Enrique Dans
…, home to some of the world’s finest universities and research centers, has fallen prey to a collective delusion dragging it decades backward in public health, environmental policy, science, energy and technology. …But the regression isn’t limited to climate. In public health, the picture is just as grim. The United States is suffering its worst measles outbreak in decades, with cases surpassing 500 in Texas and rising in Kansas and other states. The culprit? Anti-vaccine rhetoric that has gone from the fringes of conspiracy theory to the heart of public policy, …
On the environmental front, Trump used his first 100 days to roll back dozens of policies: scrapping anti-pollution regulations, incentivizing gas-guzzlers over electric vehicles, weakening safeguards for national parks, and axing energy efficiency standards for appliances.
What’s truly baffling isn’t just that a government would propose such destructive measures — authoritarian populism is nothing new — but that millions of people blindly defend it. That in the 21st century, with all the world’s knowledge at their fingertips, a significant portion of the US population rejects science, embraces climate denialism, shuns vaccines and actively votes to dismantle the very institutions upholding their quality of life. …
As Harvard climatologist Daniel Schrag put it this week: “It’s insane for a government to impose its ideology on basic science.” Indeed, it is. But that’s exactly what’s happening. Populism as democracy’s cancer. …
