National Center for Science Education:
“Florida’s Department of Education has approved the classroom use of material from the Prager University Foundation, a conservative group that produces videos that distort science, history, gender and other topics,” reported E&E News (August 7, 2023). Although the videos have been approved for use only in social studies classrooms for younger students, there is concern that climate-change-denial videos may harm climate change education in the state.
“Climate scientists long ago determined that fossil fuel use is driving rapid global warming and pushing the planet toward dangerous tipping points. Most states center their climate change curriculum around that consensus,” E&E News explained. “Only a small number of researchers with legitimate academic credentials doubt the consensus science, and PragerU videos feature many of them.”
NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch told E&E News that the state’s approval in effect publicizes the availability of the climate-change-denial videos to sympathetic teachers. Moreover, he added, even teachers who want to teach climate change accurately could feel coerced to do otherwise: with the state’s imprimatur of the PragerU videos, there’s a risk that “people are going to be pressuring [teachers] into using them.”
So, Russia invades Ukraine, and Poland gets punished for trying to wean itself from Russia’s fossil fuels, in solidarity with Ukraine? And the lesson Prager U learns from all this is that Poland is the bad guy, for ‘going green’?
Yeah, that’s pretty screwed up. I think we all know who the bad guy is, in this situation. But it illustrates once again that right-wingers, like Prager, really can’t saying anything bad about Vladimir Putin. And you have to wonder why.
Imagine you are Putin: you invade a neighbor, and Western European politicians get blamed for ‘going green’ as a response, by Prager U. It’s kind of a ‘win-win’ situation. In this scenario, where Prager U is prepared to, essentially, ‘blame the victim’ of your aggression, why would you ever stop?
I see a connection between this video and Republican candidate Ramaswamy denouncing “climate religion” and “the climate agenda.” To wit: addressing climate change is the same as communism and Nazis.
I think the deniers have shifted their focus from denying the message to trying to kill the messenger. Also to juicing climate change as a culture war issue.