https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3582-6542
![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
2019 saw a wave of youth-led climate strikes that demanded states ‘listen to the science’. Some of these states are committed to protecting free speech through neutrality on climate change. That commitment inhibits informed democratic deliberation by remaining neutral between climate science and denial. In response, using the United States as our example, we argue that the state can and should use its expressive capacity to promote climate literacy and doing so does not violate free speech commitments. Public deliberation must move on from whether climate change exists to the urgent question of how we should respond.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. See briefly rehearsing this idea, Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 515 US 819, 828–829 (1995).
2. We thank an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing this concern and suggesting an approach to formulate a response.
3. It is worth noting that there has been a recent boom in alternative theories of public reason. Tracing these is beyond the scope of this article, but for a good summary see Badano and Bonotti (Citation2020, pp. 37–40).
4. Bellolio Badiola (Citation2018) helpfully demonstrates how ‘individual scientific conclusions, such as climate change, count among the reasons available to a public, so long as they are “not controversial among experts”’ (p. 417). This further extends to scientific methods of inquiry as they allow for ‘impartial adjudication between competing factual claims’ (Bellolio Badiola, Citation2018, p. 420). We return to the idea of controversy below in Section II.
5. See for an exchange over this objection (Fowler, Citation2019; Bellolio Badiola, Citation2018, pp. 425–430).
6. In fairness, it is a critique she has made of other democracies like Canada (Harris, Citation2019), the United Kingdom (Thunberg, Citation2019b), and of the global order at Davos (Thunberg, Citation2019a).
7. The calculation of especially deficient by percentage of national population is by the authors and is of the population of the states receiving a D or lower based on 2019 population estimates. See National Center for Science Education & Texas Freedom Network Education Fund (2020, pp. 8–11) for evaluation by state.
8. Along with questions of how to do so efficaciously: see, e.g. the contributions to the special issue of this journal (Schlottmann, Citation2005), educator resources (Monroe & Krasny, Citation2015), and handbooks (Neal & Palmer, Citation2003).
9. 58% of Americans believe that ‘most scientists think global warming is happening’ while 20% understand that consensus to be above 90% (Leiserowitz et al., Citation2021a, pp. 8, 9).
10. While beyond the scope of this paper, we address this issue at length in Hodgetts & McGravey (Citation2020).
11. And to press, continually, for it as argued in Cooper v. Aaron, 358 US 1 (1958).
12. As Smith & Siegel (Citation2004) suggest, this might be as far as scientific education can reasonably go (p. 579). Pressing for student knowledge is the proper goal of education. Pressing for someone to believe or act upon knowledge is beyond the practical and normatively proper scope of education.
13. We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this formulation of the example.
14. Something we directly address in Hodgetts & McGravey (Citation2020).