Bill Nye: Anti-Science Politicians Endanger Us All

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• published: 04 Oct 2016
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Danger is at hand, and you may have voted for it. Science educator Bill Nye weaves a passionate argument for the importance of science literacy in a country's elected leaders. Read more at BigThink.com: http://bigthink.com/videos/bill-nye-on-science-literacy-and-elected-officials Follow Big Think here: YouTube: http://goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: https://twitter.com/bigthink Transcript - Ebola’s a classic example for me from an evolutionary standpoint of germs and parasites being your real enemy as a big animal, a multicellular organism. Everybody’s terrified of Ebola because you can’t see it and as the saying goes this is not my idea. People aren’t afraid of dying so much as they’re afraid of how they’re going to die. And the Ebola death looks horrible. It’s awful. And what’s making it worse in Africa in particular is scientific illiteracy. People not realizing that these microorganisms get passed from one to another. When I was in South Africa – I guess it’s five years ago a guy told a story – he was from a village, a small village. He was working for the South African Space Agency which they have. And he says it’s going to villages where kids have never seen a magnet and they recommend that you don’t go near that tree because the lightening bird landed on that tree and that means that tree will get struck by lightning and the tree branch will fall on you. And that’s not true by the way. So by having a population of people who don’t really understand germs and how serious they are, the germ gets spread really readily. As far as people freaking out here in the U.S., it’s appropriate. However, the same legislatures when it comes to climate change say well I’m not a scientist. I can’t have an opinion on climate change sure have a lot of opinions about Ebola. There’s a faction of our leaders, elected officials, who continually cuts the budget for the Centers for Disease Control which, to me reflects an ignorance of how serious germs can be. Read Full Transcript Here: https://goo.gl/zVEOGO.