Telling people to ‘follow the science’ won’t save the planet. But they will fight for justice | Amy Westervelt

The climate emergency has clear themes with heroes and villains. Describing it this way is how to build a movement

The biggest success of the fossil fuel industry's decades-long campaign to push doubt about climate science is that it forced the conversation about the climate crisis to centre on science.

It's not that we didn't need scientific research into climate change, or that we don't need plenty more of it. Or even that we don't need to do a better job of explaining basic science to people, across the board (hello, Covid). But at this moment, believe science" is too high a bar for something that demands urgent action. Believing science requires understanding it in the first place. In the US, the world's second biggest carbon polluter, fewer than 40% of the population are college educated and in many states, schools in the public system don't have climate science on the curriculum. So where should this belief - strong enough to push for large-scale social and behavioural change - be rooted exactly?

Amy Westervelt is a climate journalist and the founder and executive producer of the Critical Frequency podcast network