With Merchants of Doubt about to drop, no time like the present to repost one of my most popular videos, detailing the parallels in tactics, and personel, of the tobacco denial, and climate denial, establishments.
Merchants of Doubt necessarily tells only part of the story, but the strategy of attacking science messengers was perfected by the Tobacco Lords long before the Fossil Fuel barons picked it up.
Let’s assume Oreskes has her way, the whole Denial Machine collapses, energy companies agree with politicians and journalists, etc etc. What would you expect to happen in the USA?
I think it’s the scientists they would be agreeing with. They’re the ones who have identified the problem. Energy Companies agreeing with politicians? They already do – most notably the ones whose campaigns they’ve financed…
“What would you expect to happen in the USA?”
You would be rounded up, or extradited, and put to work doing something useful like installing solar panels.
Actually, we in the U.S. would want our solar panels to work, so we wouldn’t let Omno get anywhere near them. Having Omno do something useful IS a good idea, though—-he would make a fine doorstop, paperweight, or lawn gnome.
I feel that there would be poetic justice in denialists having to clean up oil spills, tailings ponds, and coal ash dumps. When the last blighted site is clean again they would be free men. And so would we.
From Merchants of Doubt to Servants of Fascism. You guys are a wonderful gift.