One hundred and seventy six years ago, on this day, September 20th, 1848,
1848 – The American Association for the Advancement of Science is created.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science was created on September 20, 1848, at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was a reformation of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists with the broadened mission to be the first permanent organization to promote science and engineering nationally and to represent the interests of American researchers from across all scientific fields
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 275ishppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that science was coming along in leaps and bounds, even in the United States of America. You can read the Wikipedia page about it here.
What we learn is that putting together these sorts of bodies is a tremendous amount of hard work, clever politicking. You have to scramble for funds. You’ve got to allay the concerns of people who feel that a bureaucracy has been created or that their own baileywick is being stomped on. And the benefits are not always self-evident, and it could go badly wrong. See that Machiavelli quote about innovation. But anyway, it happened. Its journal Science started to be published in 1880.
What happened next? AAAS was a crucial node in science as you’d hope it would be obviously distinct from the National Academies of Science and the American Meteorological Society and the National Research Council and all the rest of it though there is inevitably circulation of staff and ideas and people
In the 100th year of the AAAS as the English biologist G Evelyn Hutchinson mentioned CO2 build up at a seminar organised by the within the AAAS General Meeting.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Forty two years ago, on this day, September 20th, 1982
Look for a file marked “carbon dioxide – climate change” and perhaps to your amazement you will read in this publication details of Reagan’s two-day gathering titled Carbon Dioxide, Science and Consensus, September 19-23, 1982. President Reagan’s right hand man and head of his Carbon Dioxide Research Division, Frederick A. Koomanoff, started the meeting and wrote into the record and with President Reagan’s and Congress’ full backing ..
“The Executive Branch and the Congress clearly regard the CO2 issue as one deserving serious, sustained and systematic investigation. The credit for this lies in the good science and solid research that has and is being performed.”
Will the wonders of that man ever stop? Reagan’s right hand man wasn’t all, he came at the urgency of the CO2 crisis two-fisted when his left hand man chipped in with even more in affirmation of the joint executive and congressional commitment to work to resolving climate change. That left hand was James C. Greene, Science Consultant to the Congress’ Committee on Science and Technology and he was the whip at the meeting there to make sure the attending scientists were fully engaged with the urgency of this topic.
“A veil hangs ominously over the earth, from pole to pole, over all the continents, and over the oceans,” Greene noted, adding, “To a significant degree, man has put it there. It is called simply enough, carbon dioxide pollution. If today’s worst case scenario becomes tomorrow’s reality, it will be too late to reverse the atmospheric buildup or to ameliorate the severe adverse human and environmental impacts of this pollutant. However, if we quickly develop a sufficient research program to provide the necessary answers, there may still be time to rend the veil or at least keep it from reaching the dimensions of disaster. This is a major goal of the Federal carbon dioxide research program and it requires the cooperation of scientists, governmental officials, and the citizens.”
President Reagan through his carefully scripted right and left hand men urged the scientists participating in the conference to not merely be scientists but rather to become energetic advocates, as they revealed in the prepared statement,
“Involvement of scientists at all levels of public policy development is absolutely necessary if correct decisions are to be made — C.P. Snow expressed it best in his book Science and Government, when he wrote, ‘I believe scientists have something to give which our kind of society is desperately short of … that is foresight.’ That is why I want scientists active in all the levels of government. You must provide the information and the foresight — no one else can. The carbon dioxide issue is a case in point,” and then concluded, “Until recent years, scientists were not even certain if the carbon dioxide buildup would increase or decrease the Earth’s temperature. Now, the controversy is, what is of impact and how long before it will be felt worldwide?”
So Dear Republicans fellow countrymen and women of every sort, remember the teachings of one of your heroes who knew what was important and stop with the blustering nonsense. Yes I know that the cost of doing the right thing is today being spun into a spectacular trillion dollar budget figure and comes with a cabal of folks all too eager to be appointed bankers, or is that banksters, of that money but we have a solution to that carpetbagger problem.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 341ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Ronald Reagan was being a complete prick on all things environmental. Or rather the people who would put the meat-puppet Reagan into Office were being pricks, They had put James Watt and Anne Gorsuch in with the goal of destroying the Department of the Interior and the EPA. But these two asshats were making enemies too quickly and not making good results.
Someone came up with a bright idea of holding a conference which I know virtually nothing about- whose idea, what purpose what invite list but anyway, so I am speculating a bit.
What we learn. It happened and it probably acted as a safety valve so that some of the more right leaning willing to go along with whatever they were told for the sake of their careers type scientists could point to that event and say “it’s not entirely fair to accuse the Reagan administration of doing nothing.” These sorts of events or documents, useful earthing devices so that the buildup of static electricity can be dissipated harmlessly. Kind of like a lightning rod.
What happened next. Reagan continued to be an asshat, albeit an increasingly senile one (there were rumours that some around him were considering invoking the 25th Amendment).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Thirty seven years ago, on this day, September 17th, 1987,
Policy Makers Spurred by Ozone Treaty, Considering Tackling ‘Greenhouse’
Effect, WALL ST. J., Sept. 17, 1987
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 349ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the ozone treaty had just been signed. Climate scientists were seriously worried about the buildup of CO2. The September 1985 scientific meeting in Villach, Austria, sponsored by WMO UNEPand ICSU had been pivotal. And since then, US Senators had been alerted repeatedly by Carl Sagan, by NGO briefings. Joe Biden had got in on the act in the run up to his first bid for president.
What we learn is that it’s one thing to deal with a chemical that not many companies make and for which there are substitutes. IT’s somewhat more problematic when you have the whole fossil fuel sector arrayed against you and its pals in the automotive industry.
What happened next was a God Almighty battle for five years and the forces of predatory delay were successful and continued to be successful, and still being successful in 2024…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Forty years ago, on this day, September 13th, 1984
Glaciers, ice sheets and sea level : effect of a CO2-induced climatic change : report of a workshop held in Seattle, Washington, September 13-15, 1984
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 345ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The contextwas that by now, CO2 build-up and its close cousin sea level rise were well embedded in environmental science in the United States. The EPA, the year before, had produced a big fat report. And this workshop, I guess it’s a continuation of that.
What we learn is that our scientists have been warning us about sea level rise with graphs and numbers since the early 1980s. And without necessarily all those graphs and numbers since the 1950s.
What happened next, scientists kept sciencing and the rapid increase in temperature and warmth of the planet led in 1988 to James Hansen giving his famous testimony to the Senate committee in June of 1988.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Thirty six years ago, on this day, September 7th, 1988,
On September 7, 1988, with the Summer of ’88 still fully in American consciousness, the ABC news programme Nightline broadcast a segment dedicated to the greenhouse effect. I was contacted as a possible guest but was later told my views were “too moderate.” Some of the exchange between “Nightline” moderator Ted Koppel and the environmental activist Michael Oppenheimer, of the Environmental Defense Fund, helps to make this dilemma quite explicit.
Koppell: Dr Oppenheimer, I’d love to be able to say to you that I think the American public can get energised over some perceived threat forty years down the road, but I don’t believe it. Do you?
[Hecht was on it to]
(Schneider, 1989: 235-6)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 351ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the American airwaves were full of greenhouse. Thanks to James Hansen’s June 23 testimony and the severe heatwave summer drought. And we’re getting to that stage in the media cycle where the responsible cautious scientists have had their say. And now in order to keep things “fresh” the bookers for these programmes are needing to jazz it up a bit with more extreme pronouncements. And previously, bookable scientists and advocates like Oppenheimer, for the Environmental Defence Fund are considered passe or too cautious. And then, of course, someone more extreme and perhaps unhinged gets booked. And then it becomes part of the culture war, with the opponents pointing to scare stories and the media can then report that and round and round and round we go.
What happened next? The climate culture war really kicked off in ‘89 with the George C Marshall Foundation, the Global Climate Coalition [it would be fun to figure out when that was born, when it started making its first pronouncements and interventions.] And this cycle continues down on to this day.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs
Ninety seven years ago, on this day, September 7th, 1927,
Wikipedia – On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth’s image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, to a receiver in another room of his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco.[23] Pem Farnsworth recalled in 1985 that her husband broke the stunned silence of his lab assistants by saying, “There you are – electronic television!”[23] The source of the image was a glass slide, backlit by an arc lamp. An extremely bright source was required because of the low light sensitivity of the design. By 1928, Farnsworth had developed the system sufficiently to hold a demonstration for the press.[25] His backers had demanded to know when they would see dollars from the invention;[27] so the first image shown was, appropriately, a dollar sign. In 1929, the design was further improved by elimination of a motor-generator; so the television system now had no mechanical parts. That year Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images using his television system, including a three and a half-inch image of his wife Pem.[citation needed]
Television, the drug of a nation
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 307ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that we had radio and if you could put pictures on that, well, whoop, you’d make some serious money. And of course, you could create the conditions for better education. Yeah, right.
What we learn is that television as a technology is coming up to its 100th birthday. I didn’t know that, I thought television was from the 30s.
What happened next BBC suspended its television broadcasting during the war, and it came back after the war. And then in the US, ownership of televisions went through the roof between 1950 and 1956. And in the UK, the thing that really got people going was the coronation.
And for the TV/environment nexus, well, yes there was some good stuff. And then there was eco-pornography (see below).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Fifty four years ago, on this day, September 1st, 1970, the “left” conspiracy theory about the environment…
Hay reviews (2002: 259) that in the late 1960s, Marxists reacted to environmentalism with skepticism and hostility; defines it as ―a manifestation of the narcissistic and excessive individualism‖ of counter culture and false revolutionary movement. Sandor Fuchs on his paper, Ecology Movement Exposed, 1970 argues that the US ruling class develops environmentalism ―to divert attention from class-based issues
(Fuchs’ paper was in the September 1970 issue of “Progressive Labour”) f. Sandor Fuchs, “Population, Pollution, and Natural Resources: Ecology Movement Exposed,” PROGRESSIVE LAB (September, 1970): 5 If someone has a copy, please send…
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2024 it is 420ishppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in April of that year, Earth Day had happened. And lots of middl- class people who’ve come out and held hands and sang Kumbaya, and a certain number of student radicals have been part of that. And then of course, there had been the killing of four students at Kent State by National Guard troops, which I think happened in the beginning of May, in response to the bombing and invasion of Cambodia.
What we learn is that there were two perspectives on Earth Day that kind of get lost in this general nostalgia. One the radical right, saying that it was a communist trick to subvert the American way of life. And they pointed to the fact that this was apparently Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, the 22nd of April. And the other was this promulgated by the Maoists, and so forth, that it was all being done by the nefarious Rockefeller Fund and so forth to “split the anti-war movement” (as if it needed any help…)
Also we learn that any event will have multiple interpretations. So for example, the mere existence of Greta Thunberg is seen as a diversionary tactic somehow.
What happened next? I think the Maoists were mostly gone within a couple of years.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs
Nineteen years ago, on this day, August 29th, 2005, Hurricane Katrina hits Louisiana coast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 380ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that warnings of increased intensity of hurricanes, if not their number, had been around for a while. The more local context was that the things that would protect New Orleans from a hurricane were levees and swamp lands and these were being neglected and drained because there was no money in it. And the US State was busy fighting an oil war in Iraq, and the local developers could always make more money. This was not a secret. The Times Picayune was covering it as per David Rovics’ song. There is a sort of whole false sense of inevitability. There’s also an awful sense of inevitability to the way the racism kicks in. If you’re black, you’re looting, if you’re white, you’re looking for food, and on and on and on.
What we learn And if you want to understand how the 21st century is going to play out, have a look at the monstrosity that was the state response, and the corporate response, and the societal response by and large, to Katrina. That monstrosity shows you what you need to know. So you won’t be surprised.
What happened next, New Orleans was “rebuilt” and gentrified and it’s slowly being eaten by sea level rise.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
See, also Naomi Klein See also Rebecca Solnit Paradise Built in Hell, et cetera.
See also Kim Stanley Robinson’s eerily prescient 40 days of rain imagery!
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says in an interview with the New York Times that his office’s investigation into Exxon is focused less on what the company knew about climate change years ago, and more on whether the company in recent years failed to report the potential impact of climate change regulations on its future business. In other words, the AG’s office is conducting “a straightforward fraud investigation.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/science/exxon-mobil-fraud-inquiry-said-to-focus-more-on-future-than-past.html
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 404ppm. As of 2024 it is 424ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Americans love suing people. And there were various attempts to sue Exxon. These were initially based on how long they’ve known about climate change, but as the Attorney General makes clear, just getting them on today’s fraud is probably your best bet.
What we learn is that “this isn’t a Court of Justice son, this is a court of law”. The people who made the decisions to stop Exxon, working on low carbon, and the people who funded and led all the denial and delay and obfuscation do indeed deserve to be at The Hague and then sentenced to a low lying prison. But that’s not going to happen. Because the laws are not always written for the rich, they are always enforced for the rich.
What happened next, I think the court cases dragging on and on, of course.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Forty years ago today (August 16, 1984) the New York Times, the “national” paper of the USA (1) ran a piece of particularly crafty propaganda. It was a paid full-page advert, on page 23, from the oil giant Mobil (2). The title of this masterpiece was “Why are they lying to our children?”, and the sordid episode has a lot to tell today and tomorrow’s climate campaigners – and for that matter anyone else interested in how fossil fuel interests have, with enormous success, sought to shape ‘common sense’ in democratic societies.
Short version: they don’t do it with chemtrails, or subliminal advertising. They do it with brute force and with subtlety, with repetition and repetition and repetition. And they’ve been doing it for a very long time (3).
Mobil had been running “editorial adverts” – a few hundred words of text about an issue du jour for over a decade at this point. These were the brainchild of a PR guru called Herb Schmerz, and you can learn more about them, and him, by going to this brilliant podcast by Drilled. There are some excellent spoofs of the ads by the German artist and provocateur Hans Haacke – for example MetroMobilitan.
The key point is that this is a really really clever form of propaganda, for several reasons. First because it doesn’t look like propaganda; it doesn’t deploy the crude and easily-spotted techniques of clapping seals, smiling dolphins and blue skies. Second, (and related) anyone who calls it propaganda can be accused of trying to refuse corporations a voice in public debate, since Mobil is at least trying to put a *rational* case, and isn’t that what liberals keep claiming they want, after all? Third (and related to the second) any attempt to respond to the half-truths and elisions in the adverts (the creators of these adverts are too canny to indulge in outright falsehoods) will take up at least as much time and energy, exhausting a third-party’s patience. This isn’t quite a Gish Gallop, but it is Gish Gallop-adjacent. Fourth, by setting out a ‘reasoned’ argument, Mobil is consciously setting the frame of the debate. And as various people have said, if they can get you asking the wrong questions then it doesn’t matter what the answers are. Finally, Mobil, through these ‘helpful’ adverts gets to claim a place as just another citizen in the ‘ideal speech community’, the term that the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas used to describe the situation where rich and poor, lion and lamb hash things out reasonably, arriving at agreed truths. Yeah, right.
So, this advert, forty years ago today, will have raised no eyebrows – it was just one of a very long line. Indeed, the only reason I am focussing on it at all is that I saw it in a collection released by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes and was struck by the line about “why are they lying to our children” and its mention of a book by that name. I wanted to know more, and didn’t have to go down too many electronic rabbit holes to find out more.
Before I get to the specifics, there’s one more piece of historical context that will help you understand what this is all about.
What is on the curriculum (overt and hidden) and how it is taught has always been a topic of contestation (and there’s nothing more political than who is allowed to learn to read – famously, slaves were forbidden from doing so in the American south).
However, matters had come to a head in the decade before this advert. You see, the aftermath of the 1960s and early 1970s was a period of serious concern to conservatives. That period had seen the black civil rights struggle give birth to the anti-war movement, to second-wave feminism, to gay rights, latino rights, indigenous movements, and to ecology movements. The “settled” consensus of the 1950s – that elite heterosexual white men, with science as their handmaiden, would rule, with women in the kitchen, people of colour (the words they used were different then!) in their place, queers in the closet and nature under the DDT etc. thumb – all that was gone by the early 1970s (4). If you want to stay in charge, well, you rely on unthinking consent: it’s a nightmare when the people you are trying to control get an education and are able to create their own perceptions of the world, share those, refuse to believe what you want and need them to believe (that this is the best of all possible worlds and that if they know their place everything will be okay, or at least tolerable).
The elites were alive to the threat, and were casting around for how to respond. There’s a key document that explains all this rather well. Almost exactly thirteen years before the Mobil advert, a memo (August 23, 1971) landed on the desk of Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., , the Chairman of the “Education Committee” of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The memo was written by Lewis Powell (Wikipedia), soon to be nominated as a Supreme Court justice by President Richard Nixon. It’s known as “the Powell Memorandum.”
Greenpeace USA describe it as “a corporate blueprint to dominate democracy”, and they’re not wrong. Here’s some of the sense of what the memo says
“Business must learn the lesson . . . that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination—without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.”
“Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”
The book itself
One source (I will come back to this, promise!) tells the origin myth of the book itself;
“New York University Dean, Dr Herbert London learned [about the lack of ‘balance’ in school education the hard way. One day his 13-year-old daughter came home from school with tears in her eyes to say, “I don’t have a future.” She showed her farther a paper shed been given in school. It listed horrors that it claimed awaited her generation, Including air pollution so bad that everyone would have to wear a gas mask.
“Well, as a result of that incident, London wrote a book…”
The book was published by the Hudson Institute, a cold-war think tank set up in the 1961 by Herman Kahn (one of a few possible inspirations for Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr Strangelove’) and fellow nuclear war strategists. Its purpose was to argue for, in effect, ever-more nuclear weapons (it can be thought of as a precursor to the George C. Marshall Institute, set up at about the same time as this Mobil op-ed was published, to argue forReagan’s Space Defense Initiative aka “Star Wars” – for more on that, see Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway’s book “Merchants of Doubt”).
Its author, Herbert London, was at the time an academic at New York University It was his first second solo book(5), and doubtless he was happy for the foreword from Herman Kahn (6). The book was published in 1984. You can borrow it here (please donate some money, on general principles, to the Internet Archives folks).
Before I hone in on what (little) it has to say specifically about climate change, we need to back up to the Powell Memorandum. There’s something in it that might put the sweet origin myth above, of a concerned dad simply trying to protect the mental health of his daughter – in a new light.
Evaluation of Textbooks
The staff of scholars (or preferably a panel of independent scholars) should evaluate social science textbooks, especially in economics, political science and sociology. This should be a continuing program. The objective of such evaluation should be oriented toward restoring the balance essential to genuine academic freedom.
(Powell, 1971, p.16-7)
And what did London magically set out to do – why, exactly this. What a coincidence…
It’s also worth pausing to think about the clever rhetorical work being done by the very clever title. “Why are they lying to our children?”
Let’s take the third word first – there is a nefarious and identifiable “They“. An alien force that needs to be combatted, defeated. This “they” are the communist eco-freaks, useful idiots of the Soviet Union seeking to undermine the Free West. You know, all those never-do-wells in the good old days of the 1920s through early 1960s, would have been dealt with via Red Scares and the House Un American Activities Committee and so on (all pre-dating Senator Joseph McCarthy, by the way).
They are trying to wickedly deceive sweet innocent children. Not “some” children (their own, for instance) but “our” – meaning the writers of this work are taking responsibility for ALL children, for everyone’s children (the “They” do not get to have any children of their own in this, something akin to JD Vance’s attack on childless cat ladies).
Finally (!!) the book itself. I’ve not read the whole thing (life is short, and it is way later than you think). Specifically on climate change, the book has little to say (6). Ironically, London first finds himself having to correct scientific errors in the textbooks he is reviewing.
“Moreover, their analysis of environmental issues includes several egregious errors. For example, carbon dioxide does not have a cooling effect on the climate, as was suggested in silver Burdett’s geography text cited above” (emphasis in original) (London, 1984, page 64)
A few pages later London quotes from the 1981 edition of a classic textbook (first published in 1968) called The Economic Problem by Heilbroner and Thurow, which mentions carbon dioxide build-up.
London is largely dismissive.
“The ‘greenhouse effect’ to which the authors refer is caused not so much from combustion in general as from the combustion of fossil fuels in particular. Which does increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. If the effect is ‘the most serious threat’ we face, a concerted effort to cope with this threat to our environment would mean solving the problems associated with the generation of nuclear power, which is clean, and the manufacture of synthetic fuels that are low in carbon content. But Heilbroner and Thurow don’t make this point, nor does any other textbook that includes the issue.” (London , 1984, p.93-4).
And .. that’s it.
If I can editorialise for a minute – for a book that sought to allay his thirteen year old daughter’s(7) fears, well – what a sloppy effort. He seems more interested in proving that he is smarter than some secondary school textbooks, and fulfilling the suggestion in the Powell Memorandum.
What happened next
Earlier I quoted a mystery guest on the subject of the origin myth of the book. And that mystery guest is… drumroll please… take a bow… give it up for… President Ronald Wilson Reagan! On February 28, 1985, shortly after his second inauguration (Morning in America) gave a speech at the Annual General Meeting of the National Association of Independent Schools.
The book was only mentioned in passing, though, as noted above, Reagan found time to include the heart-string-tugging origin myth. He said of the book that it “documents the myths that are taught in so many of our schools. Our children should know, London argues, that because our society decided to do something about pollution, our environment is getting better, not worse. Emissions of most conventional air pollutants, for example, have decreased significantly, while trout and other fish are returning to streams where they haven’t been seen for decades”
That’s a real sign of success, isn’t it? You know you’ve arrived when your book is getting a shout out from the President of the United States!
The book got a positive review (of course) in the neoconservative journal “Commentary” and popped up in the footnotes of various “anti-reflexive” (see McCright and Dunlap – and this video!) texts seeking to minimise environmental issues and prosecute the curriculum wars over the following decades.
The last major citation (to date) came ten years ago, when the UK “Global Warming Policy Foundation” regurgitated the origin myth in a report called “Climate Control”, which claimed there was “brainwashing” in the UK’s classrooms. No, I am not linking to it, and really, think twice before wasting your time with their trash: like I said it’s a lot later than you think. By the way, most UK climate denial is like this – a pale imitation and outdated photocopy of better-funded American efforts.
Battles over climate change and US secondary school textbooks have continued. They’ve involved famed scientists like James Hansen (see this blog post about April 9, 2008.)
More recently, the Heartland Institute, a climate denialist outfit, has been trying to muddy the waters by providing “alternative facts” in attractive format to secondary school teachers.
In the UK, Michael Gove, when Secretary of State for Education, tried to have climate removed from the curriculum in primary school. In this he was, ultimately, unsuccessful, thanks to … Ed Davey.
Oh, and London? Well, according to Wikipedia, font of all accurate information
The London Center for Policy Research (LCPR) is a 501(c)(3)nonprofit organization that was founded in 2012 by London in New York City and defines itself as a boutique think tank created to engage in research and advise on key policy issues of national security, international relations, energy, and risk analysis.[32] The center claims to challenge conventional wisdom where appropriate, add texture to the current deliberations on policy issues and build support for positions that further the national interest and the interest of key allies.[33] The London Center was influential in the staffing and policy direction of the Trump Administration with many of its senior fellows taking on both official and unofficial roles in the administration.[34] The center counts these “Fellows” among its membership: Deroy Murdock, Gordon G. Chang, Monica Crowley, Jim Woolsey, Derk Jan Eppink, and Walid Phares.
There is a forever war for the hearts and minds – especially of children. If you can shape their norms, their frames, then, well, that’s half the battle. But as TS Eliot wrote,”There is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.” The conservatives know this, and are in a state of endless anxiety about this (in their way, they are as addicted to apocalypse narratives as the Hallamites, only with much less scientific justification).
So, for progressives, leftists etc, a crucial lesson is that “they” -the “other side” – are diligent, relatively skilled, and extremely well-funded. Just because you disagree with them, you shouldn’t under-estimate them.
This tactic that London (among others) used will continue. The “won’t someone think of the children”gambit is too useful not to be used again and again, no matter how ludicrous. It frames the anti-reflexives/status quo supporters etc as the good guys, responsible adults merely trying to stop the long-hairs from terrorising sweet innocent children.
In addition, the pattern of the conveyor belt and mutual amplification of influence is still there; of op-ed turning into longer article, into book, that then gets quoted in advertorial or speeches by CEOs. Politicians then amplify it, it appears in Hansard, all the while gaining “credibility” through repetition, especially when “high status” people in think tanks (junk tanks), university departments etc. Thus are memes built. That’s what they want, anyway. It doesn’t always turn out like that, sometimes it doesn’t land/resonate, they get mugged by reality etc. Counter-memes can also be put forward by “the other side.”…
What to do
Educate yourself (this is most effectively and efficiently done with others by the way) by reading widely (see some starters below) and acting in the real world. If you’re after podcasts, you cannot do better than start with Drilled. Also, throw some money at them.
Get involved in a sustainable group that is a rough fit for your politics, and stay involved (this is, for various reasons, really really hard).
Don’t be surprised when everything goes sideways very quickly indeed. Instantaneously, on geological timescales.
Further suggested reading
Barley, S. R. (2010). Building an institutional field to corral a government: A case to set an agenda for organization studies. Organization studies, 31(6), 777-805.
Beder, S. 1997. Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism
(1) There’s a highly entertaining speech by Noam Chomsky, from 1985 that talks about the NYT in, ah, “somewhat unflattering” terms, to do with its “first draft of history function.” Watch this space – or perhaps marchudson.net – for more.
(4) In his 1994 book World Orders, Old and New, Noam Chomsky writes about the perceived “crisis of democracy” in the mid-1970s. This served as the title of the first book published by the Trilateral Commission. If you don’t have access to World Orders, Old and New, that’s alright, it’s a topic Chomsky has spoken of many times. There’s this interview in India in January 1996. And here’s something from the Boston Review in 2017 that gives the same flavour
What particularly troubled the Trilateral scholars was the “excess of democracy” during the time of troubles, the 1960s, when normally passive and apathetic parts of the population entered the political arena to advance their concerns: minorities, women, the young, the old, working people . . . in short, the population, sometimes called the “special interests.” They are to be distinguished from those whom Adam Smith called the “masters of mankind,” who are “the principal architects” of government policy and pursue their “vile maxim”: “All for ourselves and nothing for other people.” The role of the masters in the political arena is not deplored, or discussed, in the Trilateral volume, presumably because the masters represent “the national interest,” like those who applauded themselves for leading the country to war “after the utmost deliberation by the more thoughtful members of the community” had reached its “moral verdict.”
To overcome the excessive burden imposed on the state by the special interests, the Trilateralists called for more “moderation in democracy,” a return to passivity on the part of the less deserving, perhaps even a return to the happy days when “Truman had been able to govern the country with the cooperation of a relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and bankers,” and democracy therefore flourished.
(5) In 1981 London had co-authored “Myths that Rule America.” A googlebooks search suggests it made no mention of carbon dioxide.
(6) Given the internal evidence, it was mostly completed before the September 1983 “battle of the reports”, where the Environmental Protection Agency released a report called “Can we delay a greenhouse warming?” (spoiler, the authors thought “probably not by very much”) and two days later the National Academies of Science released a report saying, in effect “nothing to see here.”
(7) The daughter in question is Stacy London, who most definitely does not share her father’s politics..
