As sad as the news is that NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC is laying off the last nineteen of its remaining staff writers, what grieves me more is the lack of impact this sad development is proving to have on the public consciousness.
To me, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC is the gold standard in investigative journalism. It is not an exaggeration to say that you and I are alive today because of the scientific awareness it had fostered on policy-making echelons of many world governments over the years.
This made it possible to elicit a multinational response to such global environmental risks as the hole in the Earth’s ozone layer. Because of the focused international resolve to outlaw the use of freon and other ozone-thinning chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) refrigerants, that fragile layer in the upper atmosphere that filters out the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays was saved.
Had humanity failed to do that, the occurrence of natural radiation-induced cancer among populations especially those living near the equator (namely us) would have become as commonplace as getting the seasonal flu.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC writers saved us from that grim scenario, but it’s not the only apocalyptic scenario we face, nor is it the last.
The battle is not yet won against global warming and climate change. In fact, we are right in the middle of it when the layoff announcement came.
It is sad that many people still cannot connect the dots between global warming, an abstract idea for many, and catastrophic weather events that are a daily reality for many millions more around the globe.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC had its hands full discharging this gargantuan function of weaning the ignorant or the plain unconcerned from their stuporic hostility towards climate science. But now difficulty with just making the monthly payroll had amputated even those last few remaining hands.
Make no mistake about it. There is plenty of money, more than enough, and no lack of willingness to spend it either. Here’s where even I join the denunciation of forking over $250,000 dollars for a frivolous Titanic wrecksite sightseeing ticket that advances science no further than where it stands already.
Multiplied many times over, money of that abundance would have better served mankind keeping all those NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC science writers working with pay instead.
What is it about our society that makes us hate to pay writers?
Philanthropy and scientific sponsorships like to pay scientists and engineers to build fancy machines. But they hesitate to pay writers who explain the working principles behind those machines, recruit us into the science of perpetually trying to improve them while searing the blueprints of the resulting technology right onto the brains of posterity.
I cannot think of any other profession whose disappearance would totally doom mankind. No man’s life is long enough to relay all the knowledge he possesses to the next man. Without the literal preservative work of writers, and their educative role in propagating it, the sum total of human knowledge would completely vanish within a few generations until our descendants themselves descend back to the state of tabularazza of the Stone Age.
We should pay the writers. This is a no-brainer.*
About the Author
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”
About Images: Some of the images used in the articles are from the posts in Atty. Joel Rodriguez Dizon’s Facebook account, and/or Facebook groups and pages he manages or/and member of.