On truth, power, and the climate we share

I woke today to a sky the colour of pewter, the kind that makes the sea pause. In Oman, we read the weather like a familiar poem. The shamal, the slow build of heat over the Gulf, the khareef mist that greens Dhofar Governorate, and rain that leaves frankincense trees shining. The patterns comfort us as they tell the truth. Climate science has done the same for decades. It has captured the pulse of oceans and deserts, revealing what is happening to our planet.

This week shows how truth can be bullied. In Washington, a controversy erupted over a climate report issued by the Department of Energy. More than eighty-five scientists filed a rebuttal over four hundred pages, arguing the report misrepresents evidence and cherry-picks. Their filing comes as the report is discussed in the context of moves to reconsider the EPA's endangerment finding, the legal bedrock for many emission standards.

Why should we care from here? Because power travels. Narratives born in one capital do not stay. They cross borders through media, markets, and law. When the most powerful governments toy with the frame of reality, they embolden delay everywhere. They give cover to those who profit from confusion. They slow adaptation in coastal villages and hinder innovation in our ports and factories. They make it harder for a young engineer to convince her company to invest in clean heat or for a mayor to defend seawalls and stronger building codes.

I have sat in rooms where data is invited and then set aside when it does not serve the preferred answer. The tone cools. Eyes move to the clock. The meeting shifts to what can be said so that nothing changes. Leadership, the real kind, asks us to do the opposite. It is the discipline of staying with facts long enough to let them change us. It is courageous to say we were wrong yesterday and we will do better tomorrow.

There is a term in public leadership that helps here. Productive disequilibrium is the stretch a system needs to learn without breaking. We are in that stretch on climate. The science is clear, solutions are within reach, and politics are turbulent. Disequilibrium helps when it is held with integrity and directed toward problem-solving. It becomes dangerous when it is engineered to exhaust citizens and erode trust. Then noise replaces knowledge, and fatigue replaces debate.

Oman has chosen a more grounded path. We are building a future industry around green molecules and careful stewardship of water and land. We learn in public. We plan, we build, and we keep learning. We convene, we test, and we adjust. It is not perfect, yet it rests on a simple respect for reality. The atmosphere does not negotiate. The thermometer is not partisan. The sea level does not take a position.

So this is a small appeal across borders and our institutions. Keep your hands on the evidence. Read widely. Ask the plain questions that keep the lights on in the lab and the pumps running in the field. Challenge the claim that feels easy. When power asks you to pretend that the tide is moving in the opposite direction, remember the map of your coastline and the farmers who observe the sky as if it were a ledger.

We do not need certainty to move. We need honesty and stamina. We need institutions that hold tension without turning it into theatre. We need leaders who treat facts as a common good and policy as a long river rather than a headline. We require a compass that remains accurate, as seasonal as the khareef in Dhofar Governorate and the shamal over the Gulf.

Rumaitha al Busaidi

The writer is environmental strategist and advocate for sustainable development.