall” in global temperatures.
After a national outcry from educators, West Virginia backed down. But the science curriculum standards — which come from recommendations developed and adopted by a partnership of states — have already been rejected by Wyoming. South Carolina blocked the standards before they were even finalized, and other states are gearing up for similar battles. Climate change has slipped into the same contentious curricular role that evolution once occupied, and some sort of Scopes penguin trial or a debate over “intelligent warming” seems inevitable.
The question is why. Passionate anti-evolution skepticism was clearly borne of biblical teaching. But the motivations behind climate denialism — which, to my knowledge, remains unaddressed in Genesis — are a bit blurrier.