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Merchants of Doubt – How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming – Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway (Bloomsbury Press, £25)
Published in The Morning Star and The Ecologist.
In 2006 the tobacco industry was convicted of criminal conspiracy to defraud the public about the dangers of smoking. Internal documents from the 1960s released during the landmark trial show that the industry’s own scientists had confirmed the link between smoking and cancer. Yet for over fifty years the tobacco companies waged a multi-million dollar campaign to put doubt into the public mind, muddy the waters by funding their own research and fend off both court cases and government regulation.
Similarly with climate change, as early as 1979 the basic science was settled. That year President Jimmy Carter commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to review the available science and the NAS concluded: “If carbon dioxide continues to increase, the study group finds no reason to doubt that climate change will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.”
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The 2010 Camp for Climate Action has set up right next to the Royal Bank of Scotland HQ!
The day of mass action is today! Follow the action as it happens:
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This year’s Camp for Climate Action call-out:
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A new crowd-funded film is on its way, following the direct action protests of Camp for Climate Action, Plane Stupid and Climate Rush throughout 2009. But it needs your cash to get it off the ground. Read on…
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Just in case you haven’t seen this yet. Short version above and full report below, with actions both inside and outside the Tate Gallery…
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Copenhagen Daily team member Tom Besley produced this 60 minute Clear Spot for ResonanceFM which was broadcast 18 June 2010. James Marriott of Platform and John Jordan of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination reflect on the relationship of art and the environment in the wake of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster and 20 years of BP sponsorship of the Tate Gallery. Here’s Tom’s programme description:
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In a statement just released, the Climate9 say:
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BP? Haliburton? Transocean? The corrupt Mineral Management Service? Interior Secretary Ken Salazar? President Obama himself?
This piece was published by The Ecologist on 17 May 2010.
On 20 April BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded. 11 workers were killed in the blast. According to the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the resultant oil spill is now the largest in US history – larger even than the infamous Exxon Valdez disaster. From BP’s original estimate of 1,000 barrels per day, experts now estimate that the rate could be nearer 70,000 barrels per day threatening the lives of many species – including many already endangered – in an area of rich biodiversity in the fragile Mississippi River Delta ecosystem.
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Arthur Girling has been in Bolivia for Climate Radio and his report for ResonanceFM, is now available.
“When Bolivian President Evo Morales announced the summit two weeks after the UN meeting in Copenhagen, it could have been easily dismissed as an attention-grabbing stunt. Bolivia was one of the most vocal opponents of the ‘Copenhagen Accord’, the non-binding document that emerged on the last day of talks in 2009.
“But Morales got the timing right. After the cynicism and recriminations of the failed summit, civil society, climate campaigners and governments see hope in his positive message of rights and justice.
“Arthur Girling travelled to Cochabamba to learn about new political proposals from some of the world’s poorest countries. 48 minutes of political debate, music and talk of revolution from ‘the city of eternal spring’.”
Update: As of 11 May 2010 a new version of this programme has been uploaded, with some additional clean-up and post-production work by Arthur.
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