Generation Hot—Why Aren’t Parents Fighting Climate Change?

Mark Hertzgaard’s recent article, “Parents Need to Act Against Climate Change,” in the Daily Beast, is a moralistic diatribe against parents’ apathy in response to climate change. Since the worst effects of climate change are only just beginning, our kids will be inheriting a lifetime of catastrophic storms, heat waves, droughts, famines and economic hardships. Therefore, he argues, parents should be terrified, outraged and aggressively fighting to reverse the crisis. Yet for the most part they are not.

The current U.S. heat wave—the worst in 56 years—has now encompassed 1,000 counties and is affecting fully one-third of Americans. There have already been nearly 100 deaths (which is significant, but still miniscule compared with the 70,000 who died in Europe’s heat wave of 2003). Ranchers are considering selling off their herds for slaughter early because they cannot afford to feed them. Food prices are expected to rise dramatically. And scientists are claiming that the heat wave, drought, fires in the Southwest and other extreme weather events of the past few years are what climate change looks like.

Climate change is indeed the most significant issue of our day as it threatens life on the planet in the long-term and our living conditions and material wellbeing in the short-term. Hertzgaard is correct in his assessment that American’s are relatively apathetic on this issue. He is also correct that our children, whom he dubs “Generation Hot,” will inherit much more serious consequences than we are currently experiencing if the trend is not reversed.

However, people (parents, children and everyone else) cannot be beaten into action with moralizing and guilt tripping. They will not suddenly jump to the barricades because Hertzgaard, or his organization, have made them feel guilty about leaving a moribund planet to their children.

Nor will partial or inaccurate analyses lead them into action. For example, Hertzgaard suggests that parents “don’t know, or choose not to believe,” the science because the media covers climate change through “political rather than scientific lenses.” This overly simplistic analysis deemphasizes the role of the heavily funded PR machine that the coal and petroleum industries have used to deliberately mislead and confuse the public about the facts, much like the tobacco companies have done to try to convince the public that tobacco is safe.

There are other problems with this analysis, too, like the assumptions that if the media talked about climate change “through a scientific lens” the public would necessarily understand the science, its implications, be outraged and take action. None of these assumptions is necessarily true. The facts about tobacco’s health consequences encouraged some to quit. However, increased regulation (e.g., tobacco taxes, mandated warning labels, laws regulating where and how tobacco could be sold and advertised) together with public health outreach campaigns, have contributed to significantly more dramatic reductions in tobacco usage.

Hertzgaard also suggests that the facts are just too depressing for many parents to face, leading many to ignore them or pretend climate change is not happening. Of course the facts are depressing, while the only solutions likely to reverse the trend involve dramatic reductions (or elimination) of fossil fuel consumption and significant reductions in overall consumption seem hopelessly unlikely in our current economic and cultural climate.

However, I Hertzgaard’s analysis here is dismissive and disparaging. Parents are not the cause of climate change. They are its victims. And while we are all complicit in it by continuing to consume polluting products and services, we have little choice in the matter. We need to get to work and heat our homes and eat, and these are all heavily dependent on greenhouse gas emitting technologies. Changing this requires massive regulation, which depends on the goodwill of a political and economic system that benefits handsomely from the status quo, or dramatic socioeconomic changes that are unlikely to occur without considerable violence and suffering.

Furthermore, while climate change may be the most significant issue of our day, it is still largely a long term problem in most people’s eyes, particularly when juxtaposed with our day to day needs, like putting food on the table, which for most Americans has become much more difficult as a result of the economic crisis. It may be that Americans do indeed recognize the gravity of the climate problem and are not simply shoving their heads in the ground. Rather, they also recognize the socioeconomic challenges of fighting it and the urgency of their own material needs, and choose to go on with their lives with as little disruption and stress as they can.

In many respects, climate change is just another front in the class war the ruling elite has been imposing on the rest of us for generations. The primary beneficiaries of carbon pollution are the industries that are allowed to dump carbon into the atmosphere or sell polluting products without charge (e.g., petroleum, coal, shipping, automotive, construction, owners of large buildings, big agriculture, etc.) They increase their profits by externalizing these costs onto the public. Regulation has not been possible because these beneficiaries of carbon pollution have spent billions of dollars on PR, ads and lobbying to convince the public there is no problem and to convince politicians not to regulate them. Convincing parents to get angry and get into the streets is no more likely to change this than the Occupy movement was in getting Congress to regulate banking.

Of course regulation alone cannot solve the problem. We don’t simply need better rules governing how industries pollute. We need social changes that dramatically reduce or eliminate carbon pollution combined with heavy investment in carbon neutral technologies combined with dramatic reductions in overall consumption combined with stiffer penalties and better policing of industrial pollution. Most of these enormous long-term socioeconomic changes will require directly confronting the ruling elite and capitalism itself and therefore also require comprehensive community and workplace organizing. This is most effectively done by getting into the streets, communities and workplaces and talking to people one on one and listening to their concerns, not by getting on your high horse and talking down to them.

The Best Curriculum Money Can Buy—The Real Climategate Coming to a School Near You

When internal documents from British scientists were leaked to the press, inaugurating “Climategate,” the Heartland Institute was one of the myriad right-wing climate-denial conspiracy organizations that cherry-picked quotes from the scientists and demanded punitive action against them. The scientists have since been cleared of any wrongdoing and their research has been vindicated, but Heartland Institute has continued its attack.

Now internal documents have been leaked from the Heartland Institute itself, revealing its funding of leading climate change skeptics and a plan to teach climate change skepticism in schools. The documents were published by DeSmogBlog, which said that “the climate denial machine relies on huge corporate and foundation funding from U.S. businesses, including Microsoft, Koch Industries, Altria (parent company of Philip Morris), RJR Tobacco and more."

Heartland will be paying Dr. David Wojick $5,000 per module, or about $25,000 a quarter, to develop curriculum for high school and middle school. Dr. Wojick is a consultant with the Office of Scientific and Technical Information at the U.S. Department of Energy in the area of information and communication science. According to MSNBC, Dr. Wojick considers the reliability of climate models to be controversial and questions whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant. According to others, Wojick has no scientific or educational background, especially in climate science, only a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science to lend credibility to Heartland’s efforts.

Heartland has worked for years to lend credibility to tobacco-industry scientists and help tobacco companies sow public doubt about the dangers of tobacco and secondhand smoke. Coal and petroleum companies have emulated many of the tactics of Big Tobacco, such as hiring their own scientists to come up with bogus data that supports their interests and creating fake public interest organizations. Thus, it should come as no surprise that tobacco companies would help fund such efforts by carbon-emitting industries.

Here's a copy of the group's fundraising plan, with a list of donors.

Politics and Capitalism Make Kids Stupid

While pundits, billionaires and politicians continue to scream that the educational sky is falling because of teachers’ selfishness, laziness, poor training and lack of accountability, they simultaneously erode the chances that our students will believe anything they learn at school by bombarding them with pseudoscience and other absurdities.

In one of the latest instances, Gov. Rick Perry, of Texas, has called climate change a hoax, according to the Guardian. This is a man who is considered a serious contender for president, despite the fact that he unabashedly pronounces his stupidity, gullibility and superstition. Then again, he has also suggested that Fed Chair Ben Bernacke could come to great physical harm should he step foot in Texas, a threat that would land most other people in prison, or least earn them a visit from the FBI. So perhaps public displays of stupidity and violence are now considered legitimate and inspirational.

Of course Perry is not as stupid as his climate denials would have him seem. He knows which side his bread is buttered on (the oily side). Perry has received $11 million in donations from Big Oil, according to ThinkProgress.org. If Big Oil says climate change is an unproven “theory” (by which they mean opinion, since theories, by definition, are considered satisfactorily proven), then it must be the case. And if the real estate lobby, which gave him nearly $8 million, says there is no foreclosure crisis, then by god, the housing market must be peachy keen, as well. And if the liquor lobby, which gave him more than $2 million, says that drinking is good for your driving, then dang nammit, Americans need to carry open containers in their cars more often, like they do in Texas.

But Mr. Dunn, aren’t you being a little bombastic? Isn’t Perry just a Tea Party hack, with no influence over our children’s education?

Perry is just the tip of the iceberg, the most visible and newsworthy climate denier of late.

The latest issue of Science wrote about the Los Alamitos School Board, in California, which has ordered that environmental science classes include “both sides of the climate debate.” This is kind of like Flat Earthers demanding that geography classes provide both sides of the “debate” on the shape of the Earth, or English classes presenting both sides of the “debate” about “ain’t.” There is no debate or question about whether or not climate change is happening or its causes. The facts are clear and the data overwhelming. What might be considered debatable is what we should do about it, but only if you stand to lose financially, should regulations and limits be placed on the extraction and use of fossil fuels. For the rest of us, the solution is pretty obvious: stop burning fossil fuels, reduce energy consumption and massively invest in carbon-neutral energy sources.

It is certainly bad enough to have your school board meddling in curriculum decisions, particularly when their meddling forces you to present pseudoscience to your students as if it were legitimate science. However, the abuse does not end there. The board also voted 4-0 to require that teachers make an annual presentation on how they are teaching the class in order to demonstrate that they aren’t skewing the lessons with their “liberal” biases (see Los Alamitos Patch). This will be the only course in the district in which teachers must prove they are providing politically balanced lessons.

The Insane Logic of Republican Lawmakers

"Children Are Victims of Adults Vices"Mikhail Chemiakin

From David Sirota’s List of Sadistic State Laws (published in the OB Rag)

The Pro-lifers’ Anti-Life Exemption: The use of “pro-life” to mean anti-abortion is a brilliant propaganda tactic. Anyone who is against life, particularly an innocent child’s, must surely be demented or evil. There are several problems with this however. First, while certain religions may define life as beginning at conception, scientists and doctors do not agree. There are numerous natural phenomena that can halt fetal development before it is viable, drawing into question whether it can truly be considered life. Indeed, 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage (most during the first 2 weeks, before women even realize they are pregnant), which means that 50% of all pregnancies were, in fact, not viable lives.

A second problem is that many who call themselves “pro-life” are not at all pro-life. Some support the death penalty. Many support U.S. wars of aggression. And some even support murder. South Dakota passed HB 1171 which would legalize homicide by a person attempting to protect an “unborn child.” They later shelved the bill. Then Nebraska Republican state Sen. Mark Christensen introduced a nearly identical bill in his state that would legitimize the murder of abortion providers.

The Let Them Eat Corporate Tax Cuts Act: The Georgia Legislature has introduced a bill that would create a regressive sales tax on food in order to finance a new corporate tax cut. Sirota writes as if Georgia is uniquely evil in this. However, California’s Democratic Governor Jerry Brown has been attempting more or less the same. The wealthiest Californians have been enjoying numerous tax breaks and pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than the poorest Californians, which is a major reason why California has such a terrible budget deficit. Rather than raising taxes on the rich (who can certainly afford it), Brown’s solution is to extend regressive sales taxes and vehicle licensing fees that would disproportionately affect the poor and working class.

Right to Make Kids Work (Modern School also reported this one, but it was so nutty, I though it worth repeating here): Missouri state Sen. Jane Cunningham’s is trying to eliminate child labor laws and allow corporations to hire kids under 14. The law would end restrictions on the number of hours that kids can be forced to work.

The Obesity and Deficit Encouragement Act: Colorado’s childhood obesity rate grew at the second-fastest rate in the country. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has shown that higher soda taxes can drive down obesity. (Higher gas prices reduce the amount of driving and higher cigarette taxes drive down smoking.) Colorado as has a budget deficit of over $1 billion. Yet instead of doing the obvious and levying a soda tax to raise revenues and help reduce obesity, their new Republican House is pushing a special sales tax exemption exclusively for soda.

Climate Deniers Hall of Fame: According to Sirota, Montana has been pushing a host of idiotic laws, like trying to legalize hunting with hand-thrown spears and eliminating education requirements for the state superintendent of schools. Perhaps the craziest is Rep. Joe Read’s bill that declares “global warming is beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana.”