Americans, in many ways, are more scientifically illiterate now than they have ever been.

We live in an age where the most preposterous and unjustifiable beliefs can be reaffirmed with a simple Google search.

Fourteen percent of Americans believe that there is no solid evidence for the rising temperature of the Earth. Twenty-five percent of Americans believe that the COVID-19 pandemic might have been preplanned.

It seems paradoxical that baseless conjecture about science is so pervasive in the 21st century. It is tempting to assume that these beliefs are due to a lack of knowledge, resources and information access.

However, this would be the best-case scenario. Everyday individuals bear only a fraction of the blame for this lingering ignorance.

Bad actors – from popular YouTubers to the most influential political figures – seemingly have a vested interest in keeping their audiences misinformed, emotionally charged, confused and skeptical about widely accepted scientific phenomena.

This is especially true when these observations destabilize the status quo by threatening what influential Americans hold dearly: money and power.

“The biggest threat is not global warming when the ocean’s gonna rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years – and you’ll have more oceanfront property – the biggest threat is not that,” former President Donald Trump said in a recent interview on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The sea level rising a mere fraction of an inch? We’d be lucky to tame the rise in sea levels under a foot by 2050. And how is more “oceanfront property” a silver lining in the face of a crisis as universally existential as climate change?

Instances like these are easy to ridicule. It might even feel cathartic to do so. But these qualities wash away quickly.

Nonsensical statements like those of former President Trump reduce the severity of climate change for large audiences, thus creating real, political consequences that affect all of us.

Ann Carlson, the Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law and faculty co-director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA, has led legislative and scholarly efforts to combat climate change throughout her career.

Carlson also served as chief counsel and later as acting administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under the Biden administration from 2021 to 2024. Under her guidance, the NHTSA created a set of strict fuel economy standards, which were just recently finalized.

According to the NHTSA, the improved standards will prevent over 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

In March 2023, Carlson was nominated by the Biden administration to officially serve a full term in this role. In response to the progress made by the NHTSA under her leadership, her nomination faced immediate and vehement opposition from GOP senators, a movement led by Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

“I was subject to a pretty vicious crusade against my nomination that was led in part by a dark money foundation that, it’s my understanding, at least gets money from the oil and gas industry, among others,” Carlson said.

For reference, the oil and gas industries have pumped over $600,000 into Cruz’s current Senate reelection campaign. This does not account for the multitude of other tactics that oil and gas industries use to downplay and obfuscate the climate crisis.

“It’s very clear from the historical record that oil companies have poured millions of dollars into funding a campaign designed to stoke confusion among members of the American public – they’re actually quite explicit about it,” Carlson said.

It is far from a coincidence that Carlson faced resistance from a group of politicians who are funded by the businesses that Carlson’s policies – for the long-term betterment of our planet – weaken.

“Politicians get a lot of money from the oil and gas industry, and those who get the most are often the most vociferous opponents of strong regulation to combat climate change, and indeed, frequently actually deny its existence entirely,” Carlson said.

As a result of the Cruz-led campaign, the Biden administration withdrew Carlson’s nomination. Carlson stepped down as acting administrator in December 2023 and formally left the NHTSA this past January.

These consequences are detrimental on a plethora of levels, but they illustrate the gloomy reality of modern American politics: The monetary interests of big energy businesses take precedence over the insights of field experts when it comes to drafting and enacting legislation.

However, this is a force that does not purely operate based on lobbying and aggressive political disenfranchisement.

The engine behind Cruz or Trump’s relationship with private oil and gas companies is nothing without the science-related ignorance among voters that fuels it.

“It’s a sophisticated campaign that tries to figure out ways to get people to turn their backs on the body of scientific knowledge and the concept of scientific expertise,” said Dave Farina, a scientific communicator whose YouTube channel, Professor Dave Explains, has over 3 million subscribers.

We can give everyday Americans the benefit of the doubt as it is unfair to expect everyone to have full awareness about budding scientific developments.

Unfortunately, there are vast inequities in resources and access to this knowledge within the United States. But the rhetoric from the likes of Cruz and Trump prey on these particularly vulnerable audiences.

“People spend a lot of money on the psychological understanding of how to sway people’s thoughts and feelings and emotions – and it works,” said Dr. Byron Young, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Los Angeles County’s Department of Mental Health.

Citizens who are vulnerable to misinformation develop perceptions in line with their own beliefs, values and desires for the world that are at times not consistent with reality.

“In general, there’s been enough abuse of power that people get skeptical, and then they start creating their own conspiracy theories because they’re skeptical, then things get really out of hand,” Young said.

The skepticism toward scientific or political institutions can come from honest concerns. America is not exempt from past and present shortcomings in either realm, to say the absolute least. For instance, the health system continues to serve marginalized communities unequally, which represents numerous failures at the acute intersection of science and public policy.

But people of influence who capitalize on these cautious attitudes to turn their listeners against the more informed members of society are not interested in making our nation a better one. They are interested in themselves.

“The problem is people searching the internet for the answer they want to find, and then elevating that above the words of people who actually know what they’re talking about. Because anything that people want to find is on the internet, right?” Farina said.

Undoing this damage is a tall order.

Farina’s channel initially blossomed because of his educational content. Today, his primary task as a science communicator is to nip fraudulent, antiscientific rhetoric in the bud.

“It’s going to take a concerted effort from a very large pool of career science communicators who do this for a living, as I do, right? There’s not enough of me,” Farina said. “We need one of me for every bad faith actor.”

In addition to consuming the work of science communicators like Farina and trusting academic experts, there are steps that one can take to stay vigilant against the influential force of antiacademic contrarianism.

But it will take effort.

Dr. Young spoke of two terms he uses in the mental health world: the “wise mind” and the “emotion mind”. With our “wise mind,” we think with clarity; with our “emotion mind,” we are prone to making more cognitive errors or ignoring details or pieces of information that we should not.

We must be vigilant about the rhetoric that leaders use. Are they citing facts, evidence and the views of field experts to support their proposals? Or are they using baseless claims to trigger our emotions?

“I think it’s easier to let other folks do the thinking for us. It’s easy just to feel and to not think,” Young said.

In an era infected with clickbait and bite-sized content, we must ensure that our gut reactions to TikTok clips, news headlines or Instagram comments do not completely determine how we perceive the world.

“I try to talk to people that I respect and who I think actually do a lot of work to understand things deeply and ask them: What are the sources? What are the sources that they use, that they trust? What have been their experiences around it?” Young said.

We must be willing to have face-to-face conversations about the issues humanity faces.

We must realize that, though doing so is convenient, reposting things on our Instagram stories or taking jabs at someone on the internet does nothing to assuage societal problems.

Further, we must engage with media and scholarship from people who have devoted their lives to studying the topics we feel strongest about – because those individuals are out there and eager for us to appreciate their work.

“There’s some real obstacles, but there’s also been a lot of heroic work done,” Carlson said.

Before subscribing to a belief system espoused by popular public figures or certain public officials, see if those beliefs hold up well among experts.

This practice is the only way that we can stay well-informed and make sound, logical choices for ourselves and our nation.

Our lives depend on it.