The new film Greedy Lying Bastards (GLB for short) opens today in theaters in about 30 cities around the US. Go see it, first of all... there is a theater list here. And tell your friends about it.
The film contains some gems, including this clip of "Lord" Monckton, reacting to a question about the consensus that climate change is real and man-made:
Right... the only scientists who are capable of coming to a conclusion as barking mad as that are computer modelers. These are typically zitty teenagers, sitting in dark rooms with a can of Coca-Cola and too many donuts and playing on their X-Box 360s and they are making predictions about the climate...
Wow... and that's only the beginning of the lunacy and nastiness from the deniers.
The long legacy of denial and deception by the legion of fossil doom will never be erased. They know who they are. We know exactly who they are. And we know exactly they have done... Greedy Lying Bastards is the most complete telling of this story to date.
We have the files at ExxonSecrets.org and PolluterWatch; in fact file cabinets full -- twenty-plus years of research and documentation of industry efforts to slow down the uptake of climate science, replace urgency with uncertainty and derail the policy train that is pulled along by that scientific consensus. Steve Coll's book Private Empire, which came out in 2012, pulled even more details into focus about Exxon's roll in the climate denial machine
ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Koch brothers, electric companies like Southern Company and a new posse of anonymous donors have collectively dumped millions of dollars into front groups and think tanks they could prompt to say and do things they couldn't be caught dead saying or doing themselves. The corporate puppeteers knew that sowing doubt and uncertainty would buy them time. A stay of execution. The free market front groupers had hit pay dirt and feel that taking action on climate change is some UN conspiracy to shackle their god given free market freedom.
So what? What can be done to hold these individuals and corporations accountable for their actions? What court of law will find them guilty of obstruction and deception? The film shows the similarity to the tobacco industry, who fought on for years after knowing full well that cigarettes caused health problems and nicotine is addictive -- straight up denial. There will be hearings, trials, cases, whistle blowers. The truth will be known.
Join the petition to ask Congress to investigate the Climate Denial Machine. There is much to be learned. The denial machine has not gone to sleep even as the climate is unraveling before our eyes.
Bottom line is real people are craving answers as extreme floods and hurricane superstorms sweep away everything they own, as "exceptional" drought knocks farms off the map one by one, as heat waves make life unbearable. The weather is out of whack and people are waking up one by one and want to know who to blame for their misfortune.
The culprits try to change their stripes, say they have been "misunderstood" in the case of Exxon, but you cannot change history. Their actions have contributed to two decades of inaction, costing us lives, property loss, economic and ecological damage. Species are going and will go extinct due to this inaction. This is no joke.
The latest academic treatment linking the Arab Spring to climate change raises the stakes again. Climate security is national security. Inseparable. Climate change is about where we live and how we live there. About how we grow our food, our water sources, the way we normally build our homes and buildings...How we live is adapted to the climate of the place where we live and make a living. All this is now turning upside down. When 100-year extreme events happen every year, when thousands of weather records are broken in a single year, the truth inescapable.
People are trusting their eyes and increasingly not trusting the Denial Machine.
There will be accountability, and not only in the court of public opinion. These are moral crimes, crimes against humanity. The stakes are high and the consequences are only starting to fall out. People are starting to realize they have been lied to, led to believe that global warming was some figment of Al Gore's imagination, told to look the other way...
And if there is one thing that gets people all riled up, its being lied to.
Good luck explaining yourself to our children and grandchildren, David and Charles Koch, Rex Tillerson and Lee Raymond at Exxon before him... and all the others in your denial army. You might as well start explaining right now.