According to Don Wilhite, founding director of the National Drought Mitigation Center at UNL, and lead author of the UNL report states “for more than a decade, there has been broad and overwhelming consensus within the climate science community that the human-induced effects on climate change are both very real and very large.” So why, as Republicans do we not accept the scientific evidence? I suggest it’s complicated.

Speaking as a Republican and a fellow American, I would like to lift up three considerations that hopefully will inspire anyone, if still a skeptic, to reconsider and act on the reality of climate change.

I begin first with humility. I now realize my prior reluctance was based on my rejection of the messenger, Al Gore. Shamefully, I ridiculed him for receiving the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his documentary An Inconvenient Truth; though I never watched it. Woven also into my belief system was the unconscious mindset that my liberal friends were alarmists and exaggerating the problem.

From my experience it was difficult to see how my prejudice and fear of the unknown was clouding my ability to hear the truth; harder and more humbling was to accept I was wrong. However, I have learned there is strength in humility and as a nation we are at a best when we are a humble people.