Greenman's Occasional Organ

Ecosocialist. Syndicalist. Critical Techno-Progressive.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Rightists And Corporate Puppets Prepare Assault On Climate Change Education In Britain

Flushed by their "success" in the Dimmock vs Gore/HM Govt court case (strange "success" when the Judge grants that there are some minor "errors" in the thing they are attempting to discredit, but says that its' core arguments are basically sound - but then the fickle media ran big on the "errors" and not on the Judge dismissing the bulk of the contrarian argument, and maybe this was the intention of the well-funded court case in the first place.) Now Lord Monckton, who is related to that well-heeled gang of rightist contrarians the Lawsons, has decided to try and get his own contrarian propaganda into schools - funded by American corporate attack money. Article in the Independent here.
Johann Hari is not one of my favourite columnists - on some issues he has been downright objectionable, but on this issue he has got the contrarians bang to rights.
The contrarians are following a typically dishonest strategy - it does not matter to them that their arguments are weak - what they are interested in is giving the impression that there is debate and widespread scientific uncertainty on the Climate issue. Ironically, the contrarians who regularly accuse those seeking action on climate change of political motivation are pursuing a political strategy against the weight of scientific evidence and opinion - their gamble is that if they can confuse the voting public enough, politicians will not feel confident enough of public support to take the radical measures required to address the climate crisis. The longer this goes on, the longer the paymasters of the contrarian movement continue to rake in profits from activities that increase the likelihood of disastrous runaway climate change. Unfortunately for us all though, unless defeated they may be successful for long enough to make catastrophic warming unavoidable.

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3 Comments:

At 11:46 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why don't you like Johann Hari?

 
At 6:29 pm, Blogger Jim Jepps said...

Hi, apologies for being off topic.

This is the second year of the the UK's Best Green Blogs which has just been published in Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging and was compiled by myself, Jim Jay, at The Daily (Maybe) where you can read the entire list.

I'm just sending you a quick message to let you know you're in the top twenty, congratulations. As a side benefit this also means you're in with a chance of the coveted "People's Choice Award" too, where readers vote on who of the top twenty is their favourite read.

 
At 9:16 pm, Blogger greenman said...

Anon-
Hari is OK on most topics, but on some - economics and Europe for example, he appears more liberal than left. However, his mode of journalism is not always to my liking, and his (now retracted) support of the war still rankles -
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Johann_Hari

Jim-
thanks for that - will take a look! Well done handling the GPEX ballot under difficult circumstances!

 

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