Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (30 page)

While you are reading, you should be hypervigilant about sources. I made a passing reference in Chapter 11 to the rules of evidence that prevail in North American courtrooms. I have a law degree from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, and while I have never practiced, I know some of the conventions. One is that experts in a court case have to be “qualified” by the court. The lawyer who wants to use the expert must first submit to the judge or the jury the expert’s credentials. You can’t just drag someone off the street and call him a climate scientist.

That’s the standard that should prevail in the public conversation, but given the job currently being done by many reporters, you have to take it upon yourself to “qualify” experts yourself. When I hear someone holding forth, I always ask myself these three questions:

1. Does this “expert” have relevant credentials? For example, have they trained in an area of science that is at the very least connected to climatology or atmospheric physics?

2. If an “expert” is talking about science, are they still practicing science? Are they still conducting research and publishing in legitimate peer-reviewed journals? Or are all of their “scientific” pronouncements appearing on newspaper opinion pages, edited by people who think it’s just great to provoke debate?

3. Is this “expert” taking money from vested interests or is he or she associated with ideological think tanks—the people who rely for their employment on promoting the agenda of their major funders?

Charming and articulate voices abound out there. People like Bjørn Lomborg seem sincere, and their arguments would make it easier to remain complacent—to doubt the certainty of science or, in Lomborg’s case, to neglect action on the basis that some other, equally neglected, priority is higher. But this is not a time for easy answers. This is a time for right answers, which you will find only if you insist on the best sources, the respected journals and national science academies that have no agenda other than advancing the scope of human knowledge.

I must warn you that reading very much of this material can be incredibly depressing. As in the scenarios from Gwynne Dyer’s dire
Climate Wars,
a future in which we fail to address climate change includes death, disruption, extinction, and suffering on a massive scale. It’s horrible to consider. I believe that’s one of the reasons that lie has survived so long: few people really want to sit down and contemplate that dark future. But I wager that if you dig further into the literature about climate change, you will come away with renewed vigor and a righteous sense of justifiable anger at those who have manipulated the climate conversation to date. You will join the neighborhood watch of people who will no longer stand for disinformation to be passed around your social circle—or to go unchallenged when uttered by your local politicians.

That’s what we need: vigilance. Eyes on the street. Actually, we need feet on the street, and in large numbers. We need crowds of people demanding that politicians face this issue directly and sincerely. As
New York Times
writer Thomas Friedman argues in his book
Hot, Flat, and Crowded,
we need a social change force on the scale of the civil rights movement—and given the urgency of the climate change threat, we need it to be running at ten times the speed.

We need leadership. That doesn’t mean enabling today’s “leaders” to keep their positions and expand their power. It means searching out and supporting people who understand that true leadership involves faithfully representing the interests of the people who have asked you to lead. True leaders don’t spend their time in self-promotion, advancing their own position at the expense of those around them. True leaders create an opportunity for everyone to make a greater contribution—and to enjoy a greater benefit. We will need leaders like California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who stood up to the auto industry in an effort to reduce fleet emissions. We need leaders like British Columbia premier Gordon Campbell, who risked the wrath of voters by passing the first carbon tax in North America. And if those leaders are to survive—if President Barack Obama, for example, is to live up to the expectations of his most optimistic supporters—they will need our support, on election day and every day.

I think again about David Suzuki and the leadership he has shown, and his periodic impatience that has sometimes stirred controversy. A year or so after he got caught dismissing the leadership credentials of the Alberta premier, David was in Montreal speaking to a group of students at McGill University. He was quoted in the
McGill Daily
as saying, “What I would challenge you to do is to put a lot of effort into trying to see whether there’s a legal way of throwing our so-called leaders into jail because what they’re doing is a criminal act.”

I spoke to David afterwards, and he suggested that the writer might have lost some of the subtleties of his point while wrestling his words onto the page, but I suspect the quote was largely correct. It was also interesting that in the first mainstream newspaper report of the story, Craig Offman at the
National Post
actually investigated the literal possibility of jailing our leaders, finding that in Canada, for example, the federal cabinet was in violation of a Canadian law requiring the government to abide by the immediate-term commitments of the Kyoto Protocol.

I don’t think that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is going to punish any of his ministers or volunteer for jail time himself, but it got me thinking again about what must be going through David Suzuki’s mind. He has dedicated his life to searching out and sharing knowledge about the environment and the prospect of human sustainability. It’s all he thinks about. He brings to bear an incredibly sharp mind, a specific expertise in genetics, and a prodigious work ethic. He’s always reading.

I am therefore not the least surprised that he is outraged, that he periodically snarls. I am angry enough, and I haven’t read a fraction of the material that David regularly consumes on science and the environment. So at the end of the day, I come back to the question of whether, as “David Suzuki’s public relations advisor,” I would ever have told him to say that a premier was unfit for office or that a governor should go to jail. The short answer, probably, is, “no.” I wouldn’t have told him to say it.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that he’s right. (And I must stress that this is not—on my part or David’s—a reflection of David Suzuki Foundation policy.) If our current politicians won’t take responsibility for dealing with climate change, then we have to find some who will. If governors and senators will not hold the coal companies to account, then we must cast off the blue T-shirts and the white hats and start demanding truly clean coal—or no coal. If oil companies insist that they need to invade ocean bottoms and nature preserves in search of new supplies, even while they make little or no investment in researching alternative energy, we must reject their demands out of hand. If municipal politicians want to spend money on roads and bridges rather than buses and bike lanes, we have to start writing letters and showing up at meetings—or at the very least supporting those who we
know
are advocating for the right things. And if fossil fuel-funded think tanks are paying people to phone opinion-page editors and flatter them each time they run an article suggesting that climate change is a ruse, then we must phone at the same time and offer a more appropriate critique and, if necessary, a cancellation of our subscription. We need to wrest the public policy agenda away from those who are pursuing self-interest, and return to the notion of public interest.

We have to get informed, and we have to get active. Because if we don’t, if we don’t all take the initiative and demand of our leaders that they start fixing this problem, beginning today, it will indeed be a crime. And the punishment will be visited on our children and on their children through a world that is unrecognizable, perhaps uninhabitable.

If you are not near a window, a park, or a garden, I encourage you to go find one. Stand under a big tree or contemplate a small flower. A fragile beauty and a tenuous balance both exist in the natural world. Scientists such as NASA’s James Hansen tell us that we have upset that balance. They also suggest that we might still undo what we have done. They say that in fifty years our children or theirs may still enjoy the same variety of birdsong and butterflies. There may
not
be nuclear devastation on the plains of India or in the mountains of Pakistan. The oceans may still lap the shores of Bangladesh and Holland rather than coursing through the streets, dispatching desperate refugees to neighboring countries already in crisis.

There can be a good future if we make it so. But if we stand about, if we allow energy-industry flunkies to control the conversation— or even if we just let it ride, cynically accepting that politics is inherently corrupt and that nothing we do can make a difference—we will all have time to regret the passing of a beautiful and sustainable world.

So please, be bold. Be courageous. Be positive. Act and demand action. This, for our sake and for the sake of all those who follow, is a fight that we can and must win. For this bears repeating: the world is worth saving.

NOTES

CHAPTER 2

1
Jeff Goodell,
Big Coal
(Houghton Mifflin, 2006), p. 179.

CHAPTER 4

1
Naomi Oreskes, “You CAN Argue with the Facts,” lecture (Smart Energy, 2008),
http://smartenergyshow.com/node/67.

2
TobaccoFreedom.org, “Secret Documents Reveal A.C.L.U. Tobacco Industry Ties,”
www.tobaccofreedom.org/issues/documents/aclu
.

3
John C. Stauber, “Smokers’ Hacks: the Tobacco Lobby’s PR Front Groups,”
PR
Watch,
volume 1, no 3 (1994),
www.prwatch.org/prwissues/1994Q3/ hacks.html
.

4
APCO Associates, “Revised Plan for the Public Launching of TASSC (Through 1993)”,
http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2045930493-0504.html
.

5
Memorandum from Tom Hockaday and Neal Cohen to Matt Winokur of APCO Associates, March 25, 1994,
http://tobaccodocuments.org/ pm/2024233595-3602.html
.

6
See note 4.

7
Memo from Alexander Holtzman to Bill Murray of Philip Morris Companies Inc., August 31, 1989,
http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2023266534.html
.

8
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, “How Big Tobacco Helped Create the ‘Junkman,’”
PR
Watch,
volume 7, no 3 (2000),
www.prwatch.org/ prwissues/2000Q3/junkman.html
.

9
Greenpeace International, “Denial and Deception: A Chronicle of ExxonMo-bil’s Efforts to Corrupt the Debate on Global Warming,”
www.greenpeace.org/ usa/assets/binaries/leaked-api-comms-plan-1998
(or, for a more readable version, see
www.euronet.nl/users/e_wesker/ew@shell/API-prop.html
).

CHAPTER 5

1
Friends of Science membership quarterly newsletter, No. 7 (July 2005),
http:// sourcewatch.org/images/2/22/FOS_2005_Q2_Newsletter_7.pdf
.

2
“Special Investigations Research and Trust Accounts RT73-2028 &TR73-2153,” University of Calgary Audit, April 1, 2008,
www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Auditor%27s%20Report%20April%2014%202008.pdf.

3
Natural Resources Stewardship Project, NRSP Background,
http://nrsp.com/ background.html
.

4
Podcast of Dr. Tim Ball’s meeting with the
Ottawa Citizen
editorial board in “Tim Ball: Wilful Disregard for the Truth,” DeSmogBlog, August 30, 2006,
www.desmogblog.com/tim-ball-wilful-disregard-for-the-truth.

5
High Park Group Registration, Corporations Canada,
http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/cgi-bin/sc_mrksv/corpdir/dataOnline/ corpns_re?company_select=4326741#directors
.

6
James Hoggan, “NRSP Controlled by Lobbyists,” DeSmogBlog, January 18, 2007,
www.desmogblog.com/nrsp-controlled-by-energy-lobbyists.

7
Government of Canada, Lobbyists Registration Regulations Questions and Answers,
http://ocl-cal.gc.ca/eic/site/lobbyist-lobbyiste1.nsf/eng/ h_nx00279.html
.

8
The Heartland Institute, Video Record, 15 minutes, 57 seconds,
www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork08/audio/Monday/harris.mp3.

9
See note 1.

10
Kevin Grandia, “Elections Canada drops Friends of Science Investigation,” DeSmogBlog, September 23, 2008,
www.desmogblog.com/ elections-canada-drops-friends-of-science-investigation
.

CHAPTER 6

1
Frank Luntz interviewed by John McCaslin on the C-SPAN book review show
After Words,
January 29, 2007,
www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=7872&SectionName=
.

2
“Pipeline Damage Assessment from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf of Mexico,” DNV technical report, January 22, 2007,
www.mms.gov/tarprojects/581/44814183 _MMS_Katrina_Rita_PL_Final%20Report%20Rev1.pdf
.

3
Naomi Oreskes, “My Facts Are Better than Your Facts: Spreading Good News about Global Warming,” in
How Do Facts Travel?
(Cambridge University Press, forthcoming Fall 2009).

CHAPTER 7

1
Letter from Steven F. Hayward and Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research to Prof. Steve Schroeder of the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University, dated July 5, 2006, posted on the DeSmogBlog,
www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/ files/AEI.pdf
.

2
Kevin Grandia, “Leaked Memo Claims that GM, Ford Financed Pro-CO2 Ad Campaign,” DeSmogBlog, July 27, 2006,
www.desmogblog.com/ industry-memo-claims-controversial-ad-campaign-financed-by-gm-and-ford
.

3
Quoted at
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute
.

4
See
http://store.junkscience.com/apocalypse-no-why-39global-warming39-isnot-a-global-cr.html
.