This past April, I attended one of the nation’s 1,400 “Hands Off” protests, participating in what was, at the time, the largest demonstration against Donald Trump’s second term. (The recent “No Kings” demonstrations were even larger.) Thousands of people lined the sidewalks along 22nd Street in Tucson, most wearing white and holding handwritten signs, some of them funny and others not. One sign caught my eye for its matter-of-fact clarity: the simple statement “Science is not an alternative fact.” The young woman holding it must be a scientist, I thought, looking into her face.
I wondered if she was one of the many employees — more than 10% of the agency’s staff — who were recently fired from the National Institutes of Health. Perhaps she was among the 800 staffers cut from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or the 170 laid off by the National Science Foundation — half of whom were reinstated after a judge ruled that firing probationary workers was illegal. Or maybe she was one of the hundreds of researchers studying pollution, clean water and climate change who had just been fired by the Environmental Protection Agency. Then again, she could have worked at our local University of Arizona, one of many researchers whose grants were rescinded by a federal agency.
“Science is not an alternative fact.”
Or she could have been like me: Not directly affected by the cuts, but with plenty of collective and moral reasons to protest. There are so many of us whose mission is not just to understand but to make others understand and care about the life-and-death consequences of climate change. The science behind it all matters; the impacts affect everyone.
Scientists in the United States tend to avoid activism; many fear that wading into politics will undermine their work and compromise their independence. Others worry that engaging in protest or political statements will distort the value of their research and further erode Americans’ already diminishing trust in science.
And yet scientist-activists have long helped shape public opinion and address seemingly intractable societal problems — the fight against nuclear proliferation, for example, or the pushback against genetically modified foods. Remember the 1960s and ’70s? Books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and research by U.S. scientists revealed the health impacts of air and water pollution, leading to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of landmark environmental legislation. Fast-forward to the recent past — the aftermath of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests — and, of course, to today, with the ongoing climate crisis, when scientists are mobilizing and needed more than ever.

A recent piece in the journal Nature argued that this shift has been at least 15 years in the making: “Calls for activism through or in climate science have multiplied, urging scholars to engage in activism as an ethical and social duty beyond traditional roles of writing journal articles or managing research.” Acts of civil disobedience can help spark real action on climate change, while scientists can also help by serving as expert witnesses or producing scientific reports for national or regional governments and civil society sectors. “Scientists can be rigorous, objective, and engaged, all at the same time,” said the authors. “This does not necessarily imply neutrality.”
Back in 2016, during Trump’s first term, the Pew Research Center found that 56% of the general public supported a major role for climate scientists in policy decisions. As if on cue, scientists mobilized as they had not done since Vietnam. According to sociology professors Scott Frickel and Fernando Tormos-Aponte, this inspired the creation of more science advocacy organizations and a greater push for fossil fuel divestment at some universities, including the University of California system.
“Scientists can be rigorous, objective, and engaged, all at the same time.”
Frickel and Tormos-Aponte’s survey of scientists confirmed that the current cultural shift may have started with the first Trump presidency but was truly galvanized into action by the urgent need for climate justice. When the scientists were asked how often they thought they should be politically active, 95% answered “sometimes,” “most of the time” or even “always,” especially younger scientists and those who are active on social media.
A couple of weeks after the Hands Off protest, news of the dismissal of almost 400 contributors to the Sixth National Climate Assessment (NCA) mandated by Congress clearly showed that the second Trump administration’s policies are not just anti-science but outright vengeful and destructive. Not to mention irrational: The firings leave states across the West — from Washington to Nevada and Arizona — without the ability to prepare for climate impacts such as extreme heat, wildfires and drought.
In a social media post, Arizona State University scientist Dave White, a lead author of the 2023 Fifth National Climate Assessment, said he and his colleagues remain committed to scientific integrity. “We must continue to push forward,” White wrote. “The stakes are too high.”
Soon after White’s post, a group of activist scientists came forward and pledged to continue NCA’s work: The American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union will now produce more than 29 peer-reviewed journals that cover all aspects of the climate crisis in this fast-changing political climate.
This article first appeared on High Country News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.