Bush Again Denies Climate Change
By Antony Barnett
05 April,
2004 by the
Observer/UK
George W. Bush's campaign workers have
hit on an age-old political tactic to deal with the tricky subject of
global warming - deny, and deny aggressively.
The Observer has
obtained a remarkable email sent to the press secretaries of all Republican
congressmen advising them what to say when questioned on the environment
in the run-up to November's election. The advice: tell them everything's
rosy.
It tells them how
global warming has not been proved, air quality is 'getting better',
the world's forests are 'spreading, not deadening', oil reserves are
'increasing, not decreasing', and the 'world's water is cleaner and
reaching more people'.
The email - sent
on 4 February - warns that Democrats will 'hit us hard' on the environment.
'In an effort to help your members fight back, as well as be aggressive
on the issue, we have prepared the following set of talking points on
where the environment really stands today,' it states.
The memo - headed
'From medi-scare to air-scare' - goes on: 'From the heated debate on
global warming to the hot air on forests; from the muddled talk on our
nation's waters to the convolution on air pollution, we are fighting
a battle of fact against fiction on the environment - Republicans can't
stress enough that extremists are screaming "Doomsday!" when
the environment is actually seeing a new and better day.'
Among the memo's
assertions are 'global warming is not a fact', 'links between air quality
and asthma in children remain cloudy', and the US Environment Protection
Agency is exaggerating when it says that at least 40 per cent of streams,
rivers and lakes are too polluted for drinking, fishing or swimming.
It gives a list
of alleged facts taken from contentious sources. For instance, to back
its claim that air quality is improving it cites a report from Pacific
Research Institute - an organization that has received $130,000 from
Exxon Mobil since 1998.
The memo also lifts
details from the controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist by
Bjorn Lomborg. On the Republicans' claims that deforestation is not
a problem, it states: 'About a third of the world is still covered with
forests, a level not changed much since World War II. The world's demand
for paper can be permanently satisfied by the growth of trees in just
five per cent of the world's forests.'
The memo's main
source for the denial of global warming is Richard Lindzen, a climate-skeptic
scientist who has consistently taken money from the fossil fuel industry.
His opinion differs substantially from most climate scientists, who
say that climate change is happening.
But probably the
most influential voice behind the memo is Frank Luntz, a Republican
Party strategist. In a leaked 2002 memo, Luntz said: 'The scientific
debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a
window of opportunity to challenge the science.'
Luntz has been roundly
criticized in Europe. Last month Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser,
Sir David King, attacked him for being too close to Exxon.
Rob Gueterbock of
Greenpeace condemned the messages given in the Republican email. He
said: 'Bush's spin doctors have been taking their brief from dodgy scientists
with an Alice in Wonderland view of the world's environment. They want
us to think the air is getting cleaner and that global warming is a
myth. This memo shows it is Exxon Mobil driving US policy, when it should
be sound science.'
The memo has met
some resistance from Republican moderates.
Republican Mike
Castle, who heads a group of 69 moderate House members, senators and
governors, says the strategy doesn't address the fact that pollution
continues to be a health threat. 'If I tried to follow these talking
points at a town hall meeting with my constituents, I'd be booed.'
Vermont Senator
Jim Jeffords, who left the Republican Party in 2001 to become an independent
partly over its anti-green agenda, called the memo 'outlandish' and
an attempt to deceive voters.
'They have a head-in-the-sand
approach to it. They're just sloughing off the human health impacts
- the premature deaths and asthma attacks caused by power plant pollution,'
Jeffords said.
Republican House
Conference director Greg Cist, who sent the email, said: 'It's up to
our members if they want to use it or not. We're not stuffing it down
their throats.'
He said the memo
was spurred by concerns that environmental groups were using myths to
try to make the Republicans look bad.
'We wanted to show
how the environment has been improving,' Cist said. 'We wanted to provide
the other side of the story.'
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