2008 Woodie Awards
Environmental issues steal spotlight in political arena
Daniel Black
Issue date: 2/22/07 Section: Opinion
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The environment has become a hot topic in politics lately, seemingly everyone on all sides of the political debate acknowledging that we have a serious problem. About half asserting that global climate change threatens the survival of life as we know it, the other half asserting the problem is the first half itself.
The spotlight story appeared on the Union of Concerned Scientists' homepage, under the title "Global Warming Obscured by Politics," offers some indication of the current debate's substance and quality. Because the scholarly inquiry into global climate change has been so seriously defiled by the biases that invariably accompany environmentally crass political agendas, the scientific community has been forced to pursue authentic inquiry through their own independent means. Government supported inquiry has proven valueless because the ends it seeks always have an eye to corporate profit, a reality that effectively compromise its utility. The issue of whether our home planet can sustain our current lifestyle -or even sustain our continued presence as a species at all- is, it would appear, unworthy of anything beyond the deceitful and subversive political tactics that typify most other social concerns.
The environment, it is important to realize, differs sharply from other political issues; this is one topic of political debate wherein contempt for the perspective of science is more than just foolish, it is suicidal. The stratagem of the leading skeptics is hopelessly misguided, and quite shameless, I believe. Few people, I think, are able to acknowledge reality for what it is, with all its discomforting implications, and continue to believe as they wish against all evidence suggesting that they shouldn't.
When the United Nations' experts appeal to our national conscience, asking that we open our minds to the possibility that grotesque over-consumption could be responsible for impending ecological catastrophe, the United Nations itself is baselessly discredited as threatening our "American way of life" or attempting to attack our global economic sovereignty. When scientists publish a report exposing the urgency of environmental crises, corporate lobbyists offer other scientists cash incentives to dispute the reports, or they simply attack the credibility of the scientists that have the audacity to suggest something contrary to the corporate agenda, no matter how grounded in objectivity the report might actually be. These practices, though common among large environment-wrecking corporations, are well-known but somehow escape public scrutiny. When measured in terms of its likely consequences, the truly criminal nature of this corporate behavior cannot be overstated; it is conceptually reducible to murder for profit. In that it its aim is to threaten the survival of humanity as an undivided collective, solely for the purpose of self-interest, intervention of this sort is more serious a crime than is genocide.
The spotlight story appeared on the Union of Concerned Scientists' homepage, under the title "Global Warming Obscured by Politics," offers some indication of the current debate's substance and quality. Because the scholarly inquiry into global climate change has been so seriously defiled by the biases that invariably accompany environmentally crass political agendas, the scientific community has been forced to pursue authentic inquiry through their own independent means. Government supported inquiry has proven valueless because the ends it seeks always have an eye to corporate profit, a reality that effectively compromise its utility. The issue of whether our home planet can sustain our current lifestyle -or even sustain our continued presence as a species at all- is, it would appear, unworthy of anything beyond the deceitful and subversive political tactics that typify most other social concerns.
The environment, it is important to realize, differs sharply from other political issues; this is one topic of political debate wherein contempt for the perspective of science is more than just foolish, it is suicidal. The stratagem of the leading skeptics is hopelessly misguided, and quite shameless, I believe. Few people, I think, are able to acknowledge reality for what it is, with all its discomforting implications, and continue to believe as they wish against all evidence suggesting that they shouldn't.
When the United Nations' experts appeal to our national conscience, asking that we open our minds to the possibility that grotesque over-consumption could be responsible for impending ecological catastrophe, the United Nations itself is baselessly discredited as threatening our "American way of life" or attempting to attack our global economic sovereignty. When scientists publish a report exposing the urgency of environmental crises, corporate lobbyists offer other scientists cash incentives to dispute the reports, or they simply attack the credibility of the scientists that have the audacity to suggest something contrary to the corporate agenda, no matter how grounded in objectivity the report might actually be. These practices, though common among large environment-wrecking corporations, are well-known but somehow escape public scrutiny. When measured in terms of its likely consequences, the truly criminal nature of this corporate behavior cannot be overstated; it is conceptually reducible to murder for profit. In that it its aim is to threaten the survival of humanity as an undivided collective, solely for the purpose of self-interest, intervention of this sort is more serious a crime than is genocide.
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