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As the rain picked up and my knees started to ache, I wondered what am I doing here? Am I changing anything? Is anyone paying attention? Why am I at the March for Science? The answer came back fast, although it was not a simple one.

Election night 2016 was a stunner. There were many good reasons not support to Donald Trump, but the one that troubled me the most was what his election meant for our efforts to address climate change. His election meant that our last line of defense against unfettered pandering to corporate wishes was gone. It frightened me and made me angry. The March for Science gave me a chance to speak up about something that matters; something that matters in a greater way than anything that I have ever cared about.

In reality, the story of why I marched begins long before November, 2016. It begins over 35 years ago in a classroom in a small high school in the mountains of North Carolina. A high school where the majority of my classmates thought they were headed to good lives working in mills, factories, and warehouses. I did not know it, but I was headed in a different direction.

At that high school, an inspired biology teacher in the last year of her career, Ms. White, introduced science to a class of sophomores and a few overachieving freshmen. As a freshman, I did not fully grasp what Ms. White introduced me to, but she planted a seed that transformed me.

Near the end of the school year, Ms. White rolled in a TV, dimmed the classroom lights, pressed play on the VCR, and Carl Sagan said “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.” He had my attention. The days spent watching Cosmos opened my mind and unleashed a deep desire to understand the how and why based on facts. In fairness, I grew up in a home where my mother responded to my questions about the world around me with, “Let’s look it up,” as she pulled a volume of our encyclopedia from the bookshelf. Building on the foundation that my mother had put in place, Sagan took my contemplation of the world around me, existence, science, and discovery to a new level.

It was not an easy path to follow. The ideas that were core to who I believed I was, based on the stories I was told on Sunday mornings, were deeply challenged. I realized that to follow the pursuit of knowledge laid out in Cosmos, I might forever have a part of my life, my faith, in conflict, or I would have to reject my faith altogether. It is hard to wall-off or rend away a part of your identity, especially as a teenager. I chose to not look away from the way of science, despite the peril I thought it might bring to my mortal soul. I have no regrets.

I kept seeking the truths that science yielded and took every science class my small high school offered. I studied engineering in college and graduate school. I kept and keep asking why and I look for well-founded reasons for decisions and recommendations that I make. I did this, and I do this, regardless of whether I am working on a technical problem, a business problem, or an organizational problem. I trust the process; I do not always like the answers it gives, but I have faith that they are the best answers I can get.

Even in my faith, the lessons of science have opened my mind and heart to a deeper way. Sagan’s ideas that challenged my faith as a teenager now enhance my understanding of the role faith plays in life. My trust in the results of the process and my belief that the questions we are asking are as important as the answers we find guide me to believe that much is knowable and that accepting what we can know moves us forward. The rejection of this is anathema to my own existence. So, I marched.

I marched because we are at a point where we have the most advanced and capable scientific community the world has ever seen. We have the ability to explore, to experiment, to collaborate, and to communicate to a depth and with a velocity that allows us to solve problems exponentially faster than could have been done just 35 years ago. Yet, we have decision makers rejecting the results of science because they do not like the implications; because they have benefactors whose profits or existences are threatened by the truths that science speaks. This is a travesty and threat to humanity itself. This must not be allowed to stand.

The findings and conclusions of science should not be made partisan. The discussion and debate should not be about whether what science tells us is right; it should not be about re-hashing the process itself with political overseers. It must be about how do we respond to the knowledge that science brings us?

It is not correct to debate if human-caused climate change is happening; it is happening. It is right to debate how we move forward in addressing the issue – do we regulate more or do we incentivize market forces more? Do we make public investments in resiliency or do we issue codes that encourage the private sector to prepare for the changing climate? It is time to change the conversation.

Four years before Carl Sagan’s Cosmos jarred my life, a teacher asked my class, “what will you do this weekend?” When my turn came, I said I was going to find a new source of energy to help solve the energy crisis.

That weekend I gathered a variety of rocks from the woods around my house, broke them up with a hammer, and tried to light them. Nothing caught fire; I did not solve the energy crisis,  but I have never stopped wanting to fix the problems that the world faces. I know that I cannot solve the problems alone. It is by working together that we will secure the future for our children, grandchildren, and generations to come. It is the point of the Dr. Seuss’s Lorax – “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

I care a whole awful lot. For that reason, I marched. How about you? Do you care a whole awful lot?