‘Skeptical Environmentalists’ and the Passion for Junk Science

Nowhere is this all too human tendency more evident than in deniers of crisis. We would rather bury our heads in the sand than believe a catastrophe is imminent. Every time a tyrant has plunged his people into horrific oppression or a megalomaniac has launched a brutal war against his neighbours in the quest of global dominion, thousands of normally bright, responsible people have shrugged it off as an exaggeration, an overstatement, a misrepresentation. “No one could ever treat their people as badly as some allege Stalin is doing”; “No one has anything to fear from Joe McCarthy unless they’re done something illegal.” “It’s just a correction, the market will bounce back by 1930”, We were tacitly complicit in the atrocities of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and now in Darfur because we just didn’t, and don’t, want to know how bad it is. It’s upsetting, it’s overwhelming, and it doesn’t jibe with our parochial, rosy view of human nature. For every chance to avert catastrophe with prompt and decisive action, there have been armies of deniers, “do-nothing” advocates, tellers of Chicken Little stories, working furiously to thwart action, usually successfully.

One of the latest examples of this phenomenon has been the denial of global warming and the rise of so-called ‘skeptical environmentalists’ (not actually environmentalists at all, but shills for corporatist mega-polluters, dupes and paid lackeys for others with a vested interest in sweeping environmental problems under the rug). There is a huge and organized effort underway to try to play into our desire to be seduced by false comforts on the environment. It is well bankrolled and very successful. And the media play along witlessly: Far be it for them to report on an issue the public apparently doesn’t want to hear about.

In a recent article in the Guardian entitled Junk Science, George Monbiot shows exactly how it works. Please read this article in its entirety. Here’s the punchline:

The dupes in this case include UK botanist David Bellamy (influential president of the Conservation Foundation, the Wildlife Trusts, Plantlife International and the British Naturalistsí Association), as well as New Scientist magazine and the Washington Post. The ‘sources’ of the data allegedly counter-indicating global warming include a huckster architect self-promoting a book on a new ice age, and wacko conspiracy theorist, hate-monger and US wingnut presidential candidate Lyndon Larouche. Once a few ‘respectable’ dupes have been set up, the corporatist spin machine goes into overdrive, citing and reciting them, until the virus has spread so far that attempts to attack it are fruitless.

The neocon Bush administration has purged itself of responsible scientists and replaced them with deniers, an essential prerequisite to maintaining ‘plausible deniability’. A recent survey by UCS indicates that new corporatist bosses in environment branches of US government are ordering employees to falsify and suppress reports and ignore regulations to sustain this deniability. This is nothing more than cynical exploitation of the public’s desire not to know.

And meanwhile, corporatist mega-polluters like the huge Koch Industries (the second largest private corporation in the US) use puppet think-tanks, lobbying and huge campaign donations to get their massive environmental crimes settled out of court without criminal charges, and to get the environmental laws they routinely violate overturned, or at least unenforced. These crimes involve hundreds of cases of poisoning of our water and our air with tons of carcinogens and toxins, and the subversion of laws and justice that would put these criminals behind bars where they belong.

Never heard of Koch? That’s OK, you don’t want to know. And corporatist shills (you don’t want to know who’s behind them, and they won’t tell you who they are) will tell you that it’s all right, these chemicals aren’t really bad for you, and they have just the junk science to support their claims. Don’t you feel better now?

Cartoon by Tom Toles in the Washington Post