Before scientists developed Covid vaccines, 1.2 million people in the US died of Covid. More than 100 million Americans contracted Covid 19 and hundreds of thousands more would have died without the new vaccines. Extremely creative biology led to life saving vaccines for Covid and for many other diseases that would be killing people if scientists had not developed these drugs.

Look around at your world. All our technology, and the medicine and therapies at the hospital are all products of science. Science leads to innovation which leads to new business opportunities, for example electric cars and trucks which are much more efficient, are emission free, and improve upon the polluting internal combustion engine invented in 1794.

Science is a process where trained professionals research a topic over years to discover basic facts about our world. The goal is finding truths that can be used for medicine, technology or understanding nature – for the safety and enlightenment of humanity. If a person injects ideology or unproven ideas into the scientific process, the “peer review” process will reject these falsehoods and keep the process on its fact-finding mission.

Yet we see the Trump administration discarding science on multiple fronts as it seeks to impose its ideology on the United States. Some of this comes from the personal feelings of Trump himself, others from his top aide Steven Miller who originates most Trump policy and has no background in science. The results are extremely dangerous for the US and the world.

For example. At some point, many years ago, Trump concluded that climate change is a “hoax” and that efforts to combat the air pollution that is heating our planet are damaging the economy. The opposite is true. Innovation in new energy sources and transportation creates millions of new jobs. Even so, his administration is purging the government of scientists working to protect Americans from the disasters that a heating climate is spawning. He has gotten the US out of international climate agreements and is investing heavily in oil and gas, major sources of climate pollution.

The idea that climate change is a “hoax” was debunked by thousands of scientists over decades of research. The science of climate change is a settled matter, but Trump is going in the opposite direction, right when we are running out of time to fix the problem. Last year was the hottest year ever worldwide. Yet Trump claims voters gave him a mandate (with less than 50% of the popular vote) to block climate science and pollution control, even as polls show a majority of Americans, (except republicans) understand that human pollution is heating our climate, driving larger storms, more intense fires, flooding and disease spread.

The oil industry contributed $67 million to republicans in the 2024 election. Democrats received $8 million. Trump and republicans reward the oil industry with a full-scale endorsement of oil and gas as the center of the American energy economy. Trump has ended federal support for the wind industry, has stopped fuel efficiency standards for cars and appliances, and has halted tax breaks for people buying electric and hybrid cars.

Meanwhile Trump replaced much of the top scientific staff at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with oil and chemical industry lobbyists who have worked for years to block regulations that protect us from cancer-causing chemicals and other toxins that sicken people, destroy farmlands, and kill wildlife. Other administrations put scientists in these posts.

If we base public policy on faulty beliefs rather than science, America will slip in our competition with other countries even as climate change causes massively expensive disasters.

Tom Ribe