Bill Nye Pleads With Reporters: ‘Ask the Candidates About Climate Change Directly’
Bill Nye, better known as the Science Guy from all those hours of after-school television you watched as a kid, has become a regular contributor of sorts to Comedy Central’s Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. Nye’s foremost passion as it relates to the 2016 campaign is, unsurprisingly, climate change and its skeptics, or as the TV personality pointed out Tuesday night, those who now like to be identified simply as “doubters” rather than outright deniers.
During the panel segment of the show, host Larry Wilmore opened the floor to Bill Nye’s ideas on how to better introduce the concept of global warming into the political dialogue. Wilmore pointed out that climate change questions comprise a shockingly low percentage of those asked on the stump of any candidates, but especially those on the GOP side. The Science Guy in no uncertain terms puts the emphasis not on the politicians who are likely to give rehearsed responses, but rather onto the journalists who haven’t been pressing the issue hard enough.
Nye joked during his appearance, “Out there, some hard-hitting investigative reporters — we recognize you because you wear knit ties and they’re loose — I want you to ask the candidates about climate change directly.”
He continued, “‘What are you gonna do about climate change?’ And what we need are big ideas. We need to pull together and do these extraordinary things. Hoover Dam. Grand Coulee Dam. Person on the moon. We can do big things.”
Despite the long documented history of conservative talking points that would seem to refute scientific evidence to the contrary, Nye believes that the issue of climate change is so key to millennials in 2016 that he expects a pivot of sorts from the eventual Republican nominee. “Don’t be surprised if after the conservatives, the Republicans, pick somebody and this person goes ‘Well I’ve been thinking about it and climate change is a big issue.” A Monmouth University poll from January revealed that as much as 70% of Americans believe that climate change is real and that humans are contributing to it, likely making the issue a key source of debate in the general election this summer.
Check out the above clip from Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show.
[image via screengrab]
