On this day, in 2001, the oil company Exxon was throwing its weight around trying to get specific scientists pushed off the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In a memo to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol denounces esteemed climate scientist Robert Watson, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as someone “handpicked by Al Gore” who is using the media to get “coverage for his views.
He asks “Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the US?” In addition to Watson, Randol names other climate experts who he wants “removed from their positions of influence.”
You can read the document here, on climate files.
And they succeeded. Bob Watson only served one term where the normal expectation was two. And this is because he was too independently minded and wasn’t going to waffle about technology saving us.
This is not a new story. Historically scientists have come under ferocious attack, not just for their climate work, but also ozone hole, asbestos, you name it. There’s a lovely example in An Enemy of the People, the play by Henrik Ibsen, which by the way, inspired the movie, Jaws… but I digress.
Why this matters
We need to remember that a lot of what we see and hear and take as accepted fact, is actually constructed for us actively or passively, and that critical voices have been removed. For the benefit of continued capital accumulation. This is Gramsci in action, people. This is how hegemony is constructed and maintained.
What happened next
The IPCC kept producing reports and is producing another one. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide accumulates thanks to the actions and inactions of people like you and me who have failed to build the kinds of movements that could have made a difference despite having freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of information. It might be a good idea for us to look ourselves in the mirror.