Once again, the parallels between climate denial and racism in the US right wing are prominent in the news. This week, the uncanny similarity between right wing responses to the racially motivated massacre in Charleston, and the overwhelming evidence for human caused climate change, are unavoidable.
Though a mass shooter in Charleston wore Confederate flags and other racist symbols, announced he was in a church to “kill black people”, and accused blacks of “raping women and taking over the country..” – high profile right wing politicians and media kept declaring that there was just no way anyone could possibly know whether race was on his mind or not. After all, they’re not psychologists, right?
When I started the “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” series in january, 2009, I had just come off a debate with Competitive Enterprise Shill Chris Horner, and followed the conventional wisdom, then, of not using the “D” word in referring to Deniers, but rather softer terms like “skeptic” and “contrarian”.
Let the record show that I gave Horner an epic ass-kicking that I’m sure he’s not forgotten, and I’d be happy to repeat anytime. But in observing Homo climatus denialus in its native habitat, I realized that any pretense of courtesy to charlatans and sociopaths was, in itself, dishonest, and part of the distortion field that we have to work through. Hence the provocative series title.
Years later, “Denier” is the preferred term of art, used by the President, and, more and more, even by the most passive and gutless of mainstream media. The recent spate of “I’m not a scientist so how could I possibly know” dodges has been massively ridiculed and ineffective – yet the reality of the overwhelming scientific consensus continues to be an invisible 900 pound gorilla in conservative political dialogue.
Charleston shooter Dylann Storm Roof is shown here, top, wearing a jacket with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa, top, and Rhodesia, as modern-day Zimbabwe was called during a period of white rule. Below, with the Confederate flag.
New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan believes the paper is making progress when it comes to using the more accurate term “denier” — rather than “skeptic” — to refer to those who reject the scientific consensus on climate change.
In an interview with Media Matters, Sullivan described “denier” as the “stronger term” and the appropriate label “when someone is challenging established science.” Sullivan said that “the Times is moving in a good direction” on the issue, adding that the newspaper is using the term “denier” more often and “perhaps should be doing it even more.”
She also likened the discussion to the Times’ process for evaluating whether to refer to “enhanced interrogation techniques” as torture, stating: “After a long time the Times came around to calling it torture and I thought that was a very good thing. I think we’re sort of in the same realm with the business about skeptics and deniers.”
Sullivan, who briefly addressed the distinction between “skeptics” and “deniers” in her May 7 column, said she doesn’t have any immediate plans to return to the topic. But she reiterated that “language choice is something that interests me a lot because I think it’s something that matters.”
Philip Corbett, the Times’ associate managing editor for standards, confirmed to Media Matters that Times staff are “aware of the issue and have discussed it.” Corbett said Times reporters and editorial staff “do our best” to keep the proper use of labels in mind “even if the process is not always perfect,” and that “[w]e intend to continue scrutinizing future stories with these concerns in mind.”
However, Corbett said he does not expect The Times to “set a hard-and-fast rule” on the subject. Sullivan also said she doesn’t “think there needs to be a policy,” and that she and Corbett believe it makes more sense to handle the issue “on a sensible case-by-case basis.” According to Sullivan, the term “denier” doesn’t fit “when people are kind of wishy-washy on the subject or in the middle.”
Beth Parke, executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists, told Media Matters that she believes “there are reasonable shades of ‘skepticism’ about specific science or assumptions [and] conclusions,” citing ongoing research into the relationship between global warming and certain extreme weather events as an example. But Parke added: “Personally, I feel ‘denier’ is the most accurate term when someone claims there is no such thing as global warming, or agrees that it exists but denies that it has any cause we could understand or any impact that could be measured.”
The Star’s own stance on the topic has ruffled some feathers. Kathy English, the Star’s public editor, gets messages from time to time from climate change skeptics who feel their viewpoints are not expressed in the paper’s coverage of the issue.
But English cautions that given the overwhelming consensus on the subject, continually getting the other side of the climate change debate would lead to a “classic case of ‘false balance,’” and give readers the impression that both viewpoints are equal.
The CBC has a similar policy.
“Whenever there’s a controversial subject . . . we accept that it’s our job to ensure that all kinds of views are presented respectfully, but we take into account how relevant they are to the debate and how widely held the views are,” said Jack Nagler, the director of journalistic public accountability and engagement at the CBC.
Nagler said there is no ban on alternative viewpoints, but they should not be given “50/50” coverage.
“When it comes to climate change there’s a pretty strong consensus among mainstream scientists that climate change is a reality, so you see that in our coverage,” Nagler said.
The right wing Fox News appendage Daily Caller is predictably outraged (no I won’t give them a link):
“I am embarrassed for the New York Times,” Marc Morano, publisher of the skeptic news site Climate Depot, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Using the term ‘denier’ to describe skeptics is poor journalism, it comes across to the reader as a partisan tactic.”
“Using the term ‘denier’ is designed to slur anyone who dissents from the alleged ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming and the term taints the reporting of the Times,” Morano added. “It makes the paper sound like a Greenpeace newsletter, not the paper of record.”
Politicians and environmental activists have been using the term for years. Use of “denier” seems to have become even more vitriolic, especially in recent months.
“For you to believe that there’s somehow a taint being created, you have to believe that Holocaust deniers are somehow a lot worse than climate science deniers,” Joe Romm, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and blogger at ThinkProgress, told Climatewire.
“I don’t believe that,” Romm said. “If people who deny climate science continue to be successful in thwarting climate action, then it’s going to be a catastrophe beyond imagining.”
President Barack Obama recently equated denying global warming with a “dereliction of duty.”
“Denying it or refusing to deal with it endangers our national security,” Obama said in May. “It undermines the readiness of our forces.
John Oliver makes the point clearly, here.
Bloomberg News joins the fray on climate change denialism, on the sane side of the argument. Deniers have fewer and fewer friends to flirt with, even among the business community. We’ll know we’re getting somewhere when Jeb! Bush finally speaks the truth about climate. Hey, I’m not holding my breath, but it could come by mutual agreement between Hillary! and Jeb! to both go lockstep into agreeing that scientists are onto something.
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/
Great job, Ray! That is a terrific graphic that all but the most rabid deniers should be able to understand and accept.
Of course, the topic of this post is the parallel between climate change denial and racism. Any thoughts there? I’ve got some.
DOG,
Sure, #burnthatflag.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/BurnThatFlag?src=hash
Nice clip also, but there are quite a few degrees of separation between “the flag” and “the parallel between racism and climate change denial”. Why are you and so many other Crockers apparently reluctant to address this point?
I myself find it hard to fathom why a group of people (1773 of us) who are mostly committed to the idea that AGW is a bad thing are so UN-committed to exploring how racism and climate change denial go hand in hand.
I voted Green Party last time ’round; this time: Sanders.
Great! It probably didn’t matter too much last time around, but a case can be made that Nader cost Gore his election and Perot cost GHW Bush his reelection.
How would you feel if 2016 turned out to be as tight as 2000 and a Republican won because you and others were “making a statement”? And if that Republican is Jeb?—-who will go as far right as he needs to get the nomination, then try to go as far left as he needs to get elected, and then will turn as far right as he was when he was the governor of Florida? And Jeb isn’t sure about AGW and thinks the Pope should mind his business?
I’m hoping for Sanders (D) vs. Donald Trump (R)! The main stream media won’t like it, and will shun Sanders like they did Ron Paul. But the poles are liking him:
https://youtu.be/9Mrafq6vspE
Are those the Poles in Chicago, Milwaukee, Buffalo, or Pittsburgh that are liking Bernie? I hear he’s popular among Lithuanians, also.
Cenk makes some good points about why so many would be willing to vote for a socialist, but that’s one poll he’s citing and the election is 17 months away—that’s both close and far. It’s going to be quite a ride.
I’ll likely vote for Sanders in the Oregon primary in May, 2016 and then for Jill Stein or whoever the Green Party candidate is in the general election.
***
DOG,
I could not agree with you less about Ralph Nader being Al Gore’s problem in 2000. Al Gore’s problem in 2000 was two fold. One, he was a lame candidate especially as he allowed the media to portray him.
And two, more importantly, Al Gore knew from the early days of 2000 that he was facing a voter suppression campaign in Florida. Sec of State Katherine Harris was ruthlessly sweeping blacks off the voter roles. Greg Palast was reporting on this well before the election and had contacted the Gore campaign with the information about the likely effect of Harris’s illegitimate stripping of voter rights from likely Democratic voters. Gore and his team did nothing in this regard.
Now let’s look at loot.
Bill Clinton was the best moderate Republican president of the 1990s. Wiped out welfare rights for the indigent, created the job-destroying NAFTA, destoyed (eventually) the financial markets by signing legislation relaxing New Deal legislation regulating the financial market. The result? Bill, Hillary and Chelsea are now worth north of $300 million.
Next up on the list? Al Gore. Lost the election of 2000 under extremely dubious circumstances. Net worth before 2000? Under $20 million. Net worth after having fallen on his sword in 2000 and given the presidency to the Bush Family? Gore’s fortune now estimated at north of $500 million.
Similarly in 2004 John Kerry gave up his fight for the extremely dubious results in Ohio without a fight. Net worth before 2004? On the order of less than $50 million. His net worth today? North of $300 million largely based, ironically for a 1972 peacenik, on his “investments” in defense industry contractors during the illegitimate Iraq War profiteering era.
Let’s not talk childishly about how Ralph Nader may have hurt Al Gore in 2000. There’s some bigger games going on, donchaknow.
Good old Ray! The aging hippy-anti war protester-anti establishment-anarchist strikes another blow! Ideology trumps FACT in his mind once again!
You couldn’t agree LESS with “Ralph Nader being Al Gore’s problem in 2000”? You’re perhaps right about Gore’s shortcomings as a candidate and FL playing dirty, but I was talking about Nader costing Gore Florida’s electoral votes and the presidency.
Let’s look at the FACTS of the 2000 election in Florida.
Bush beat Gore by 5 electoral votes, 271-266.
Florida gave 25 electoral votes to Bush.
If Gore had won Florida, the electoral vote would have been 291 Gore, 246 Bush—-Gore would have been our 43rd president.
Bush won Florida by 537 votes according to the “official” recount (,009%)
Nader got 97,488 votes in Florida (1.635%).
That 97+K is three times what the right wing fringe parties may have taken from Bush).
Can you do the math, Ray? One can make a VERY strong case that Gore would have won Florida and the presidency if Nader hadn’t run.
As for “loot”, you are again showing your old biases. ALL politicians are in it mainly for the “loot”, and it has been that way for a while. Please don’t tell me you’re going to be anti-Hillary in 2016 because of your cognitive dissonance. Are you and Andrew going to help put a Republican in the White House? Brilliant! About as smart as those who voted for Nader in Florida in 2000 and put Bush in the White House. Didn’t that turn out well?
PS If I’m not mistaken, Kerry’s financial success is mainly rooted in his having married a rich widow. You overreach a bit with the “war profiteering” anyway—-the ones who deserve that label are mainly Republicans, with the earlier members of the Bush dynasty being prime examples. Go back to WW One for that.
And you still haven’t talked about “the parallel between climate change denial and racism”, the topic of this post. You’re not a racist, are you? Is that why you are deflecting the discussion her into politics? Were you involved in any civil rights activism in addition to your hippy stuff back in the day?
As for “childish”, I’m not the one here that needs to grow up. I’ll stack my understanding of the “bigger games” up against yours any day, and give big odds. Talking about voting for a Green candidate does NOT help, and could AGAIN be very hurtful to the cause.
You write: “Can you do the math, Ray? One can make a VERY strong case that Gore would have won Florida and the presidency if Nader hadn’t run. ”
You miss the big picture, once again, DOG.
The big picture is that the Florida recount was well underway in early December, 2000 with the Florida Supreme Court fully in control of the process as has been laid out in the U.S. Constitution.
The big picture you fail to understand is that the U.S. Supreme Court had no standing to interject itself into the recount of the Florida vote. The U.S. Supreme Court acted entirely in a partisan manner and by a vote of 5-4 unethically and unconstitutionally stole the right of the State of Florida to count its own election results.
This blatant partisan act is what brought George Bush to the White House.
As to your viciously mindless attack on Ralph Nader winning ~97,000 votes in the Florida general election, I’d say the great preponderance of these voters would never deign to vote for an Establishment candidate like Al Gore. They knew full well that Gore meant a continuing sell-out by pols to the interests of the corporations. After Al Gore’s promotion of NAFTA, how could anyone be in doubt as to the decency of the man?
DOG, do you understand that by attacking Nader you are attacking the very principles of democracy? You are saying we all must get into lock-step ranks and vote always for one of the corporation’s two evil alternatives presented to the public as a safe way for the corporations to always win. The same will be the case in 2016. I can safely predict that whether it is Hillary!, Jeb! or some other GOP clone, the corporations will once again have installed their “man” in the White House. Can I not vote to end this crass, brash, evil and destructive stupidity?
***
As to your demand that I address the topic of climate change denialism and racism, I have to say that my only intent with my original comment here was to elevate the discussion from the gutter. I made what I consider an important point. The Bloomber News item endorsed a serious view about climate change denialism. After the news cycle hits its next target, be it weather, war or other world related, no one is going to give a darn about comparing denialism with racism. That’s a topic with a (too long) 5 minute half-life.
There are certain places in WV I don’t go into: namely Mingo County, Logan County and Boone County, whose local residents still think it’s 1940 with regard to race relations. I did some college externship work in Boone County around 1997 for a few weeks one semester, and witnessed locals openly talking to one another in a public setting, affording flagrantly racist subject matter, as if the civil rights movement had never happened – or perhaps the Civil War for that matter. It didn’t even occur to them, what they were saying impressed upon them any sort of character deficiency. Heck, they didn’t even like me, as I was a ‘big city’ college boy.
I’ll share with y’all a blogger’s thoughts on racism in that part of the country:
http://thethoughtfulcoalminer.com/2015/06/24/rebels/
“When I was a teenager, I became caught up in ideals of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. I went to a meeting and hoped desperately that I could find a confederate soldier within my lineage so I could join. I followed the thinking of the SCV, believing that the war wasn’t entirely based on slavery. I often quoted that Abraham Lincoln was an abolitionist, but still a racist and that the emancipation proclamation was more so a political move than an ethical/moral one.
Always one to support the underdogs and fight for justice, I thought I was doing just that within my wishes to be a part of the SCV, thereby aligning with the tens of thousands of poor southern farmers who became confederate soldiers and died fighting against the rich northerners.
Today, I’m not so ignorant. Though I was hinting at many truths to the war, I was blinded by a false sense of pride in being a “southerner.”
The truth, as I see it, is that it was a war once again created by the wealthy using the poor to fight it. While the south did see many soldiers volunteering to defend their way of life, those poor and unfortunate multitudes did so under a false presumption of politics. They were fooled by a class of people who understood the values of the lower classes just enough to tap into their sense of pride and heritage. They prayed upon the lack of education given to the masses and the inability of those masses to think critically. As a result, columns upon columns of men were formed, all willing to die in battle to defend their way of life. In truth, and as has long since been known, those confederate leaders were working to protect profit margins achieved through slave labor.
While I do paint a rather sinister picture of the confederate leadership, the north was not much better. The upper echelons of the North recruited the same sorts of people off of ships carrying hungry immigrants from Europe. Similarly uneducated, but without a sense of pride and heritage to drive them onto the battlefields, the motivation of immigrants to fight came from the impending starvation of their family in an economy dominated by the wealthy. When more soldiers were needed than could be supplied by incoming immigrants, conscious decisions were made to draft the poorest people, thus leading to the New York Draft Riots.
The war was about money and power within the upper classes of both sides. The north would have been unaffected by the loss of slavery for they already had their wage slaves laboring away in the many factories and mills. They were able to gain the moral high ground through making it appear as the war was primarily about the abolition of slavery. At the same time we know they had no love of the African Americans and would continue to detest and deter them through institutionalized racism.
In essence, though the abolition of slavery was a definite positive outcome off the war, the working class of this country lost and lost dearly. And they continue to lose.
The top 1% still employs similar tactics to shape the minds of the people living in the south, understanding their strong sense of pride and love of family, and using it to misguide them into false political battles. A divide is created between being “book smart” and having “common sense,” to create enemies out of people who have gone on to achieve a higher education (and improve critical thinking skills), while also helping fill the voids of failure felt among blue collar workers for not having gone on to college themselves. Having “common sense” leads many to believe they are right without the need to research facts, while also ignoring or refuting the scientific facts provided by others who they see as being “to smart for their own good.”
It is a system of manipulation and exploitation played out through political speeches, the defense of symbolic relics, and well thought out news media and popular culture.
We should mourn the hundreds of thousands of lives lost upon battlefields and within the homesteads throughout our nation during this dark time, and learn from our history that those who only seek wealth and power should never NEVER be trusted.
But even after saying all of this, the Civil War, though the utter atrocity it was, pales in comparison to what we have done to the first nations who occupied this wonderful land, to the millions of Native Americans who we committed genocide against in cruel and unforgivable ways.”
Great link! Nick Mullins is indeed a “thoughtful coal miner”. He gets it
Bernie Sanders is running for the Democratic Party nomination, not as an Independent. And, I seem to remember that he he out polled all the Repub candidates.
And your point is…? I have sent $$$ to both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in the past so that they could continue to say some things that needed saying and put pressure on the “mainstream” Democrats (that all too often resemble Republicans anymore). Does Bernie have any hope of winning the nomination, and if he did, could he win the general election? Both are VERY unlikely.
I think the choice is going to be between a somewhat imperfect Hillary or a very imperfect Republican, and anyone who votes Green as a “statement” may do serious damage to the country if we have another situation like 2000.
The point is whether he wins the nomination or not, he won’t be responsible for a Republican sneaking into office a la Ralph Nader. Which appeared to me to be part of the argument you were making.
Ah!
Posted as a new comment to “decompress”—in reply to Ray Duray’s comment on 6/25 at 9:42 PM
Ray never fails us. Ideology trumps FACT and logic in his mind yet AGAIN! Such mindless consistency and tenacity is to be admired (I guess). Now he slathers us with hyperbole and BS (and it’s even patriotic sounding) in the hopes that no one will point out his logic fails. Nice try, Ray. However, your “big picture” is so distorted that it must have been painted by Dali or Picasso.
We were talking about the number of votes Gore and Bush and Nader each received in Florida in 2000, Ray. Do you dispute my facts or mathematics? If a good number of those leftish types who voted for Nader had voted for Gore as the least objectionable candidate (as is likely), and all those libertarians and fringe folks on the right had voted for Bush as preferable to a Democrat (as is also likely), Gore could then have received up to 50 or 60 thousand more votes than Bush, would have gotten Florida’s 25 electoral votes, and would have been our 43rd president. He only needed maybe 1000 out of the 97,000.
Neither the Florida Supreme Court nor the U.S. Supreme Court would have needed to get involved, and you could have saved your BS about “blatant partisan acts” for someone who cares.
Ray speaks of my “…viciously mindless attack on Ralph Nader winning ~97,000 votes in the Florida general election”, and says, “DOG, do you understand that by attacking Nader you are attacking the very principles of democracy?” Who attacked Nader? Not me. I actually liked what Nader stood for, but wouldn’t waste a vote on him as you seem so willing to do.
And the over-the-top hyperbole of his statements is laughable. In addition to the preceding Nader foolishness, he rants on about “evil alternatives”, and “voting to end this crass, brash, evil and destructive stupidity…”. Watch Ray foam at the mouth as he seeks the right words, folks—-William Jennings Bryan he is NOT.
Ray’s brain suffers a complete meltdown in his closing paragraph. He admits to sabotaging this thread because he felt the need to “elevate this discussion from the gutter”? WHAT? What “gutter” are you talking about, Ray? And he says “…no one is going to give a darn about comparing denialism with racism. That’s a topic with a (too long) 5 minute half-life”. Really, Ray? Racism is a very big topic this week, if you haven’t noticed, and the degrees of separation between racism, Republicans, and climate change denial are shrinking rapidly. I’m afraid all those drugs you did back in your younger “protestor” days may have finally caught up with you. Get some help.
And Ray? How about just going somewhere else to rant so that those of us who want to discuss the very obvious links between climate change denialism and racism don’t have to be distracted by your delusions. Andrew has posted some serious stuff on this thread and it deserves a reply. Get out of the way (please).