Trick or Treat for Climate Change

Halloween is around the corner, and children will soon be dressing up and chanting "trick or treat," their demand for candy backed up by the threat of a prank. Climate-change activists, from pranksters to presidents, are doing the same. This past Monday, the activist artist group The Yes Men staged another of its hoaxes, with one member posing as an official from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce leading what appeared to be a legitimate press conference and stating the Chamber's complete reversal on its historically adamant opposition to climate-change legislation. Meanwhile, in the Indian Ocean, the president of the Maldives held the world's first underwater cabinet meeting, demonstrating that rising sea levels could very soon overwhelm his archipelago nation. With the Copenhagen climate conference less than 50 days away, people are stepping up the pressure.

The Yes Men stage elaborate hoaxes on global-trade organizations, multinational corporations and politicians. They satirically skewer corporate, free-trade, pro-business positions by acting as genuine, sincere spokespeople for these institutions, often offering apologies for past corporate crimes or promoting absurd products with remarkably straight faces at industry conferences. In December 2004, on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal, India, disaster in which a Union Carbide plant gas leak killed thousands of people, Andrew Bichlbaum of The Yes Men appeared on BBC News posing as a representative of Dow Chemical (which bought Union Carbide), claiming Dow would finally take full responsibility for the accident.

In 2007, Yes Men Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno addressed Canada's largest oil conference, posing as executives of ExxonMobil and the National Petroleum Council. They announced a plan to convert the corpses of the expected millions of victims of climate change into a fuel they called "Vivoleum." They were ejected, after which Bonanno told the press: "While ExxonMobil continues to post record profits, they use their money to persuade governments to do nothing about climate change. This is a crime against humanity."

At this week's faux press conference in Washington, D.C., Bichlbaum read from a statement: "We at the Chamber have tried to keep climate science from interfering with business. But without a stable climate, there will be no business." Fox Business News and other global news outlets carried the story of the Chamber's surprise support of climate-change legislation. During the press conference, an actual U.S. Chamber of Commerce employee entered, loudly declaring the event a fraud, but exposing himself to probing questions about the Chamber's position on climate change.

Several major corporations have quit the Chamber because of its opposition to genuine climate-change legislation, including Apple, Exelon, PG&E and Levi Strauss & Co.

The U.S. Chamber's resistance to science-based climate policy is nothing new. Career public-relations executive James Hoggan is the author of Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Hoggan told me, "The PR stunt wasn't pulled off by The Yes Men; the PR stunt is basically being pulled off by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and it's been going on for decades." Hoggan's book describes what he calls "a two-decade-long campaign by the energy industry in Canada and the United States, basically designed to confuse the public about climate change, and to give people the sense that there is a debate about the science of climate change."

Oct. 24 is the global day of action organized by the group 350.org, which includes environmentalist Bill McKibben. Named after what scientists have identified as a sustainable target for carbon-dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, 350 parts per million (we are currently at 387 ppm), 350.org lists close to 4,000 events around the world on Oct. 24. The goal is to pressure government representatives prior to their departure for the major United Nations climate summit that will be held in Copenhagen in December.

President Mohamed Nasheed of the Republic of Maldives is already taking action. Last week, he held an underwater cabinet meeting, donning scuba gear and literally meeting in 20 feet of water in the world's lowest-lying country. They signed an "SOS from the frontline" declaration, reading, in part, "If we can't save the Maldives today, you can't save the rest of the world tomorrow." He will carry the declaration to Copenhagen.

U.S. government leadership will be critical to clinching a substantive deal in Copenhagen, but the Senate has not finalized any climate legislation, which essentially ties the hands of U.S. negotiators. Oil, gas and coal interests are spending $300,000 a day lobbying the government. The moment of climate-change truth is upon us, and the professional deniers are up to their old tricks.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of "Breaking the Sound Barrier," recently released in paperback.

 

 

Follow Amy Goodman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/democracy_now

Comments

[Dixieboy]

So what caused the glaciers to recede and form the Great Lakes?.....I guess those cave men burning all those tires and driving all those Humvees around chasing and killing all the dinosaurs??? You libs have to continue this "MYTH" simply because you created the hoax and now have to support brother AL Gore and all his greedy money-making carbon offset propoganda.

2 Scientists with entirely contradictory sets of information supporting and denying global warming...wait, you libs don't call it that anymore....climate change....or whatever we are calling it this week.

[knowBuddhaU]

Hey Dixieboy, it ain't 2 scientists with equivalent sets of data, get a freakin' clue. Same goes for the rest of you.

A) Royal Society (London)
"The statement stresses that the scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action ...
http://royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=20742 (PDF)

B) All major science bodies in the US whose expertise bears on the climate:

~~~~~~~~~~~
Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.... Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). ... In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: ...

In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. ...

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8)....
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

[Dixieboy]

I can't wait for Polar Bear season.

[PrairieView]

Amy, thanks!

[realpolitic]

If anyone has talked with climate change deniers on these threads one knows they are full of misinformation. They claim temperatures are cooling, when this decade is the warmest in recorded history. They claim Arctic ice is rebounding when it is at its third lowest extent and thinnest in recorded history. Then they never have a citiation for their wild claims. When corrected they make the same claims in a latter thread. Well, so much for intellectual honesty! Finally, they have the hubris to believe they have some special knowledge that undermines a science that involves a multitude of specializations. They make such a claim despite being filled with myriad misinformation. Again, deniers are never wrong just they believe there is a whole climate conspiracy with an intent to somehow suppress their views. Glenn Beck would be proud!

[kobrock1]

Chicken Little comes to mind, but don't stop believin', geology has provided evidence that just because it may not be hot now, in an eon or so, it probably will be. For now, I intend to enrich myself selling t-shirts that read "I SUPPORT MAN-MADE CLIMATE STASIS."

[kobrock1]

Back in April, 1970, the first Earth Day was held. At that time, the coming Ice Age was the boogie man on the horizon; along with perhaps KC and the Sunshine Band. Today, global warming is the new specter. With fewer than 40 years separating these equally dire, yet diametrically opposed warnings of an impending apocalypse, one from man-made cold and the other from man-made heat, what is one to think about all of this?

You can count me as a skeptic. Politicians, whose track record on more easily surmountable tasks isn't wonderful, are now demanding more of our money and freedom, for their promise to make it colder outside. I don't suspect that many readers of this post, now have much more closet space, as you've been able to get rid of all of your winter clothes. I guess you've just gotta have faith.

[OneTop]

Thank you for your article Ms. Goodman

It's an outright shame that the US is hindering any meaningful change and not leading the way.

[thnk4selfagain]

Vivoleum? A modest proposal. Satire done right cuts the heart of it quickly. Thanks Ms. Goodman. A good read.

[noneIn2008]

Darn cold out. But again that is weather, not climate. You'll end up with a lot of cranky people after the higher utility bills this winter. When people calculate the cost of 5X utility bills, from cap n TRADE, they are going to be very uneasy. But what the heck, we've already given the traders trillions, why not a few more by installing cap N TRADE.

[thnk4selfagain]

" 5X utility bills, from cap n TRADE"

No complaints from you about inflated oil prices resulting from commodity speculation divorced from market demand, eh? Just cap/trade. To abandon responsibility now for short term gain devastates the country's future, as Wall Street has shown.

[Moo Goo Gai Pan]

Just "Google" "Global Cooling" or "The Big Chill" to see that "Global Warming" is not necessarily true.

[LMPE]

I seem to recall that Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, also continues to deny global warming. That country needs its own version of the Yes Men.

[knowBuddhaU]

Thanks for the great work of Democracy Now! I liked what Hoggan said at the end of the interview. The more we bust the myths of the propagandists, the less power they and their myths will have over us.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And we just have a minute left, but you write about how reading the book may affect your faith in humanity. What gives you hope about the whole climate so-called debate and future changes to legislation?

JAMES HOGGAN: The more we know about these kinds of groups and these kinds of efforts, the less they work. And I would just encourage journalists to ask these people whether or not they’re actually practicing climate science, whether they have—they are climate scientists, and who they’re taking money from. Start to ask these questions and shed light on these people, they’ll be far less effective.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/20/pr_executive_james_hoggan_on_james

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/20/yes_men_pull_off_prank_claiming