I felt compelled to get to the March for Science today, favoring the SF march, but – because the whole entire family minus one or two are coming together here tomorrow, I’m not going. I did it to myself: time to gather the family, long wandering around the globe. What’s up, guys?

Earth Day – March for Science is crucial, I believe, and follow up work highlighted by the marches. Without respect and support for science, we don’t stand much of a chance to live out our lives in peace let alone ensure a healthy planet for our kids and grandkids. You can have your own opinions but not your own facts!

It’s time RIGHT NOW: We’re not passively supporting this; we’re actively supporting science.

March in LA is wrapping up: reporter on KQED FM told of students concerned about jobs available for scientists in the near future. If federal agencies dry up their funding, where are the jobs? Corporate responsibility programs may dry up, too.

Tom Steyer and air quality experts were speakers in LA. Politicizing science? The administration did it first.

Future scientists feel they won’t be able to do the jobs they are training for if federal funding dries up.

HOW TO change hearts and minds? Jared Blumenthal talked about refineries in Richmond. Get away from Ivory Tower presciptions and present current facts. 45% of American public understands climate change is real and harmful. Localize the impacts so people understand. Weathercasters can connect what is happening today to climate change – it is human caused but difficult to get it across. Then they need hope: they have to believe it is a solable problem – or let’s just change the subject.

Jared Blumenthal(formerly of the EPA): What are you planning for? People are rallying around scientists; tomorrow every one of the Congress gets to vote on it. In Fresno, there are pressing environmental issues and our budgets must support scientists or we lose our clean air, water, etc.

NYT a few hours ago:
WASHINGTON — Thousands of scientists and their supporters, feeling increasingly threatened by the policies of President Trump, gathered in Washington on Saturday under rainy skies for what they called the March for Science, abandoning a tradition of keeping the sciences out of politics and calling on the public to stand up for scientific enterprise.

NBC:
March for Science Demonstrators Say They’re the Real Patriots
by MAGGIE FOX
It’s not often that bugs get whoops and cheers.
Lovers of science got their day in the rain Saturday as they rallied around their passions, delivering applause for the technology that brought their smart phones to the obvious theme of climate change on Earth Day.
Bill Nye, a television science entertainer and educator, noted that “science and the useful arts” are embedded in the Constitution.
“Yet today we have active politicians deliberately ignoring and actively suppressing science. Their information is misguided,” he said.
“Our numbers here today show the world that science is for all.”

Newsday
Huge crowds attend March for Science rallies in NYC, worldwide
Tens of thousands of scientists and their allies marched through Manhattan to protest President Donald Trump’s approach to science, including his job picks for top regulatory posts and proposed funding cuts to research and enforcement.
The March for Science, coinciding with Earth Day, was set for more than 600 locations worldwide, including Stony Brook and Washington, D.C., the anchor city, from the Brandenburg Gate to Gainesville, Florida.

“SCIENCE IS NOT A LIBERAL CONSPIRACY,” read one sign at the Manhattan protest. “STOP THE WAR ON FACTS.”
“I don’t know that there’s anything that cuts closer to home than life or death,” Peter Haugen, 45, a psychologist from New Jersey, said of Trump’s proposed budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health: 18.3 percent, about $5.8 billion, cuts he said would imperil the fight against disease and illness.

Christina Lowenstein, 55, of Manhattan, stood on Broadway handing out pink pro-science paper caps in the style of the “pussyhats” worn by pro-Hillary Clinton supporters critical of Trump.

Me: Whatever your political “stripe” the world needs your help to move toward health and away from apocalypse. Figure out your own work with the help of Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, Union of Concerned Scientists, 350.org and Transition US – you CAN make a difference locally which makes a difference for us all. Happy Earth Day!

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