Bernie Sanders and Bill Nye, two confirmed legends in the art of taking no shit from anyone, joined up for a climate change-centered chat Monday. The Facebook-streamed discussion touched on the ludicrousness of the Trump administration's stance on climate change, the potential long-term damage of that stance, and the fact that anyone still out here denying science is—in a word—wrong.
After Sanders introduced him as a fellow dude who believes "actually reading and thinking is a good thing," Nye got straight to the point: Trump's stated belief that climate change is a Chinese hoax, coupled with the administration's efforts at dismantling environmental protection regulations, should be alarming for everyone.
"The long-term implications are potentially catastrophic," Nye said of the current administration. "You can hate me, you can hate everything, I understand that. But the problem is the speed at which the world is warming and the climate is changing. It's not that the climate is changing, it's the rate."
But Nye is hopeful that the issue of climate change can be presented to Republican-led deniers with an economic advantage angle, possibly tilting the conversation in science's favor. "It is reasonable to me that, if we can show an economic benefit to turning things around, we could turn things around," Nye said. "The example I harken to all the time, everybody, is the Solutions Project. The Solutions Project is a group of civil engineers who have done an analysis that shows we could power the entire U.S. renewably right now if we just decide to do it." That decision, Nye explained, would result in the creation of jobs right here in the U.S.
For anyone still not sold on the facts, Nye has a message: "The science is settled."
Peep the full Sanders x Nye chat above, then join us in waiting impatiently for the April premiere of Nye's new Netflix series.
