Environmentalism

see also greens, activistssee TWO

=html 50m<div>=</div><div><div class="widgetbrief" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ew 920human consumption has led to an unprecedented rate of decline in the world's <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">wildlife</a> populations, according to the <a href="https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-us/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-color: rgb(82, 149, 70); overflow-wrap: break-word;">Living Planet Report 2020,</a> a biennial paper put out by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London.
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Earth Day 1970 capitalized on the emerging consciousness, channeling the energy of the anti-war protest movement and putting environmental concerns front and center.

The idea came to Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, he realized that if he could infuse that energy with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, it would force environmental protection onto the national political agenda. Senator Nelson announced the idea for a “national teach-in on the environment” to the national media; persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair; and recruited Denis Hayes as national coordinator. Hayes built a national staff of 85 to promote events across the land.

As a result, on the 22nd of April, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the <a href="http://www.epa.gov/air/caa/">Clean Air</a>, <a href="http://www.epa.gov/owow/watershed/wacademy/acad2000/cwa/">Clean Water</a>, and <a href="http://www.epa.gov/regulations/laws/esa.html">Endangered Species</a> Acts. "It was a gamble," Gaylord recalled, "but it worked."

LAW:

<a id="Toc195514412" name="Toc195514412">B. Rise of Environmental Legal Tools</a>

In response to awareness of these environmental problems, the U.S. Congress passed a series of environmental laws in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Congress passed the Wilderness Act in 1964<a id="ednref16" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn16" name="ednref16" title="">[16]</a>and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1969.<a id="ednref17" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn17" name="ednref17" title="">[17]</a>In 1970, an Executive Order established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)<a id="ednref18" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn18" name="ednref18" title="">[18]</a>and Congress passed regulatory amendments to the Clean Air Act (CAA).<a id="ednref19" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn19" name="ednref19" title="">[19]</a>In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act (CWA),<a id="ednref20" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn20" name="ednref20" title="">[20]</a>followed by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973.<a id="ednref21" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn21" name="ednref21" title="">[21]</a>In 1976, it passed the National Forest Management Act (NFMA)<a id="ednref22" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn22" name="ednref22" title="">[22]</a>and in 1980 it passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response and Cleanup Liability Act (CERCLA).<a id="ednref23" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn23" name="ednref23" title="">[23]</a>

Citizens took hold of these legal tools and as they utilized them to preserve our environment, the collateral impacts of enforcement on private industry began to surface. One example is the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill,<a id="ednref24" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn24" name="ednref24" title="">[24]</a>in which the Court refused to ignore the ESA's legal protections for species on the brink of extinction.<a id="ednref25" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn25" name="ednref25" title="">[25]</a>The Court recognized that the species in question was a small fish, and that enforcement of the law would permanently stop a dam project in which the Army Corps of Engineers had already invested more than $100 million.<a id="ednref26" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn26" name="ednref26" title="">[26]</a>Nonetheless, the Court held that the dam could not close (and thereby destroy the river ecosystem) because the value of an endangered species is "incalculable."<a id="ednref27" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn27" name="ednref27" title="">[27]</a>This decision and its repercussions on industries that exploit natural resources have led organizations like the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation to denounce the ESA as helping to "devastate entire industries."<a id="ednref28" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn28" name="ednref28" title="">[28]</a>In the same vein, "free market" groups like Ron Arnold's Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise have called NEPA a "procedural, bureaucratic, punitive, dangerous obstruction to the social and economic requirements of present generations of Americans."<a id="ednref29" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn29" name="ednref29" title="">[29]</a>

Another example is the case of Love Canal, New York where, after historic dumping of billions of tons of hazardous waste, the industrial owners of the dumping ground sold their land to the local school district for $1.00.<a id="ednref30" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn30" name="ednref30" title="">[30]</a>In 1978, after a school and 100 homes were built on the dumping ground, a carcinogenic sludge began seeping into homes. Eventually, 1000 families were forced to abandon their homes.<a id="ednref31" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn31" name="ednref31" title="">[31]</a>The publicly led outcry in response to this disaster led to the enactment of CERCLA by the U.S. Congress.<a id="ednref32" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn32" name="ednref32" title="">[32]</a>CERCLA forces any agency that is involved in the creation, transport, or dumping of hazardous waste to be held strictly, and jointly and severally, liable.<a id="ednref33" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn33" name="ednref33" title="">[33]</a>This liability can end up costing industries tens of millions of dollars.<a id="ednref34" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn34" name="_ednref34" title="">[34]</a>

<a id="Toc195514413" name="Toc195514413">C. Rise of Environmental Organizations</a>

As these laws were promulgated and initially utilized to combat environmental degradation, the 1970s and 1980s saw a public environmental movement take shape to organize against environmental destruction.<a id="ednref35" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn35" name="ednref35" title="">[35]</a>In 1976, the Internal Revenue Service recognized the importance of "efforts to preserve and protect the natural environment for the benefit of the public" by officially sanctioning the granting of federal income tax-exempt status, and charitable contribution deduction status, for environmental organizations.<a id="ednref36" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn36" name="ednref36" title="">[36]</a>Over time, environmental groups and activists have developed their own distinct identities. Some environmental organizations, like the Sierra Club, are large corporations with headquarters, local offices, legal teams, and lobbying efforts.<a id="ednref37" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn37" name="ednref37" title="">[37]</a>Other organizations, like the Environmental Protection Information Center in Northern California, are grassroots groups that participate in local issues and use community organizing and strategic lawsuits as tools.<a id="ednref38" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn38" name="ednref38" title="">[38]</a>And yet other environmental activists, who do not believe that environmental change is occurring fast enough through the mainstream channels,<a id="ednref39" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn39" name="ednref39" title="">[39]</a>and who may identify with radical movements like Earth First! or the Earth Liberation Front, use civil disobedience as their tool, which includes breaking criminal laws from trespass to laws against property damage.<a id="ednref40" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn40" name="ednref40" title="">[40]</a>

While tactics may be a constant source of debate, the collective purpose of all of these groups resonates with the American people. National polls indicate that the majority of Americans believe that environmental quality is getting worse (67%),<a id="ednref41" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn41" name="ednref41" title="">[41]</a>that the United States should be enforcing environmental regulations more strongly (79%),<a id="ednref42" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn42" name="ednref42" title="">[42]</a>and that businesses will "cut corners and damage the environment without strong government rules and regulations" (75%).<a id="ednref43" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn43" name="ednref43" title="">[43]</a>Moreover, a 2005 Harris Poll indicated 74% of Americans agree that "protecting the environment is so important that requirements and standards cannot be too high, and continuing environmental improvements must be made regardless of cost."<a id="ednref44" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn44" name="ednref44" title="">[44]...</a>

<a id="ednref44" href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes#edn44" name="_ednref44" title=""> </a><a href="http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes">http://www.elawreview.org/elaw/382/ecoterrorism_a_critical_analys.html?print=yes</a>

XIAN ~

<a href="http://www.grist.org/article/scherer-christian">http://www.grist.org/article/scherer-christian</a>

Abortion. Same-sex marriage. Stem-cell research.

U.S. legislators backed by the Christian right vote against these issues with near-perfect consistency. That probably doesn't surprise you, but this might: Those same legislators are equally united and unswerving in their opposition to environmental protection.

See the numbers laid out in graph form, for the Senate and the House:

<a href="http://grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/senate_ratings" target="new">Senate ratings chart</a>

<a href="http://grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/house_ratings" target="new">House ratings chart</a>

See how individual senators and representatives score:

<a href="http://grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/senate_ratings.xls">Senate Excel spreadsheet</a>

<a href="http://grist.org/news/maindish/2004/10/27/house_ratings.xls">House Excel spreadsheet</a>

</div>

Forty-five senators and 186 representatives in 2003 earned 80- to 100-percent approval ratings from the nation's three most influential Christian right advocacy groups -- the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. Many of those same lawmakers also got flunking grades -- less than 10 percent, on average -- from the League of Conservation Voters last year.

These statistics are puzzling at first. Opposing abortion and stem-cell research is consistent with the religious right's belief that life begins at the moment of conception. Opposing gay marriage is consistent with its claim that homosexual activity is proscribed by the Bible. Both beliefs are a familiar staple of today's political discourse. But a scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism?<a href="#correction">*</a>

Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. They may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.

We are not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. The 231 legislators (all but five of them Republicans) who received an average 80 percent approval rating or higher from the leading religious-right organizations make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. Congress. (The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian Coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who earlier this year quoted from the Book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread or of thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord!")

These politicians include some of the most powerful figures in the U.S. government, as well as key environmental decision makers: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Republican Conference Chair Rick Santorum (R-Penn.), Senate Republican Policy Chair Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, and quite possibly President Bush. (Earlier this month, a cover story by Ron Suskind in The New York Times Magazine described how Bush's faith-based governance has led to, among other things, a disastrous "crusade" in the Middle East and has laid the groundwork for "a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.")

And those politicians are just the powerful tip of the iceberg. A 2002 Time/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks.

...

<h3>If I Had a Hammer</h3>

To understand how the Christian right worldview is shaping and even fueling congressional anti-environmentalism, consider two influential born-again lawmakers: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

DeLay, who has considerable control over the agenda in the House, has called for "march[ing] forward with a Biblical worldview" in U.S. politics, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A6825-2001May9&no" target="new" jquery1279045038180="39">reports Peter Perl</a> in The Washington Post Magazine. DeLay wants to convert America into a "God centered" nation whose government promotes prayer, worship, and the teaching of Christian values.

Inhofe, the Senate's most outspoken environmental critic, is also unwavering in his wish to remake America as a Christian state. Speaking at the Christian Coalition's Road to Victory rally just before the GOP sweep of the 2002 midterm elections, he promised the faithful, "When we win this revolution in November, you'll be doing the Lord's work, and He will richly bless you for it!"

Neither DeLay nor Inhofe include environmental protection in "the Lord's work." Both have ranted against the EPA, calling it "the Gestapo." DeLay has fought to gut the Clean Air and Endangered Species acts. Last year, Inhofe invited a stacked-deck of fossil fuel-funded climate-change skeptics to testify at a Senate hearing that climaxed with him calling global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

DeLay has said bluntly that he intends to smite the "socialist" worldview of "secular humanists," whom, he argues, control the U.S. political system, media, public schools, and universities. He called the 2000 presidential election an apocalyptic "battle for souls," a fight to the death against the forces of liberalism, feminism, and environmentalism that are corrupting America. The utopian dreams of such movements are doomed, argues the majority leader, because they do not stem from God.

"DeLay is motivated more than anything by power," says Jan Reid, coauthor with Lou Dubose of <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=25450&cgi=product&isbn=1586482386" target="new" jquery1279045038180="40">The Hammer</a>, a just-published biography of DeLay. "But he also believes in the power of the coming Millennium [of Jesus Christ], and it helps shape his vision on government and the world." This may explain why DeLay's Capitol office furnishings include a marble replica of the Ten Commandments and a wall poster that reads: "This Could Be The Day" -- meaning Judgment Day.

DeLay is also a self-declared member of the Christian Zionists, an End-Time faction numbering 20 million Americans. Christian Zionists believe that the 1948 creation of the state of Israel marked the first event in what author Hal Lindsey calls the "countdown to Armageddon" and they are committed to making that doomsday clock tick faster, speeding Christ's return.

In 2002, DeLay visited pastor John Hagee's Cornerstone Church. Hagee preached a fiery message as simple as it was horrifying: "The war between America and Iraq is the gateway to the Apocalypse!" he said, urging his followers to support the war, perhaps in order to bring about the Second Coming. After Hagee finished, DeLay rose to second the motion. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "what has been spoken here tonight is the truth from God."

With those words -- broadcast to 225 Christian TV and radio stations -- DeLay placed himself squarely inside the End-Time camp, a faction willing to force the Apocalypse upon the rest of the world. In part, DeLay may embrace Hagee and others like him in a calculated attempt to win fundamentalist votes -- but he was also raised a Southern Baptist, steeped in a literal interpretation of the Bible and End-Time dogma. Biographer Dubose says that the majority leader probably doesn't grasp the complexities of dispensationalist and reconstructionist theology, but "I am convinced that he believes [in] it." For DeLay, Dubose told me, "If John Hagee says it, then it is true."

<h3>Onward Christian Senators</h3>

James Inhofe might be an environmentalist's worst nightmare. The Oklahoma senator makes major policy decisions based on heavy corporate and theological influences, flawed science, and probably an apocalyptic worldview -- and he chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

That committee's links to corporate funders are both easier to trace and more infamous than its ties to religious fundamentalism, and it's true that the influence of money can scarcely be overstated. From 1999 to 2004, Inhofe received more than $588,000 from the fossil-fuel industry, electric utilities, mining, and other natural-resource interests, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Eight of the nine other Republican members of Inhofe's committee received an average of $408,000 per senator from the energy and natural resource sector over the same period. By contrast, the eight committee Democrats and one Independent came away with an average of just $132,000 per senator from that same sector since 1999.

But the influence of theology, although less discussed, is no less significant. Inhofe, like DeLay, is a Christian Zionist. While the senator has not overtly expressed his religious views in his environmental committee, he has when speaking on other issues. In a Senate foreign-policy speech, Inhofe argued that the U.S. should ally itself unconditionally with Israel "because God said so." Quoting the Bible as the divine Word of God, Inhofe cited Genesis 13:14-17 -- "for all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever" -- as justification for permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and for escalating aggression against the Palestinians.

Inhofe also openly supports dispensationalist Pat Robertson, who touts every tornado, hurricane, plague, and suicide bombing as a sure sign of God's return; who accused both Jimmy Carter and George Bush Sr. of being followers of Lucifer; and who makes no secret of the efforts of his Christian Coalition to control the Republican Party, according to Theocracy Watch.

A good fundamentalist, Inhofe scored a perfect 100 percent rating in 2003 from all three major Christian-right advocacy groups, while earning a 5 percent from the League of Conservation Voters (and a string of zeroes from 1997 to 2002). Likewise, eight of the nine other Republicans on the Environment and Public Works Committee earned an average 94 percent approval rating in 2003 from the Christian right, while scoring a dismal 4 percent average environmental approval rating. The one exception proves the rule: Moderate Lincoln Chafee (R.-R.I.) last year earned a 79 percent LCV rating and just 41 percent from the religious right.

As committee chair, Inhofe has subtly chosen scripture over science. The origins of his 2003 Senate speech attacking the science behind global climate change, for example, reveal his two masters: the speech is traceable to fossil fuel industry think tanks and petrochemical dollars -- but also to the pseudo-science of Christian right websites. In that two-hour diatribe, Inhofe dismissed global warming by comparing it to a 1970s scientific scare that suggested the planet was cooling -- a hypothesis, he fails to note, held by only a minority of climatologists at the time. Inhofe's apparent source on global cooling was the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, a Christian-right and free-market economics think tank. In an editorial on that site called "Global Warming or Globaloney? The Forgotten Case for Global Cooling," we hear echoes of Inhofe's position. The article calls climate change "a shrewdly planned campaign to inflict a lot of socialistic restriction on our cherished freedoms. Environmentalism, in short, is the last refuge of socialism." Inhofe's views can be heard in the words of dispensationalist Jerry Falwell as well, who said on CNN, "It was global cooling 30 years ago ... and it's global warming now. ... The fact is there is no global warming."

Inhofe's views are also closely tied to the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship, a radical-right Christian organization founded by radio evangelist James Dobson, dispensationalist Rev. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, Jerry Falwell, and Robert Sirico, a Catholic priest who has been editing Vatican texts to align the Catholic Church's historical teachings with his free-market philosophy, according to E Magazine.

The ICES environmental view is shaped by the Book of Genesis: "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the seas, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on this earth." The group says this passage proves that "man" is superior to nature and gives the go-ahead to unchecked population growth and unrestrained resource use. Such beliefs fly in the face of ecology, which shows humankind to be an equal and interdependent participant in the natural web.

Inhofe's staff defends his backward scientific positions, no matter how at odds they are with mainstream scientists. "How do you define 'mainstream'?" asked a miffed staffer. "Scientists who accept the so-called consensus about global warming? Galileo was not mainstream." But Inhofe is no Galileo. In fact, his use of lawsuits to try to suppress the peer-reviewed science of the National Assessment on Climate Change -- which predicts major extinctions and threats to coastal regions -- arguably puts him on the side of Galileo's oppressors, the perpetrators of the Christian Inquisition, <a href="http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=viewprint&articleId=7603" target="new" jquery1279045038180="41">writes Chris Mooney</a> in The American Prospect.

"I trust God with my legislative goals and the issues that are important to my constituents," Inhofe has told Pentecostal Evangel magazine. "I don't believe there is a single issue we deal with in government that hasn't been dealt with in the Scriptures." But Inhofe stayed silent in that interview as to which passages he applies to the environment, and he remained so when I asked him if End-Time beliefs influence his leadership of the most powerful environmental committee in the country.

<h3>And the Cow Jumped Over the Moon</h3>

So weird have the attempts to hasten the End Time become that a group of ultra-Christian Texas ranchers recently helped fundamentalist Israeli Jews breed a pure red heifer, a genetically rare beast that must be sacrificed to fulfill an apocalyptic prophecy found in the biblical Book of Numbers. (The beast will be ready for sacrifice by 2005, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher041102.asp" target="new" jquery1279045038180="42">according to The National Review</a>.)

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horowitz site

<a href="http://discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catId=60&type=group">http://discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catId=60&type=group</a>

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<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7312/full/467133a.html">http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7312/full/467133a.html</a>

Nature | Editorial

<h1 class="article-heading">Science scorned</h1>

<dt>Journal name:</dt>

<dd class="journal-title">Nature</dd>

<dt class="volume">Volume:</dt>

<dt>Date published:</dt>

<dd>(09 September 2010)</dd>

</dl>

<dt class="published-online first">Published online</dt>

<dd>08 September 2010</dd>

</dl>

��

��The four corners of deceit: government, academia, science and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That's how they promulgate themselves; it is how they prosper.” It is tempting to laugh off this and other rhetoric broadcast by Rush Limbaugh, a conservative US radio host, but Limbaugh and similar voices are no laughing matter.

There is a growing anti-science streak on the American right that could have tangible societal and political impacts on many fronts �� including regulation of environmental and other issues and stem-cell research. Take the surprise ousting last week of Lisa Murkowski, the incumbent Republican senator for Alaska, by political unknown Joe Miller in the Republican primary for the 2 November midterm congressional elections. Miller, who is backed by the conservative 'Tea Party movement', called his opponent's acknowledgement of the reality of global warming “exhibit 'A' for why she needs to go”.

<blockquote class="quote">“The country's future crucially depends on education, science and technology.”</blockquote>

</div>

The right-wing populism that is flourishing in the current climate of economic insecurity echoes many traditional conservative themes, such as opposition to taxes, regulation and immigration. But the Tea Party and its cheerleaders, who include Limbaugh, Fox News television host Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who famously decried fruitfly research as a waste of public money), are also tapping an age-old US political impulse �� a suspicion of elites and expertise.

Denialism over global warming has become a scientific cause cél��bre within the movement. Limbaugh, for instance, who has told his listeners that “science has become a home for displaced socialists and communists”, has called climate-change science “the biggest scam in the history of the world”. The Tea Party's leanings encompass religious opposition to Darwinian evolution and to stem-cell and embryo research — which Beck has equated with eugenics. The movement is also averse to science-based regulation, which it sees as an excuse for intrusive government. Under the administration of George W. Bush, science in policy had already taken knocks from both neglect and ideology. Yet President Barack Obama's promise to “restore science to its rightful place” seems to have linked science to liberal politics, making it even more of a target of the right.

US citizens face economic problems that are all too real, and the country's future crucially depends on education, science and technology as it faces increasing competition from China and other emerging science powers. Last month's recall of hundreds of millions of US eggs because of the risk of salmonella poisoning, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, are timely reminders of why the US government needs to serve the people better by developing and enforcing improved science-based regulations. Yet the public often buys into anti-science, anti-regulation agendas that are orchestrated by business interests and their sponsored think tanks and front groups.

In the current poisoned political atmosphere, the defenders of science have few easy remedies. Reassuringly, polls continue to show that the overwhelming majority of the US public sees science as a force for good, and the anti-science rumblings may be ephemeral. As educators, scientists should redouble their efforts to promote rationalism, scholarship and critical thought among the young, and engage with both the media and politicians to help illuminate the pressing science-based issues of our time.

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greens hate ppl,. bix <a href="http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201201140002">http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201201140002</a>  capitalistpig.com?  fox

50m to stoves for UN <a href="http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201009250004">http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201009250004</a>

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