Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science

New York Times

February 15, 2012

Richard Perry/The New York Times

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, a gathering in Times Square of skeptics on global warming.

By and

Leaked documents suggest that an organization known for attacking climate science is planning a new push to undermine the teaching of global warming in public schools, the latest indication that climate change is becoming a part of the nation's culture wars.

The documents, from a nonprofit organization in Chicago called the Heartland Institute, outline plans to promote a curriculum that would cast doubt on the scientific finding that fossil fuel emissions endanger the long-term welfare of the planet. "Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective," one document said.

While the documents offer a rare glimpse of the internal thinking motivating the campaign against climate science, defenders of science education were preparing for battle even before the leak. Efforts to undermine climate-science instruction are beginning to spread across the country, they said, and they fear a long fight similar to that over the teaching of evolution in public schools.

In a statement, the Heartland Institute acknowledged that some of its internal documents had been stolen. But it said its president had not had time to read the versions being circulated on the Internet on Tuesday and Wednesday and was therefore not in a position to say whether they had been altered.

Heartland did declare one two-page document to be a forgery, although its tone and content closely matched that of other documents that the group did not dispute. In an apparent confirmation that much of the material, more than 100 pages, was authentic, the group apologized to donors whose names became public as a result of the leak.

The documents included many details of the group's operations, including salaries, recent personnel actions and fund-raising plans and setbacks. They were sent by e-mail to leading climate activists this week by someone using the name "Heartland insider" and were quickly reposted to many climate-related Web sites.

Heartland said the documents were not from an insider but were obtained by a caller pretending to be a board member of the group who was switching to a new e-mail address. "We intend to find this person and see him or her put in prison for these crimes," the organization said.

Although best-known nationally for its attacks on climate science, Heartland styles itself as a libertarian organization with interests in a wide range of public-policy issues. The documents say that it expects to raise $7.7 million this year.

The documents raise questions about whether the group has undertaken partisan political activities, a potential violation of federal tax law governing nonprofit groups. For instance, the documents outline "Operation Angry Badger," a plan to spend $612,000 to influence the outcome of recall elections and related fights this year in Wisconsin over the role of public-sector unions.

Tax lawyers said Wednesday that tax-exempt groups were allowed to undertake some types of lobbying and political education, but that because they are subsidized by taxpayers, they are prohibited from direct involvement in political campaigns.

The documents also show that the group has received money from some of the nation's largest corporations, including several that have long favored action to combat climate change.

The documents typically say that those donations were earmarked for projects unrelated to climate change, like publishing right-leaning newsletters on drug and technology policy. Nonetheless, several of the companies hastened on Wednesday to disassociate themselves from the organization's climate stance.

"We absolutely do not endorse or support their views on the environment or climate change," said Sarah Alspach, a spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, a multinational drug company shown in the documents as contributing $50,000 in the past two years to support a medical newsletter.

A spokesman for Microsoft, another listed donor, said that the company believes that "climate change is a serious issue that demands immediate worldwide action." The company is shown in the documents as having contributed $59,908 last year to a Heartland technology newsletter. But the Microsoft spokesman, Mark Murray, said the gift was not a cash contribution but rather the value of free software, which Microsoft gives to thousands of nonprofit groups.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Heartland documents was what they did not contain: evidence of contributions from the major publicly traded oil companies, long suspected by environmentalists of secretly financing efforts to undermine climate science.

But oil interests were nonetheless represented. The documents say that the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation contributed $25,000 last year and was expected to contribute $200,000 this year. Mr. Koch is one of two brothers who have been prominent supporters of libertarian causes as well as other charitable endeavors. They control Koch Industries, one of the country's largest private companies and a major oil refiner.

The documents suggest that Heartland has spent several million dollars in the past five years in its efforts to undermine climate science, much of that coming from a person referred to repeatedly in the documents as "the Anonymous Donor." A guessing game erupted Wednesday about who that might be.

The documents say that over four years ending in 2013, the group expects to have spent some $1.6 million on financing the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, an entity that publishes periodic reports attacking climate science and holds lavish annual conferences. (Environmental groups refer to the conferences as "Denialpalooza.")

Heartland's latest idea, the documents say, is a plan to create a curriculum for public schools intended to cast doubt on mainstream climate science and budgeted at $200,000 this year. The curriculum would claim, for instance, that "whether humans are changing the climate is a major scientific controversy."

It is in fact not a scientific controversy. The vast majority of climate scientists say that emissions generated by humans are changing the climate and putting the planet at long-term risk, although they are uncertain about the exact magnitude of that risk. Whether and how to rein in emissions of greenhouse gases has become a major political controversy in the United States, however.

The National Center for Science Education, a group that has had notable success in fighting for accurate teaching of evolution in the public schools, has recently added climate change to its agenda in response to pleas from teachers who say they feel pressure to water down the science.

Mark S. McCaffrey, programs and policy director for the group, which is in Oakland, Calif., said the Heartland documents revealed that "they continue to promote confusion, doubt and debate where there really is none."

Steven Yaccino contributed reporting from Chicago.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 16, 2012, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: In Documents, a Plan to Discredit Climate Teaching.
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Roundup in city-dwellers' urine

Institute for Responsible Technology
February 20, 2012

Studies have already found Monsanto's toxic herbicide Roundup in groundwater, in streams, and even in the rain and air of US agricultural areas. It's been found in our blood and even crosses the placental barrier to enter our unborn fetuses. So are we surprised that a German university study has now found significant concentrations of Roundup's main ingredient glyphosate in the urine of city dwellers?

Perhaps we should be surprised at the amount: all the samples had concentrations of glyphosate at 5 to 20 times the limit for drinking water.

Roundup is used on railway lines, urban pavements, and roadsides. It's used to dry down grain crops before harvest. But the single greatest use of Roundup is on genetically engineered "Roundup Ready" crops - designed not to die when sprayed with the poison.

Wouldn't it be good if we too were Roundup Ready, so we wouldn't get sick or die due to the virtually omnipresent toxin? After all, studies now link it to birth defects, endocrine disruption, cancer, and abnormal sperm.

As Roundup is a best-selling product worldwide and there are massive profits hanging on its continued use, the new testing initiative has fallen prey to the usual attempts at disinformation, distortion, and intimidation. Note the excerpt from the story: "The address of the university labs, which did the research, the data and the evaluation of the research method is known to the editors. Because of significant pressure by agrochemical representatives and the fear that the work of the lab could be influenced, the complete analytical data will only be published in the course of this year." [Read the Article]


Monday, February 6, 2012

Environmentalists were the 99%

Huffington Post
February 6, 2012

These are not easy times for the green movement. In fact, according to the NY Times: "If there was a tougher moment over the last 40 years to be a leader in the American environmental movement, it would be hard to put your finger on it."


Yes, 2011 was rough. Gallup reported that Americans are more willing to let the environment suffer to boost the economy than at any other time since polling on this question began in 1984. According to Yale and George Mason Universities, the number of Americans who are "very worried" about our climate has fallen sharply, to a mere nine percent, despite two decades of warnings that man-made climate change could rob us of everything we hold dear.

We greens aren't exactly racking up Occupy Wall Street numbers, are we?

Anti-environmentalists in Congress know this and are having a field day, gleefully making irrational moves like blocking new standards for incandescent light bulbs that would have cut pollution, saved money and created jobs. Environmental groups and our allies in Congress dutifully protest such boneheaded acts -- but where is the public outrage?

Perhaps the recession alone is to blame for the big green chill and we'll come roaring back when economic conditions improve. But I wouldn't bet on it and neither should you. This could be an "adapt or die" moment, for the environmental movement.

Here are three ideas to consider, as we greens search for our missing mojo:

Fight harder for social and economic sustainability. It's easier to stop an environmentally-harmful project when there are safer, cleaner alternatives that achieve the same social and economic goals. The more we help promote such alternatives, the more likely we'll be to win our own battles.

Take Hydrofracking, for example. Fracking has done enormous damage to people's health, to air and water quality, and to rural landscapes. But the fact that fracking isn't safe may not be enough to stop it. After all, President Obama himself delivered a veritable infomercial for fracking during his State of the Union address, pushing it as a source of cheap, reliable energy.

We can shoot back that fracking only looks cheap because the retail price doesn't take into account the damage fracking does. We can argue that its reliability is also doubtful, now that the Energy Department has cut its estimate of recoverable reserves. But, what if we coupled these arguments with an all-out enviro push for greater investment in scalable alternatives like retrofitting power plants and increasing energy efficiency in homes and businesses? Not only can such measures create over a million jobs and generate huge sales of American-made materials, they would also reduce the need for natural gas and increase our chances of winning the fracking wars.

This doesn't mean that we wouldn't go to court to stop fracking from trashing air, water and public health. Riverkeeper and others sued when the Delaware River Basin Commission proposed new fracking rules without first doing any environmental review [the rules were subsequently withdrawn] and we'll sue New York State on fracking if we have to. But it will take more than a successful fight against fracking to put us on the path to long-term energy sustainability, which is where we really need to be, isn't it?

Turbocharge the grass roots. Whether or not you agree with Margaret Mead that local volunteer activists are the only ones who can change the world, you probably would accept the notion that we aren't exactly beating climate change from the top-down. In fact, the only time this Congress even considers environmental issues is when they vote on the latest proposal to gut the Clean Water Act or one of the other resource protection laws that have served this country well for decades. In a hostile climate like this, we'd all do well to remember that professional environmental groups -- no matter how much staff they have or how big their budgets -- don't vote or pay taxes. Volunteer citizen activists do. That gives them leverage the big groups don't have, especially at the local level.

In some very fundamental ways, volunteer activists and professional environmental groups need one another to get anything meaningful accomplished. Riverkeeper complained for years about failing sewage infrastructure and increasing bacteria levels in the Hudson, but investment in water treatment systems just kept falling. Now that there are nearly a dozen volunteer groups out taking water quality samples on the Hudson and lobbying their local officials, investment in water treatment facilities is finally back on the public agenda in a growing number of river communities.

Share leadership with the next generation. Fifty may be the new 40, but how gray can the movement get before it blows any real chance to renew organizational leadership? And, more immediately: At 50 and up, do we really understand what it will take to rebuild membership in the Occupy era?

So, fellow non-profit leaders: What are you doing to bridge the gap? Have you begged, borrowed or stolen the resources you need to hire young environmentalists? When you do, are you finding leadership roles for them as soon as they're ready for it? We're not going to reverse those plummeting poll numbers any other way.

* * *

Environmentalists were the original "99%." We can get back to that kind of popular support, by promoting social and economic recovery, empowering local activists and passing the torch to the generation whose future is most at stake. Of course, given the enormity of the environmental challenges ahead, we'd better start soon.


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