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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Issue Overview: Guns in America

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Newsela | Understanding key terms in the gun control debate

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Gun regulations can vary from state to state

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Newsela | World is not addressing climate change, scientists warn in new report

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A new report from United Nations scientists says the world is not doing enough to slow down climate change.

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Rachel Schraer & Kayleen DevlinBBC Reality Check

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COP26: The truth behind the new climate change denial

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The climate claims that went viral – and what you need to know about them.

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Even as the science of global warming gets stronger, fewer Americans believe it's real. In some ways, it's nearly as jarring a disconnect as enduring disbelief in evolution or carbon dating. And according to Kari Marie Norgaard, a Whitman College sociologist who's studied public attitudes towards climate science, we're in denial.

"Our response to disturbing information is very complex. We negotiate it. We don't just take it in and respond in a rational way," said Norgaard.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change declared in 2007 that greenhouse gases had reached levels not seen in 650,000 years, and were rising rapidly as a result of people burning fossil fuel. Because these gases trap the sun's heat, they would - depending on human energy habits - heat Earth by an average of between 1.5 and 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit by century's end. Even a midrange rise would likely disrupt the planet's climate, producing droughts and floods, acidified oceans, altered ecosystems and coastal cities drowned by rising seas.

"If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future," said Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, when the report was released. "This is the defining moment."

Studies published since then have only strengthened the IPCC's predictions, or suggested they underestimate future warming. But as world leaders gather in Copenhagen to discuss how to avoid catastrophic climate change, barely half the U.S. public thinks carbon pollution could warm Earth. That's 20 percent less than in 2007, and lower than at any point in the last 12 years. In a Pew Research Center poll, Americans ranked climate dead last out of 20 top issues, behind immigration and trade policy.

Wired.com talked to Norgaard about the divide between science and public opinion.

__Wired.com: __Why don't people seem to care?

__Kari Norgaard: __On the one hand, there have been extremely well-organized, well-funded climate-skeptic campaigns. Those are backed by Exxon Mobil in particular, and the same PR firms who helped the tobacco industry (.pdf) deny the link between cancer and smoking are involved with magnifying doubt around climate change.

That's extremely important, but my work has been in a different area. It's been about people who believe in science, who aren't out to question whether science has a place in society.

__Wired.com: __People who are coming at the issue in good faith, you mean. What's their response?

__Norgaard: __Climate change is disturbing. It's something we don't want to think about. So what we do in our everyday lives is create a world where it's not there, and keep it distant.

For relatively privileged people like myself, we don't have to see the impact in everyday life. I can read about different flood regimes in Bangladesh, or people in the Maldives losing their islands to sea level rise, or highways in Alaska that are altered as permafrost changes. But that's not my life. We have a vast capacity for this.

__Wired.com: __How is this bubble maintained?

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Even as the science of global warming gets stronger, fewer Americans believe it's real. In some ways, it's nearly as jarring a disconnect as enduring disbelief in evolution or carbon dating. And according to Kari Marie Norgaard, a Whitman College sociologist who's studied public attitudes towards climate science, we're in denial.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Different Religions' Beliefs about Abortion

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Different Religions' Beliefs about Abortion

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When does life begin? Religions don’t agree

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Debates about abortion often center around the issue of when life begins. Some religions say it’s at conception. Another says it’s with the baby’s first breath.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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How Heteronormativity Hurts LGBTQ People

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How Heteronormativity Hurts LGBTQ People

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | More teens see gender in non-binary terms, according to new study

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More American youths are self-identifying as gender nonconforming according to a recent study.

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The fine print of the Respect for Marriage Act | CNN Politics

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Republicans and Democrats are coming together to protect same-sex marriage from the Supreme Court through the Respect for Marriage Act. But there is a fair amount of fine print, including religious exceptions.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela | Inmates strike to protest poor treatment and low wages in prisons

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Newsela | Barack Obama: Solitary confinement is overused in our prisons

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Newsela | PRO/CON: Is it time for America to allow prisoners the right to vote?

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The authors make a case for and against allowing prisoners to retain their voting rights.

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Pro: Opposition to the death penalty is increasing among both political parties - with opponents saying that is a waste of resources. Con: The death penalty prevents others from doing similar crimes and prevents the defendant from hurting others.

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Rather than creating safety, our punishment system is an active source of harm for many. And the system's violence extends far beyond what makes the news. Black, disabled, and sex-working women and trans people are especially vulnerable to police violence and often face sexual assault at the hands of the police. Disabled people are estimated to make up as many as half of those murdered by police. Between 70 and 100 million Americans have a criminal record, and one year in prison takes two years off one's life expectancy. Further, there are more than 10 million arrests per year, and a misdemeanor arrest -the standard encounter between police and civilians-can upend a life, leading to lasting exclusions from employment and other opportunities.

So while some ask how we will be safe without police and prisons, abolitionists point out that most people cannot be safe so long as they exist. For this reason, abolitionists are, at heart, builders-builders of community safety, well-being, accountability, and harm prevention. As abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore has said, abolition is about presence-the presence of life-giving systems that allow people to thrive and be well, that prevent harm and better equip communities to address harm when it occurs.

To be clear, building toward a world without prisons is different than believing in a world without harm. As one contributor to the prisoner-run publication In the Belly writes, abolitionists are "not promising a world without harm. People hurt each other, and that won't change. But why do we all just accept that the appropriate response to harm is more harm, administered by the state?"

Instead, when presented with harm, abolitionists reject the false choice of putting someone in a cage or doing nothing. In fact, abolitionists are actively building various models of preventing and responding to harm, focusing in particular on community accountability processes that, as our #8ToAbolition cocreators recently explained, "seek safety for those harmed, changed behaviors for those who caused harm, and a transformation of the conditions that allowed the harm to occur."

Countless groups across the country are doing the work of safety building. In Washington D.C., the Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS) trains community members to intervene in gendered public harassment and, through the Rethink Masculinity program, helps men to identify harmful behaviors and build relationships of accountability and care. Likewise, the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective holds regular "labs" to help community members build skills around transformative justice and ending child sexual abuse. Across the country, violence interrupters work to halt lethal violence before it happens by resolving conflicts and building healthy relationships between community members. And beyond programming centered on ending violence, groups focusing on mutual aid are doing the work of abolition by meeting community members' needs and building local models of self-sufficiency. This is a small sliver of the work being done by abolitionists.

Ultimately, abolitionists do not have all the answers-but we are committed to finding them together. Prison is a one-size-fits-all solution, sending people to cages for violating a criminal law. Abolition requires just the opposite, recognizing the complexity of harm and the indispensability of humanity.

Ultimately, abolition is a verb, a practice. It consists of the actions we take to build safety and to tear down harmful institutions. People do abolition every day when they connect to their community, learn how to take accountability, and foster communal responsibility for preventing and responding to harm.

Abolition is within our reach; it's up to us to build it.
Reiana Sultan and Micah Herskind are 2 of the 10 cocreators of the #8ToAbolition campaign.

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What Is Abolition, And Why Do We Need It?

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Rather than creating safety, our punishment system is an active source of harm for many. And the system's violence extends far beyond what makes the news. Black, disabled, and sex-working women and trans people are especially vulnerable to police violence and often face sexual assault at the hands of the police.