By Jeff Schweitzer

(Originally found at HuffingtonPost.com)

To compete in a technology-driven world, the United States must dramatically improve public education. Our children today test behind many Third World countries. Losing our technological lead threatens our national security, undermines our economy and prevents us from solving our most pressing environmental problems.

We must teach critical thinking from the beginning, and reconfigure our curricula to incorporate science and technology as fundamental rather than elective. Ignorance of scientific principles prevents the public from distinguishing the dangerous from the harmless and from preventing the abuse of science for malevolent purposes. On the basis of bad science, governments support costly efforts to enforce ill-conceived laws to protect consumers from nonexistent or negligible risk, while draining resources from areas of critical need.

Ignorance of science allows the public to be deceived by a barrage of dubious claims. The most recent is fear that the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva will create a black hole that will consume the earth when scientists there smash protons together to create energies first seen at the Big Bang. Even the most rudimentary familiarity with, not even understanding of, high energy physics would prevent such an absurd idea from flourishing.

The anti-vaccine movement is another classic case of dangerous scientific illiteracy. Vaccines are one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine, saving hundreds of millions of lives and improving the quality of life for countless others, but because of medical illiteracy and misplaced religious zeal, some parents are, in a display of colossal ignorance, forcing school boards across the country to accept students with no vaccination history.

The public is unable to filter exaggerated claims by some environmental groups, such as the fear of Alar in apples, from legitimate concerns like global warming. People opposed to irradiated food ignore the existence of more than 50 known strains of E. coli that can cause bloody diarrhea, kidney failure, and death. This is a typical case of poor risk-benefit analysis, another consequence of scientific illiteracy. People are duped by claims of harmful emissions from cell phones. Life-saving diagnostic x-rays are eschewed from fear of radiation, and vulnerable people are persuaded to rely on crystals and astrology for guidance. Without an ability to reason critically, people believe in weeping statues of the Virgin Mary, the existence of a carved face on Mars, out-of-body experiences, and Christ’s image captured on the Shroud of Turin.

While we debate teaching creation science alongside evolution, the rest of the world is training the next generation to compete in the new global economy. We are the only industrialized nation that questions the proven ideas of evolution. We debate this issue, resolved 150 years ago, while China, Japan, Europe and Australia leave us in the dust. Those countries are actively funding stem cell research, which the United States has shunned on the basis of a narrow religious ideology.

We can be the country of the 20th century, a relic of the age of fossil fuels and polluting industries, left behind by the rest of the world adapting to a new age. Or, we can be the leader of the 21st century, blazing the trail to renewable energies, clean technologies and a green economy. The choice is ours. But such leadership demands a better system of education, based on rational thinking skills and knowledge of the basic principles of science. Without an educated populace, the United States will fall ever farther behind the Asian giants and a united Europe.

The first step is to remove from public education the influence of religion, bringing us back in line with other industrialized countries. Let us leave religious teachings to the church, synagogue and mosque. Let us teach religion in our homes, but not in our public schools. We cannot hope to teach lessons of the 21st century when we are fighting battles of the 15th. The next step is to integrate lessons from science and technology into every subject taught, from English to social studies to home economics. Finally, we need to revamp how we teach actual science courses, making the subject more accessible to a broader range of students, not just a few nerds interested in chemistry.

When properly taught, science is fun, exciting and interesting. No experience is quite like that light bulb going off when some aspect of the natural world suddenly becomes clear and understandable. Knowledge truly is power. The image of science should be the polar explorer or underwater adventurer, not the guy in the white coat with thick glasses standing in the lab with a beaker in hand. Scientists should be the rock stars of the future.

If we focus on the Three Es of Energy, Environment and Education, this country can once again reclaim its rightful position as a global leader and leading light in the centuries ahead. But we have to go back to basics and get our system of education back on track.

By Jeff Schweitzer

(Originally Posted on Huffington Post)

Others tonight will write eloquently about the historic nature of Barack Obama’s incredible victory. As many others do, I feel as if our country has been reclaimed after suffering eight years of despair. We have vanquished an occupying force of oppression and retaken possession of our rightful territory. The country and the world will rejoice, for we have embarked on a new path of transparency, honesty and integrity.

But in the midst of this celebration, I still fear for our republic. While Obama’s election demonstrates the absolute best of our democracy, we should not ignore a more ominous truth. Nearly half of the American electorate believed that Sarah Palin was qualified to lead our nation as president. That is a sign of a nation at risk.

My opposition to John McCain was based on a philosophical difference about governance, and based on specific disagreements with his policies on war, energy, environment and economics. But Senator McCain was a legitimate candidate for the office of the president. He is a war hero and a long-standing member of the United States Senate. He clearly has the qualities one looks for in a president, even if I believed he would take us dangerously in the wrong direction. That is the purpose of elections, to allow voters to choose between different visions for the future.

Governor Palin is an entirely different matter. We have to question the judgment of anyone who could conclude that Palin is qualified to president. She is no more qualified to be leader of the free world than is the mayor of Austin, Texas, which has a population as big as her state. Imagine the mayor of Austin as president, fighting the war on terror, righting our listing economy. Palin has no more claim to legitimacy. Let us be honest: Palin’s candidacy was a sick joke. McCain chose her to win an election by exciting the right-wing base but in doing so put our country in peril. The greatest danger, though, is the inability of half of our voters to make reasoned decisions about our leaders. A democracy can only survive with an educated electorate, and we now have to wonder if 50% are no longer qualified.

History will show that Palin’s nomination was an abomination, an affront to reason, and an insult to the American people. Once the adrenalin of the campaign had dissipated from the American bloodstream, once we have transitioned to the calm reason of an Obama presidency, we will be embarrassed by her candidacy. I can only hope that those who voted for Palin will recognize the error of that support, so that such a dangerous mistake is not made again. If not, if fully half of the American people persist in the belief that Palin was a legitimate choice, then this country is in trouble, even considering the historic victory we celebrate tonight.

By Jeff Schweitzer

(Originally posted on Huffington Post)

By Jeff Schweitzer

(Originally posted on Huffington Post)

The King of Corruption, the Sultan of Sleaze, the Doge of Dirt, disgraced congressman Tom DeLay has weighed in on the election by calling Obama a radical Marxist.

The basis of this claim is that Obama will allow Bush’s tax breaks for the rich to expire. Those were the tax reductions for the wealthiest of the wealthy, the very same that McCain wants to extend to ensure that each Fortune 500 CEO benefits from a $700,000 tax cut. Obama is called a communist because he will provide some relief to the Middle Class, simple reinstating the tax code we had under President Clinton. Hey, here is an idea: why not just go ahead and call Obama a Fascist Nazi baby killer? That last claim is no less absurd than calling Obama a socialist or Marxist or Muslim or terrorist-coddler. If claims are free from the constraints of truth, just go for the brass ring and use the worst of a sick imagination and twisted fantasy. Why stop at Marxist? The Republicans have truly reached new lows of desperation by frantically throwing ugly epithets at the wall hoping some of the verbal feces will stick. The nutty Far Right has been reduced to fabricating charges against Obama from whole cloth because the sane world offers them no help at all.

Former House majority leader DeLay was at the apex of, and leading cheerleader for, the most corrupt culture to contaminate Washington since Nixon subverted our constitution by using the FBI to influence the outcome of a presidential election. In the face of the Bush financial meltdown, record foreclosures, and a failing healthcare system, you would be forgiven for forgetting Jack Abramoff and the lobbying scandal that rocked Washington. Allow me to offer a brief reminder. DeLay created an environment of rampant corruption so pervasive that buying votes on the Hill became the norm, the dirty secret that everybody knew. DeLay was sanctioned by the House Ethics Committee not once, not twice, but three times for openly favoring lobbyists, misusing a federal agency and attempting to bribe a colleague in exchange for a vote. He was implicated in the Indian Casino scandal. He claimed that Republicans were “bigger than Christ.” He abused his power to intrude into the family tragedy of Terri Schiavo. The man is a moral monster, an ethical eel. He resigned in disgrace, crawling out of Washington in a haze of deceit. DeLay has no standing, no authority to accuse Obama of anything. DeLay as a crusader for good has as much credibility as Sweeney Todd lobbying on behalf of the barbers union. Both characters are butchers of the worst kind, each with a serious credibility problem in the face of his crimes.

DeLay does provide us with one benefit. As he spews his hate on TV, we can contrast the best and the worst of our politicians by setting him beside Obama. No contrast could be greater. We can visualize the face of sleaze and the image of hope. He reminds us why we must elect Obama and reject the culture that created and nurtured Bush and McCain.

But the benefits of his presence do not come close to offsetting the high costs. So Mr. DeLay, please go away. For the sake of our country, for the good of the electorate, go away. You had your chance, and you used your time to undermine our political system with corruption and greed. You outrageously abused your power. Go away. Never come back. Obama is the future, and you are nothing but a sad reminder of an ugly past. Go away.

By Jeff Schweitzer

(Originally posted on Huffington Post)

By Jeff Schweitzer

(Original text found on Huffington Post)

While subprime lending precipitated the latest financial meltdown, credit default swaps drove us over the cliff. Greedy and unscrupulous lenders are easy to blame, and rightfully so, but pinstripe suits are in fact minor players in the crisis. The proximate villains are government deregulators working in conjunction with commercial banks to create a grand Ponzi scheme of hiding risk to bilk taxpayers out almost $1 trillion. However, even these obscene self-proclaimed masters of the universe and criminally compliant feds are not the real problem. We the American people, individual investors, families struggling to fund retirement accounts, are the ultimate cause of this crisis. We are the enemy. We allowed this to happen by pretending we could have something for nothing, that we could create wealth with no risk, that we could invest with impunity no matter how weak the underlying fundamentals. We were had, but we let ourselves be taken on the false hopes of empty promises.

The mentality and collective insanity that enabled the creation of destructive financial instruments like credit default swaps have had consequences that extend well beyond the financial sector, reaching all the way to the deepest jungles of the Amazon. Not just the obvious impact of collapsing banks, but the philosophy and herd-instincts that led us to this sad state. Much of our domestic and global environmental woes share a common cause with the implosion on Wall Street. The shared denominators are hubris, greed, wishful thinking, willful ignorance and a deep arrogance about our relationship with the material and natural worlds. The seemingly unrelated financial and ecological crises are in fact bound together by the same incredible idea that somehow humans are unaffected by the laws of nature, that we are above and separate from all other forms of life, free of earthly constraints. If we wish to avoid a bleak future in a failing economy, and conserve the resources on which we depend for our survival, we absolutely must adopt a more modest view of our rightful place on the planet.

So far our record is not enviable. The very same arrogance that allowed us to think we could defy gravity in the stock market gives us confidence to ignore the destruction of 40 million acres of tropical forests every year, be indifferent to the catastrophic loss of our coral reefs and dismiss the urgency of climate change. The hubris that encouraged us to invest with wild abandon in bundled mortgage securities with no corresponding inherent value makes us dangerously complacent in the face of mass extinction, now reaching a level of 50,000 species every year.

The implosion of our financial system is a wake up call, a warning of other impending crises caused by our conceit. If only we would listen to the blaring alarm. What we have done to our economy we are doing to our environment. Unfortunately the same characteristics that led us down this path of self-destruction have made us deaf to the ear-splitting signals all around us. Saying that the “jury is still out” on climate change is like doubling down on credit default swaps. The effect will be equally devastating.

When our banks collapsed, the government immediately stepped in to stop the slide to chaos. Yet we are not contemplating an equivalent bailout to protect our atmosphere or to save species or to conserve the ocean’s resources on which we depend to feed much of humanity. We ignore the impending environmental implosion at great peril, just as we now suffer for turning a blind eye to the growing financial storm before the winds of insolvency hit with hurricane force. We had plenty of warning but were hypnotized by greed.

Chaos should not be our first call to action on the environment. The signs of impending trouble are clear, and we need to act now. Let us respond with urgency, with humility, and with an eye on Wall Street as a reminder of our errant ways. After eight years of neglect, climate change, deforestation, loss of biological diversity, depletion of ocean resources, and water and air pollution all require immediate attention, and international cooperation guided by a strong leader in Washington. Starting on November 5, following his historic landslide election, Obama and his team of advisors should put in place comprehensive action plans in each of these critical areas, ready to implement the moment Obama takes office in January.

By Jeff Schweitzer

(Originally posted on Huffington Post )

The latest polls show that 27% of Americans believe that George W. Bush is doing a good job. Sure, that means that an unprecedented 73% have concluded that Bush is a failure, but that is no mystery. A trillion dollar war illegally initiated and incompetently executed would discourage most. For those wavering, Bush offered an impressive menu of ineptitude and cynicism leading to a financial meltdown, record foreclosures, malignant neglect of the environment, civil liberty violations, torture, treasonous exposure of a an active CIA agent, obstruction of justice, Watergate-like politicization of the Department of Justice, cronyism, corruption and destruction of our global reputation.

In the remaining few months, Bush is finishing off with a fine wine of voter fraud, keeping Obama supporters from reaching the polls with a trifecta of sleaze: deleting legitimate registrants, creating illegal barriers to new registrations and using the FBI to investigate bogus claims of fraud on the side of Democrats to create the foundation for challenging the results of an election the Republicans know they will lose.

Yet in the face of this gourmet buffet of criminality, we are left with that mysterious quarter of the population who seem unable to process facts, embracing fantasy in lieu of rationality. Other than Bush’s nuclear family, the man should have no support. In a sane world, the polls should show an approval rating for Bush of 0%. No one person has done more to destroy everything Americans stand for, nobody has been more corrosive to American values, nobody has done more to weaken our national security. Any citizen with a pulse should rightfully be disgusted with everything Bush has done to damage this great nation. Yet we have the crazy quarter. I so desperately want to ask each and every person swimming in that ocean of irrationality the following questions: what exactly would it take for you to stop supporting Bush? What would Bush have to do for you to say, enough, I can’t take any more? Is there anything, anything at all, that Bush could do to lose your support? Is there any horror that Bush could perpetuate that would cause you withdraw your support? I fear that the answer to all of those questions is that no crime, no injustice could change the mind of these Crazy Quarters.

The real problem, though, is not the zealotry of the last of the lost tribe holding down Masada. We could comfortably write them off as extremists who will never support mainstream America. But that quarter is, frighteningly, metastasizing beyond the borders of zealotry into the broader electorate. That is the only reasonable explanation for how something close to half the voting population can support Sarah Palin as a viable leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Support for Palin is no more reasonable than claiming that George Bush is doing a good job. Both require a suspension of disbelief, a surrender to faith over fact, an embrace of the absurd.

Democracy can survive only with an educated electorate. We can now dismiss one-quarter as hopeless, unable to evaluate issues beyond a religious-like devotion to right-wing ideology, immune to reality. We have eaten into our margin. We cannot afford to lose too many more voters to fantasyland.

So, please, tell me, what would Bush have to do to lose the support of that remaining one-quarter of voters? How much more would Palin need to reveal to slap people back to sanity? Please, somebody tell me.

By: Jeff Schweitzer

(Originally posted on Huffington Post .)

In a final act of sabotage, the Bush Administration is working furiously to undermine the Endangered Species Act. Officials are frantic with the idea that McCain will not prevail in November. In a reaction of collective panic as the election draws near, Bush and a compliant McCain are proposing the most significant changes to regulations governing endangered species since 1986.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has gathered a quickly-assembled team in Washington to relax the most important rules that create the foundation of species protection. One goal of this parting act is to exclude from consideration the emission of greenhouse gases when evaluating if a species could be harmed by a new project. But the assault is much broader. This team will also seek to exclude advice from its own government biologists who evaluate the impact of federal projects such as dams on endangered species.

Pause for a moment and consider the implications of this latest assault on rational thought. Bush is actively and openly working to exclude science from the decision-making process. He is silencing the scientists hired specifically to do the job the Administration is now undermining. This is an astonishing, incredible admission that if facts are inconvenient to Bush/McCain faith-based objectives, then those facts will be ignored or buried. At no other time in the history of our Republic has a president sought to silence his own scientists because he did not like the answers yielded by the natural world.

While McCain buries his head in the sand next to Bush, on a beach quickly disappearing under an advancing ocean, Obama says, "I strongly support the goals of the Endangered Species Act, which has paved the way for a number of species, such as the bald eagle, to return from the brink of extinction." He goes on to say, correctly, that the law has not always been executed well, and that he will work to strengthen and improve implementation.

The approach to protecting endangered species is just one of many that spotlight the deep contrast between Obama and McCain on all major environmental issues. Barak Obama understands the urgency of global warming, and will commit to reducing our greenhouse gas emission by 50 percent by the year 2050. He has vowed to make the United States a leader once again in combating climate change. But "the jury is still out," according to Palin, who is smarter than 2,500 climate experts from 166 countries who concluded otherwise. She can, after all, see the sky from her doorstep, just as she can see Russia from the Alaskan border, making her an expert in climatology and in the psychoanalysis of Vladimir Putin. Based on this extensive experience in the atmospheric sciences, she dismisses climate change as a left-wing conspiracy. She denies that the dramatic melting of arctic ice has anything to do with global warming caused by human activity.

On renewable energy, the two candidates could not be farther apart. Obama’s plan to promote renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power will alone create 5 million new high-paying jobs. But that is just the tip of the iceberg, assuming any icebergs remain in our warming world. Just as the United States became globally dominant through technology and innovation in the 1800s and 1900s, the next two centuries will belong to the country that first embraces and encourages the technologies that promote both green and growth. But that will not happen under McCain-Palin. "Drill here and drill now" and "drill, baby, drill" are not the cries of a team interested in supporting a transition to renewable energy and the economy of the future.

The transition to green development will require vision and strength to overcome powerful resisting forces and a deep skepticism. We have precious little time remaining to overcome such resistance. The world every year is losing 40 million acres of tropical forests, which now cover only 6% of the globe’s surface, down from 14%. More than half of all coral reefs are dead or dying. Humans have depleted 90 percent of all large fish from the world’s oceans. We are losing up to 50,000 species each year to extinction, a rate 1000 times natural background levels. After eight years of hostile attack, the environment is in desperate need of a champion in Washington.

We face an environmental crisis every bit as acute as the financial debacle on Wall Street, yet we do not contemplate a similar $700 billion bailout. We ignore the facts before us, and take no decisive action, because the debate has been obscured by an Administration dedicated to obfuscation, misdirection and lies. Our entire approach to the environment must change, and this critical change would be impossible under McCain. We must take a more humble view of our place in the world. We must recognize the confluence between future economic growth and mastery of environmental technologies. We must aggressively protect the natural resources on which we depend for survival.

Individual actions collectively can have global impacts. But such acts are futile in the absence of effective coordination through leadership at the federal level. Economic incentives, tax laws, enforcement of environmental legislation, implementation of international treaties, and government support for sustainable resource use are necessary to create the milieu in which individuals can rationally act to promote the greater good. The environmental challenges before us call for strong, visionary and effective leadership, just the qualities we see in Obama. The choice between McCain and Obama is stark and clear. We need Obama sitting in the Oval Office. He cannot get there a day too soon

By Jeff Schweitzer

(Original text found at Huffington Post .)

By: Jeff Schweitzer

(Original text found on Huffington Post .)