How to tell a story

How to tell a story

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

3 Commencement speeches

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, at University of Maryland, had a jab at climate change deniers. “To those who say climate change is not caused by human activity or that addressing it will harm the economy, let’s encourage them to go to college, too, and to study physics and to study economics, but for the rest of us, let’s get to work.”

Bill Nye the Science Guy, at University of Massachusetts Lowell, called out the conspiracy theorists delaying action on the climate. “Conspiracy theories are for lazy people,” he said. “People that don’t want to get down to the business at hand. Instead of just doing less, we have to find ways of doing more with less. That’s the key to the future.”

New Yorker Magazine Editor David Reminck, at Syracuse University, singled out President Obama. “[W]hat about our refusal to look squarely at the degradation of the planet we inhabit? In the last election cycle many candidates refused even to acknowledge the hard science, irrefutable science, of climate change. The president, while readily accepting the facts, has done far too little to alter them. How long are we, are you, prepared to wait?”