In response to cuts by the Trump administration, “Stand Up for Science” rallies took place around the world on March 7 in support of programs under the National Institutes of Health, NASA and more.
The Conversation spoke with renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle, a former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which includes the National Weather Service. She's in town to help the Polynesian Voyaging Society celebrate its 50th anniversary of launching Hōkūleʻa.
Earle holds the record for the deepest walk on the ocean floor, and through her life’s work as a marine scientist, is a National Geographic Explorer.
She shared her thoughts on a CBS News report about the possibility of cutting another thousand NOAA workers. Earle lamented the tremendous loss if science goes by the wayside.
Interview Highlights
On the impact of cuts at NASA and NOAA
SYLVIA EARLE: It's just a terrible mistake to undercut an agency like NASA that serves the interests of everyone across the country and around the world. We take what NOAA provides very much for granted. Like the air you breathe, you just expect the weather report to be there. You expect knowledge about the ocean, about the basic systems that safeguard the habitability of Earth to be there, but it doesn't just happen automatically. It happens because there are people out there observing and reporting on the nature of nature, and giving that information, distilling it in ways that really provide the basis of being able to predict your future, whether it's the next day or the next month, or far into the future. NOAA was intended to be something basically like a counterpart of NASA back in 1970 when it was first formed, referred to NOAA as the wet NASA, bringing the atmosphere and ocean together to really understand better than we ever had before… To cut that is just absurd. It shows profound ignorance on the part of those who are conducting this shrinking of the government. There may be some justification for downsizing the federal government, but there's a smart way to go about it. You don't go on a diet reducing your weight by chopping off your head or losing an arm or leg. You do it strategically, if you have to do it at all, and here we are witnessing a reduction of an agency on an almost arbitrary basis without understanding what the agency actually does.
On how the public should prepare and react
EARLE: We should, as citizens who benefit from what NOAA provides to all of us, we should be forceful in insisting that it be protected and be kept independent from biases that would inevitably occur if privatized… We should be thankful for those who, back in 1970, brought the atmospheric science community, the ocean community together under one agency… It's a unique time in history when, as never before, we have knowledge that could not exist, but for the efforts that have been invested, and to lose that would be a loss to everyone.
This interview aired on The Conversation on March 11, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m.
