Free Essay with the Short Article Analysis: Earth Day March Stresses Importance of Science in Everyday Life

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Earth Day march stresses importance of science in everyday life

MARIAN SCOTT, MONTREAL GAZETTE Updated: April 22, 2017

Tens of thousands are expected to take part in the March for Science in Washington on Saturday to protest against scientific cutbacks and comments by United States President Donald Trump. Montreal is among some 500 cities and towns around the world that are also holding events on Earth Day. The Montreal Gazette talked with organizer Jeremy Bouchez, a science writer at the Universite de Montreal.

Q: Why a march for science?

The march for science in Montreal was inspired by the one in Washington. This was in response to Donald Trump's announcement of his intention to cut the budgets of environmental organizations and other governmental organizations in the United Sates, like NASA.

Originally, it was aimed at the U.S. administration, but it has turned into a march to remind people of the importance of science and empirical evidence for the health of democracies and, more generally, of the importance of science in everyday life.

We are living in an era in which we could not survive without science and technology. But to quote a phrase by Carl Sagan (the American astronomer and science popularizer), which is still very true today: "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."

When you look at surveys, fewer and fewer people are aware of the benefits of basic science and of how much we owe to scientific discoveries, for example, in prolonging our lives or improving road safety.

More and more, "alternative facts" are questioning basic science and the scientific approach. We are living in a very dangerous period, when science and research are under attack.

So I think this event on April 22 will be an excellent opportunity on a global scale to remember how important science is to society.

Q: Who is organizing the march?

It's basically being organized by citizens, not by any organization. I came up with the idea two days after they announced the march in Washington. I am a science writer at the Universite de Montreal and I write an academic blog for a research institute on public health. I've been working in the field of popularizing scientific information for 10 years and I'm very passionate about it.

Q: What will be the message of the march?

The main message is to celebrate science and underline the need to protect it, because it brings us prosperity, health and security.

The most important topic today is climate disruption. It gets a lot of attention in the media, for good reason, because it has so many implications for our daily lives. For example, it could lead to wars, like wars over water as rivers disappear. It could cause public health problems like parasites and disease.

Climate science has made a lot of progress in the past 15 years. It's not for nothing that the Trump administration has made it a priority to cut funding to it because of financial interests like the oil and gas sector. Climate science gives us the tools to foresee environment problems. So cutting funding for it is like taking away the glasses of someone who needs them to read.

Commentary on Short Article

1. The topic of this article emphasizes on the importance of science in our everyday living as highlighted by the march for Earth Day.

2. Chapter 3 of the text titled Sensation and Perception has a subtopic that deals with the science of seeing and how humans are able to perceive things through the sensory aspect of vision.

3. I chose this article after going through the subtopic on the science of seeing that made me realize how crucial science has been in helping mankind to discern the world around him. It is through science that the psychology text was able to comprehend how human beings can visualize and see objects, rendering substantial importance to the world of science at large. The march for Earth Day brought about the same realization of the significance of science in the lives of humans in their everyday lives (Scott, 2017).