Fwd: Climate Catastrophe - The Ultimate Media Betrayal

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Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:29:13 UT

Medialens Media Alerts

 

Climate Catastrophe - The Ultimate Media Betrayal

 

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

 

RAPID RESPONSE MEDIA ALERT: CLIMATE CATASTROPHE – THE ULTIMATE MEDIA BETRAYAL

 

January 8, 2004

 

 

Today’s Guardian and Independent newspapers both report that over the next 50

years, global warming could drive a quarter of land animals and plants into

extinction. According to a four-year research project by scientists from eight

countries, published today in the prestigious journal Nature, 1 million species

will have disappeared by 2050. The findings have been described as “terrifying”

by the report’s lead author, Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at

Leeds University.

 

Professor Thomas said: " When scientists set about research they hope to come up

with definite results, but what we found we wish we had not. It was far, far

worse than we thought, and what we have discovered may even be an

underestimate. " (Quoted, Paul Brown, ‘An unnatural disaster,’ The Guardian,

January 8, 2004: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1118244,00.html)

 

The predicted disaster is based on a mid-range forecast of possible outcomes.

The worst case suggests as many as 58% of species could become extinct – the

best case suggests 9%, still catastrophically high.

 

The Guardian and Independent both devote editorials to the report. The Guardian

writes of ”a fresh wake-up call about the dangers of global warming”. As a

possible response, the editors cite Chris Thomas, who suggests " an immediate and

progressive” switch to technologies that produce little or no greenhouse gases,

combined with active removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. (‘The death

of species’, Leader, The Guardian, January 8, 2004)

 

“The usual response to the problem”, the Guardian continues, “is to blame

governments. They certainly carry a great deal of the responsibility...” America

is then criticised for abandoning the Kyoto protocol to limit greenhouse gasses.

Britain is praised for being “more or less on target” with regards to Kyoto,

with its performance assisted “fortuitously by the unrelated decline of its

polluting coal-mining industry”. No mention is made of the fact that Kyoto is

itself a trivial response to climate change.

 

Finally, the Guardian’s editors note: “Although governments undoubtedly have a

leading role to play, there are plenty of things that individuals can do that

could make a dramatic difference... having a shower rather than a bath, putting

a ‘hog’ in the lavatory cistern, recycling household rubbish, disposing of

household chemicals carefully, encouraging wildlife in the garden and composting

vegetable cuttings”.

 

Governments and individuals aside, there is of course one other group that might

be deemed worthy of mention – transnational corporations. In 1991, in his book

US Petroleum Strategies In The Decade of the Environment, Bob Williams, a

consultant to the oil and gas industry, described the industry’s number one

priority:

 

“To put the environmental lobby out of business... There is no greater

imperative... If the petroleum industry is to survive, it must render the

environmental lobby superfluous, an anachronism.” (Quoted, Andrew Rowell, Green

Backlash – Global Subversion of the Environment Movement, Routledge, 1996, p.71)

 

Ron Arnold, also an industry consultant, told a meeting of the Ontario Forest

Industries Association:

 

“You must turn the public against environmentalists or you will lose your

environmental battle.” (Quoted Sharon Beder, Global Spin – The Corporate Assault

on Environmentalism, Green Books, 1997, p.22)

 

The response was overwhelming:

 

“Right wing businessmen like Richard Mellon Scaife and Joseph Coors, and

conservative treasuries like the Mobil and Olin foundations, poured money into

ad campaigns, lawsuits, elections, and books and articles protesting ‘big

government’ and ‘strangulation by regulation’, blaming environmentalists for all

the nation’s ills from the energy crisis to the sexual revolution.” (Kirkpatrick

Sale, The Green Revolution, Hill and Wang, 1993, p.49)

 

Frank Mankiewicz, a senior executive at transnational PR firm Hill and Knowlton,

predicted accurately:

 

“I think the companies will have to give in only at insignificant levels.

Because the companies are too strong, they’re the establishment. The

environmentalists are going to have to be like the mob in the square in Romania

before they prevail.” (Beder, op., cit, p.22)

 

With much of life on earth threatened by mass death, not one word of this

appears in today’s Guardian or Independent, where climate change continues to be

presented as a kind of wildlife issue somehow existing outside the realities of

corporate greed, propaganda and control.

 

It is fine for our corporate media to rage against the destruction of our world,

but it is not in the business of doing anything about it – literally the reverse

is true. After all, the same edition of the Guardian that features today’s

“terrifying” report, carries large, lucrative adverts for Lexus cars, Toyota

cars, Audi cars, BMW cars, American Airlines, Dixons computer equipment, Office

World, HSBC, Magnet, and so on – adverts promoting endlessly rising mass

consumption on which all broadsheets depend for 75% of their revenue. Doing

something means taking on exactly these corporate interests, exactly these

materialist versions of life, liberty and happiness. Doing something, in fact,

means taking on corporate interests like the Guardian newspaper.

 

The Independent’s editors are equally happy to describe the appalling fate in

store for us without feeling the need to tell the truth about the cynical causes

and obstructed solutions. The editors warn of the coming mass death: ”it is not

an asteroid that will have caused this, of course: it is us. The Sixth Great

Extinction will be an entirely human achievement.” (‘The sixth great extinction

is avoidable - if we act now’, Leader, The Independent, January 8, 2004)

 

It is “us”, although most of us – the public – are excluded from meaningful

politics, debate and action by corporate interests. We are excluded by the

corporate media – media like the Independent - which naturally have nothing to

say about the exclusion or their role in making it possible.

 

The Independent then concludes:

 

”There is still time to take action against climate change, and some world

leaders, notably Tony Blair, are committed to doing so”; but the continuing

reluctance of George Bush to take the threat seriously invites disaster.

 

Again, not a word about the organisations destroying our world by obstructing

action on climate change. The US National Association of Manufacturers, for

example, representing much of US industry, was candid enough in its letter to

George W. Bush in May 2001:

 

" Dear Mr. President:

 

On behalf of 14,000 member companies of the National Association of

Manufacturers (NAM) - and the 18 million people who make things in America -

thank you for your opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on the grounds that it

exempts 80 percent of the world and will cause serious harm to the United

States. " (Michael E. Baroody, NAM Executive Vice President, Letter to the

President Concerning the Kyoto Protocol, May 16, 2001, http://www.nam.org)

 

That other great voice of US business, the US Chamber of Commerce, declared in a

letter to the US president:

 

" Global warming is an important issue that must be addressed - but the Kyoto

Protocol is a flawed treaty that is not in the U.S. interest. "

(www.uschamber.org July 19, 2001)

 

The US Chamber's website notes that it is the world's largest business

federation representing more than " three million businesses and organisations of

every size, sector and region " .

 

In our view, the corporate media’s long-term, stubborn refusal to address the

real issues behind global warming – the corporations fighting with unrelenting

ferocity to destroy not just the Kyoto protocol but the environment movement

itself – represents the ultimate betrayal of us, our future, and our planet.

 

The journalists willing to participate in this betrayal are complicit in

unimaginable crimes against humanity. They must be held to account for their

actions. We must demand honesty, action, an end to corporate obfuscation – if

there is to be a future.

 

 

SUGGESTED ACTION

 

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for

others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to maintain

a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

 

Sample Email:

 

Why, in reporting the catastrophic effects of global warming, do you make no

mention of the global corporate efforts to obstruct even trivial action on

climate change and to destroy the environment movement? Why are these political

and economic factors bringing mass death to our planet unworthy even of mention

by you and your newspaper?

 

Write to Paul Brown at the Guardian:

 

Email: paul.brown

 

Write to Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger:

 

Email: alan.rusbridger

 

And, very importantly, the Letters Page:

 

Email: letters

 

Write to Steve Connor at the Independent:

 

Email: s.connor

 

Write to Independent editor, Simon Kelner:

 

Email: s.kelner

 

And the Letters Page:

 

Email: letters

 

 

Please also send all emails to us at Media Lens:

Email: editor

 

Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org

 

Please consider donating to Media Lens: http://www.medialens.org/donate.html

 

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