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By Ramona Blaber
Sierra Club
Censored News
Sierra Club
Censored News
Gov. Martinez's twisting of science is dangerous and bad for education
Last week, New Mexico's Public Education Department released proposed science standards that would scrub climate change and even the age of the Earth from our schools' curriculum, while introducing assignments to boost the oil and gas industry.
In response, Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter Director Camilla Feibelman issued the below statement:
"It's reckless to erase humanity's most dangerous crisis from our kids' science curriculum. Science education must be based on the data -- the earth's temperature is increasing, not fluctuating. 2016 was the hottest year on record, which broke the record for 2015, which broke the record for 2014.
"The PED's proposal came on the heels of a Scripps Institute of Oceanology paper warning of a 5% chance of catastrophic climate change by 2050, and a smaller chance that climate change would broadly wipe out human life by then. The chance of extinguishing most of humanity rises to 20 or 30 percent by 2070."
"My son will be 54 in 2070. So we have to ask: How are we preparing our kids to deal with these stark realities if we won't even say the words "climate change" in their science curriculum?"
"We can't help but wonder about the role of Gov. Martinez's oil and gas campaign contributors supplanting educators in deciding what our kids will be learning. To instruct kids to describe the "benefits of industry as an exercise" while not even mentioning the costs to health, water and air is part of the model that got us in trouble in the first place."
Contact: Camilla Feibelman camilla.feibelman@sierraclub.
Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, 2215 Lead Ave SE, Albuquerque, NM, 87106, 505-243-7767
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