Jim Walsh
George Shattuck Richardson was a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital as was his father, as was his son. He spent summers in Nahant while growing up and returned to Nahant with his wife, Becky, for his final decades. It was in those final decades that my wife and I came to know George and Becky.
I thought of George Richardson recently when I read that the Trump administration desired to officially deny any connection between the pollution caused by human activities and the reality of climate change.
Back in the 1990s Christopher Lydon had a show on WBUR called The Connection, a precursor to his current podcast, Open Source. His show featured both on-air guests and call ins. As I listened one morning. Lydon presented the following question: In the Middle Ages Christians in Europe began building cathedrals that they knew could not be completed with their lifetimes. Think of Notre Dame. It took hundreds of years to build and rebuild that iconic structure and those who laid its foundations sensed they would never live to see it completed. But their faith told them it was a worthy endeavor, and they persevered.
Lydon put this question before his audience “What in our current time might be viewed as similar now to the building of cathedrals then?” George Richardson called in and provided an answer. “The establishment of science is the Cathedral we’re building,” was George’s answer.
Slowly, over time, we have built science as the most basic structure for our understanding of the world we live in. It may not have the beauty of Notre Dame but its power will be as lasting. In 1988 our family had an opportunity to visit Notre Dame and to experience its power and beauty. Five years before my father had died. My mother and I lit a candle in his memory.
In 2019 a great fire consumed the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Crowds gathered in Paris and wept as those whose job it was to fight that fire engaged in battle and fought it bravely. In the weeks that followed people from all over the world vowed that Notre Dame would be rebuilt. And so it was. I hope to visit that sacred place again and to light another candle, not only in my parents’ memory, but for the future of my children and grandchildren as well.
In the meantime, the memory of George Richardson’s elevation of science to such a high place will motivate me to work to reestablish science to its rightful pedestal in modern time, despite the efforts of Trump and those who support him to topple science and replace it with propaganda.
Among informed and intelligent Americans there is no doubt that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we ourselves create contribute to and worsen climate change. Most of us understand that the pollution in the air we breathe is as destructive to our climate as inhaled tobacco products are to our lungs. When I was a boy there were advertisements with actors dressed as doctors asserting that “Doctors recommend Camels” urging that we take “the 30-day mildness test.” Smoke Camels for thirty days and they will make you a happy, healthy person. In my memory I can almost see their self-assured and sickening smiles.
When, finally, the government created a team of scientists in 1964 to assess the impact of smoking cigars and cigarettes on our health, there were members of that team who smoked as they sat in that room and debated the question. As they did so, I too was still a smoker. I was addicted to nicotine.
Just this week Trump’s head of the EPA, Lee Zeldin, asserted that a total of 31 key environmental rules on topics from clean air to clean water and climate change would be rolled back or repealed under his plan. He is Trump’s guy for Big Gas and Big Oil as were those phony doctors who, representing Big Tobacco, asked us to just smoke Camels for 30 days and put our money into their pockets.
“Notre Dame” was not just the mother of Christ. Notre Dame can be translated and understood as “Our Mother.” Science has helped us understand and care of our Mother Earth as she cares for and sustains us. I cared for the mother who adopted and raised me—the one who smoked an occasional cigarette herself—and I loved being able to care for her.
Science has helped us care for Mother Earth while Trump has gleefully and shamefully sought to sell her out for his personal profit and power. If it helps him add gilt to his imagined Gilded Age, I suppose he can sleep well at night.
I can’t.
In the coming months our American Congress and our American Judiciary have a responsibility to put up barriers against this assault and in 2026 we can make those barriers even stronger. Then, when Trump is gone, we can go about rebuilding a strong and healthy Mother Earth…Notre Dame.
Jim Walsh is a Nahant resident.
