The Boy Who Could Change the World (25 page)

Shifting the Terms of Debate: How Big Business Covered Up Global Warming

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/shifting
1

June 6, 2006

Age 19

In this series of blog posts, Aaron provided citations as links, many of which have broken since. Where the citations are broken, they have simply been elided, rather than replaced.—Ed
.

[Here's the first part of an article I wrote last year about how right-wing think tanks shift the debate.]

In 2004, Michelle Malkin, a conservative editorialist, published the book
In Defense of Internment
. It argued that declassified security intercepts showed that Japanese internment during World War II—the government policy that relocated thousands of Japanese to concentration camps—was actually justified in the name of national security. We needed to learn the truth, Malkin insisted, so that we could see how racial profiling was similarly justified to fight the “war on terror.”

Bainbridge Island was the center of the evacuations; to this day, residents still feel ashamed and teach students a special unit about the incident, entitled “Leaving Our Island.” But one parent in the district, Mary Dombrowski, was persuaded by Malkin's book that the evacuation was actually justified and insisted the school was teaching a one-sided version of the internment story, “propaganda” that forced impressionable children into thinking that the concentration camps were a mistake.

The school's principal defended the practice. As the
Seattle Times
reported:

            
“We do teach it as a mistake,” she said, noting that the U.S. government has admitted it was wrong. “As an educator, there are some things that we can say aren't debatable anymore.” Slavery, for example. Or the internment—as opposed to a subject such as global warming, she said.
^†
†

True, Japanese internment isn't a controversial issue like global warming, but ten years ago, global warming wasn't a controversial issue either. In 1995, the UN's panel on international climate change released its consensus report, finding that global warming was a real and serious issue that had to be quickly confronted. The media covered the scientists' research and the population agreed, leading President Clinton to say he would sign an international treaty to stop global warming.

Then came the backlash. The Global Climate Coalition (funded by over 40 major corporate groups like Amoco, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and General Motors) began spending millions of dollars each year to derail the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to help reduce global warming. They held conferences entitled “The Costs of Kyoto,” issued press releases and faxes dismissing the scientific evidence for global warming, and spent more than $3 million on newspaper and television ads claiming Kyoto would mean a “50-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax.”
^{‡
‡}

The media, in response to flurries of “blast faxes” (a technique in which a press release is simultaneously faxed to thousands of journalists) and accusations of left-wing bias, began backing off from the scientific evidence.
^{‡
‡}
A recent study found only 35% of newspaper stories on global warming accurately described the scientific consensus, with the majority implying that scientists who believed in global warming were just as common as global warming deniers (of
which there were only a tiny handful, almost all of whom had received funding from energy companies or associated groups).
^*
*

It all had an incredible effect on the public. In 1993, 88% of Americans thought global warming was a serious problem. By 1997, that number had fallen to 42%, with only 28% saying immediate action was necessary.
^†
†
And so Clinton changed course and insisted that cutting emissions should be put off for 20 years.

U. S. businesses seriously weakened the Kyoto Protocol, leading it to require only a 7% reduction in emissions (compared to the 20% requested by European nations) and then President Bush refused to sign on to even that. In four short years, big business had managed to turn nearly half the country around and halt the efforts to protect the planet.

And now, the principal on Bainbridge Island, like most people, thinks global warming is a hotly contested issue—the paradigmatic example of a hotly contested issue—even when the science is clear. (“There's no better scientific consensus on this on any issue I know,” said the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics.”)
^{‡
‡}
But all this debate about problems has kept us away from talk about solutions. As journalist Ross Gelbspan puts it, “By keeping the discussion focused on whether there is a problem in the first place, they have effectively silenced the debate over what to do about it.”
^§
§
So is it any wonder that conservatives want to do the same thing again? And again? And again?

Making Noise: How Right-wing Think Tanks Get the Word Out

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/shifting2

June 7, 2006

Age 19

Malkin's book on internment was no more accurate than the corporate misinformation about global warming. Historians quickly showed the book badly distorted the government records and secret cables it purported to describe. As just one example, Malkin writes that a Japanese message stated they “had [Japanese] spies in the U.S. Army” when it actually said they hoped to recruit spies in the army.
^*
*
But it should be no big surprise that Malkin, who is, after all, an editorialist and not a historian, didn't manage to fully understand the complex documentary record in the year she spent writing the book part-time.

Malkin's motives, as a right-wing activist and proponent of racial profiling, are fairly obvious. But how did Mary Dombrowski, the Bainbridge Island parent, get caught up in this latest attempt to rewrite history? Opinions on global warming were changed because big business could afford to spend millions to change people's minds. But racial profiling seems like less of a moneymaker. Who invested in spreading that message?

The first step is getting the information out there. Dombrowski probably heard about Malkin's book from the Fox News Channel, where it was ceaselessly promoted for days, and where Malkin is a contributor. Or maybe she heard about it on MSNBC's
Scarborough
Country
, a show hosted by a former Republican congressman, which had Malkin as a guest. Or maybe she heard it while driving and listening to Fox host Sean Hannity's radio show, or maybe Rush Limbaugh's. Or maybe she read a review in the
New York Post
(which, like Fox News, is owned by Rupert Murdoch). Or maybe she read about it on a right-wing website or weblog, like
Townhall.com
, which publishes 10 new conservative op-ed columns every day.

All of these organizations are partisan conservative outlets.
Townhall.com
, for example, is published by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Washington, D.C., think tank. Most people imagine a think tank as a place where smart people think big thoughts, coming up with new ideas for the government to use. But that's not how Heritage works. Nearly half of Heritage's $30 million budget is spent on publicity, not research. Every day, they take work like Malkin's that agrees with their ideological prejudices and push it out through the right-wing media described above (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh,
New York Post
) and into the mainstream media (ABC, NPR,
New York Times, Seattle Times
).

They use a variety of tactics. Heritage, for example, publishes an annual telephone directory featuring thousands of conservative experts and associated policy organizations (The
Right Nation
, 161). And if looking up somebody is too much work, Heritage maintains a 24-hour hotline for the media, providing quotes promoting conservative ideology on any subject. Heritage's “information marketing” department makes packages of colored index cards with preprinted talking points for any conservative who plans to do an interview (
The Right Nation
, 167). And Heritage computers are stocked with the names of over 3,500 journalists, organized by specialty, who Heritage staffers personally call to make sure they have all the latest conservative misinformation. Every Heritage study is turned into a two-page summary which is then turned into an op-ed piece which is then distributed to newspapers through the Heritage Features Syndicate (
What Liberal Media?
, 83).

It all adds up: a 2003 study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the media watch group, found conservative think tanks were cited nearly 14,000 times in major newspapers, television, and radio shows. (By comparison, liberal think tanks were cited only 4,000
times that year.) That means 10,000 additional quotes of right-wing ideology, misleading statistics, distorted facts, and so on. There's no way that doesn't unfairly skew the public debate.