San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
State Board of Education fails in science
The State Board of Education almost approved a new slate of science textbooks without embarrassing Texans, but then came the missives from the lesser educated corners of our body politic.
The Christian fundamentalists at Texas Values fired off a press release headlined, “Alert, Did
You Come From a Monkey?”
“Were Adam and Eve monkeys? Don’t allow Texas Science classes to make a monkey out of you and your kids!” the group’s statement proclaimed.
The Scopes Monkey Trial was nearly a century ago, yet our state school board is still debating evolution. Even though board members are only certifying that these textbooks include all of the state’s teaching standards, right-wing Republicans still want biblical creationism in science class.
Board member Evelyn Brooks, R-Frisco, objected to a middle school science textbook over its language on evolution and Earth’s geological history. She asked that textbooks include creationist ideas and allow students to “form their own opinion,” my colleague Edward McKinley reported.
Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian, whose job has nothing to do with railroads and everything to do with oil and gas, fired off a
letter demanding that textbooks ignore global warming and the role fossil fuels play in overheating the planet.
“Despite what the mainstream media reports, the debate over climate change is far from settled, as none of the catastrophic events they predicated (sic) in that last 20 years have occurred,” he advised the board. “These catastrophists are using the CO2 boogeyman and the threat of apocalypse to frighten people into submission.”
I know from experience that Christian feels passionately that climate change is a hoax, and no amount of scientific evidence is going to change his mind. He relies on the
oil and gas industry for most of his campaign donations and, therefore, his future employment. But some education board members took him seriously.
The book “emphasizes the negative effect of fossil fuels. If that’s what’s presented to our children, that would have a negative effect on our state’s GDP,” board member Julie Pickren, RPearland, said about one of the textbooks. “It is factually inaccurate to the way that the negative effects of fossil fuels are presented because it is stated as fact and it is theory.”
Brooks and Pickren are wrong; evolution and global warming are facts. We can debate the edge
cases, but DNA proves evolution happened, and climate data proves fossil fuel emissions are raising global temperatures.
Understanding evolution is fundamental to biology, and carbon dioxide’s role in heating the atmosphere was established in the 19th century. Teaching scientific facts in public schools prepares future generations for the challenges ahead.
Fourteen federal agencies released the Fifth National Climate Assessment on Wednesday, and our young people will have their plates full tackling the mess past generations made. In Texas terms, a person born in 2020 will face many more Hurricane Harveys, Winter Storm
Uris and extreme drought than someone born in 1965.
They will need a thorough understanding of climate science to reduce emissions and slow the current pace of warming. They will also need to understand evolutionary biology to adapt plants and animals to survive with higher average temperatures, both night and day.
Texas is the nation’s largest wind and utilityscale solar energy producer because young people took up the challenge of perfecting lowcarbon power. The next generation will need a sound understanding of science to make good decisions, develop new technologies and thrive in a world facing immense challenges.
More than half of total energy sector jobs are in clean energy, the International Energy Agency reported Wednesday.
“The unprecedented acceleration that we have seen in clean energy transitions is creating millions of new job opportunities all over the world — but these are not being filled quickly enough,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “Governments, industry and educational institutions need to put in place programs to deliver the expertise needed.”
Texas’ leadership never talks about global warming. Lawmakers tried to punish clean energy in this year’s legislative session. Now, Republican politicians are trying to keep the climate crisis out of our textbooks.
Meanwhile, Michigan lawmakers passed a requirement that all of the state’s electricity come from carbon-free sources by 2040. They also created an Economic Transition Office to support former fossil fuel workers.
An embarrassmentfree approval of science textbooks would have been nice, but the real tragedy will come when our kids open those censored textbooks. We owe them a better education and a brighter future.