Suppressing Climate Change Science and Information

The major theme of the 2010 midterm election, which is currently raging in the 112th Congress, concerns reducing the federal deficit and creating jobs. For all intents and purposes a large federal deficit provides science deniers with the opportunity to justify gutting funding for the Environmental Protection Agency by framing it as “tightening our financial belts.” This theme is a red herring, but is nonetheless getting a great deal of play in the congress (Geman, 2011). The sort of funding cuts recommended by Republicans would effectively demolish the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide (among other things), and provide a boon to special interest not all that interested in climate change. This should not be a complete surprise, as Chait (2007) notes, only 13% of Republicans believe global warming is real.

In relation to his presidential election bid, George Bush Senior was not one of those Republicans, but George W. Bush certainly is. According to Hoggan & Littlemore (2009), George W. Bush’s White House was not only friendly to big business in the oil and gas sectors, but he worked tirelessly to limit not only the access real scientists had to citizens but also the dissemination of scientific information and the crippling of EPA regulations. The Clear Skies Initiative was aimed at forcing coal-fired electric industry to reduce pollution. Originally, the plan would have cost the industry $6.5 billion to implement; however, Hoggan & Littlemore report that the change would have produced $93 billion in health benefits (170). Obviously, if the issue was about saving money and creating jobs, while simultaneously increasing health, the Bush administration would not have forced the EPA to back away from its original objective and revert instead to a much less effective cap-and-trade system which ignored the output of carbon dioxide altogether (Hoggan & Littlemore, 2009). But the tragedy does not end here. Rich Piltz, senior associate in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, reported in an interview with John Mitchell and Jana Christy of shuffleboil.com (now defunct) that the Bush administration intentionally misled the public by injecting uncertainty into reports on climate change (ibid. p. 171-2).

Not only did the Bush administration attempt to inject confusion and debate into a topic supported by thousands of individual scientists and major scientific groups, the administration did us one better by actually altering documents related to climate change before they were released. Andy Revkin (2005) reported that the Bush administration hired Phillip A. Cooney as a Chief of Staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality without having any background in science. From this position, Cooney inserted phrases into summaries of reports which made them appear less certain. This is disturbing because it marks a moment wherein elected officials willfully and knowingly hired and allowed individuals to disrupt the flow of information from scientific groups (funded by taxpayers) to the populace. It doesn’t end here. James Hansen, a respected scientists and 30 year director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies was limited in his capacity to speak openly with the American people about the dangers of climate change by press aide George Deutsch (Hoggan & Littlemore, 2009 p. 175). A report was later released by NASA concerning an internal investigation into the matter which reads:

During the fall of 2004 through early 2006, the NASA Headquarters Office of Public Affairs managed the topic of climate change in a manner that reduced, marginalized or mischaracterized climate change science made available to the general public. (ibid, p. 176)

Marginalized or mischaracterized is the key, here.

Given even this small amount of information, it should be clear that the Bush administration worked very hard to ensure policy decisions which might affect the oil and gas industry were sidestepped, trivialized or ignored altogether. It is also curious to note that at the time of election, the George W. Bush campaign received $1,724,579 in funding from the gas and oil industry (Pilhofer & Williams, 2004). Now that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has been affirmed by the Supreme Court, it should not be surprising to see the investment of special interest groups will move further from sustainability and even closer to lobbying. According to Citizens United, “The impact of the case has been to level the playing field in American politics during the 2010 election cycle.” (Citizens United, 2011). If by leveling the playing field they mean making it more difficult for individual citizens to compete for the attention of a congressman or president, they hit the nail on the head.

In the current congress, we find climate science is experiencing a reinvigorated onslaught by science deniers utilizing a frame tailor-made by big business. The Clean Air Act severely limited by George W. Bush during his presidency is once again the focus of House and Senate Republicans. The joint proposal:

would not only amend the Clean Air Act to say explicitly that it does not apply to greenhouse gas emissions, but would also nullify the EPA's scientific finding that those gases pose a threat to humankind (a conclusion that even the Bush-era EPA had reached). (Sheppard, 2011).

The proposal would essentially make the scientific findings concerning greenhouse gasses void. In other words, the United States would take a position of leadership which encourages other nations not to worry about climate change or the scientifically sound evidence for it.

Up Next: The Global Turning Point
Go Back: The Bought and Paid For Science Denial Campaign

References