Harrison Ford: "Stop Giving Power to People Who Don't Believe in Science"

Celebrities frequently raise awareness of significant topics by using their platforms. Harrison Ford has a way of making people pay attention, even when many of us have grown indifferent to their cautions.

Perhaps it's the cult following he's gained from portraying heroes like Han Solo and Indiana Jones.

More likely, though, it's because Ford doesn't skirt around significant topics; instead, he tackles them head-on.

The 76-year-old actor and ardent climate activist delivered a sobering warning this week at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco: "If we don't change the path that we are on today, the future of humanity is at stake."

The actor lets out a deep sigh after making the harsh statement. You can practically feel the actor's frustration with that one deep breath. Ford has been employed by Conservation International, an environmental organization that helps scientists worldwide discover and combat threats to biodiversity, for almost 27 years.

However, as Ford explains in his latest passionate speech, if we collectively neglect nature in our "corporate, state, and national climate goals" and deny the truth of climate change, then none of that work will matter.

"We can put solar panels on every house, we can turn every car into an electric vehicle, as long as Sumatra burns, we will have failed," he asserts. "Our climate targets will remain unattainable as long as the Amazon's vast forests are cut down and burned, as long as tribal and Indigenous peoples' protected territories are permitted to be encroached upon, and as long as wetlands and bog peats are destroyed. We will also run out of time.It would be an extreme understatement to say that the actor seems unhappy with the way environmental matters are going right now. Ford's address, which is a thinly veiled attack on naive politicians ahead of the US midterm elections, is more than just an urgent call to action; it is a rallying cry.

"Elect leaders who believe in science," he exhorts voters about.

Ford made a similar address last year, shortly after President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, and the remarks are evocative of that speech.

At the time, he cautioned us, "We have people in charge of important shit who don't believe in science."A year later, that emotion is still palpable. However, there is also a growing sense of resentment following a series of political assaults on climate research in 2018.

"They are aware of their identity. We are aware of their identities.

Ford calls climate change "the greatest moral crisis of our time" and warns that the "least responsible will bear the greatest costs" unless something changes (and quickly).

He consistently returns to his main contention, which is that natural carbon sinks are "the only feasible solution" to combating climate change at the moment."Simply put, if we can't protect nature, we can't protect ourselves," he states.

The words "Let's shut off our phones, roll up our sleeves, and kick this monster's ass" were the very words he used to close his address.