This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate is Naomi Klein's fourth book; it was published in 2014 by Simon & Schuster. In it, Klein argues that the climate crisis cannot be addressed in the current era of neoliberal market fundamentalism, which encourages profligate consumption and has resulted in mega-mergers and trade agreements hostile to the health of the environment.
The book launch video Naomi Klein references an occasion in December 2012, at the American Geophysics Union, when a complex systems scientist walked up to the podium to present a paper. It was titled:
“This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” is a book of such ambition and consequence that it is almost unreviewable. Klein’s fans will recognize her method from her prior books, “No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies” (1999) and “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” (2007), which, with her latest, form an antiglobalization trilogy. Her strategy is to take a scourge — brand-driven hyperconsumption, corporate exploitation of disaster-struck communities, or “the fiction of perpetual growth on a finite planet” — trace its origins, then chart a course of liberation. In each book she arrives at some semihopeful place, where activists are reaffirming embattled civic values.
To call “This Changes Everything” environmental is to limit Klein’s considerable agenda. “There is still time to avoid catastrophic warming,” she contends, “but not within the rules of capitalism as they are currently constructed. Which is surely the best argument there has ever been for changing those rules.” On the green left, many share Klein’s sentiments. George Monbiot, a columnist for The Guardian, recently lamented that even though “the claims of market fundamentalism have been disproven as dramatically as those of state communism, somehow this zombie ideology staggers on.” Klein, Monbiot and Bill McKibben all insist that we cannot avert the ecological disaster that confronts us without loosening the grip of that superannuated zombie ideology.
In Monthly Review, Professors John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark provided detailed counter-arguments in response to what they term are the "liberal critics" of the book. They also praised the book, writing:
Klein, who in No Logo ushered in a new generational critique of commodity culture, and who in The Shock Doctrine established herself as perhaps the most prominent North American critic of neoliberal disaster capitalism, signals that she has now, in William Morris's famous metaphor, crossed "the river of fire" to become a critic of capitalism. The reason is climate change, including the fact that we have waited too long to address it, and the reality that nothing short of an ecological revolution will now do the job.
Crossing the River of Fire The Liberal Attack on Naomi Klein and This Changes Everything by John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark
The situation, five years on, has changed, but for many corporate business interests we find there is a deepening conflict between a requirement to acknowledge the present reality or carry on, but in denial.
This is NOT the time for "Business as usual" . . .
In another fragment of marginalia on the bottom of page 24 of this book we read:
Civilization, the mother of war
In the main page text, juxtaposed to this item of marginalia, McLuhan writes, and we read:
It helps to know that civilization is entirely the product of phonetic literacy, and as it dissolves with the electronic revolution, we rediscover a tribal, integral awareness that manifests itself in a complete shift in our sensory lives.
Maintaining the illusion of Business as usual requires an advertising industry to serve the interests of the usual businesses.
For the so-called "western democracies", the two world wars of the twentieth century required the democratic governments among the "allies", to shape the everyday consciousness of civil society, and the military, along with social behaviours and the entire public discourse, through propaganda efforts, as exemplified in the poster image above. Advertising techniques were applied in this propaganda onslaught that continue to be developed to the present day.
Clickbait alert!
Mum's the word
A version of this phrase notably appears in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2, Act 1, Scene 2:
Seal up your lips and give no words but mum.
The word “mum” is a slanged version of momme, which was used between 1350-1400 in Middle English with very close to the same meaning: Be silent; Do not reveal.
Mum becomes a Middle English word meaning 'silent', and may be derived from the mummer who acts without speaking. Note the similar English word "mime" (Old English "mīma", Latin "mimus") meaning silent actor or imitator.
Originating in a 1940 campaign with the catchphrase "Be like Dad, keep Mum," the best-known image from this campaign is the 1942 poster "Keep mum, she's not so dumb" by the architect and artist Gerald Lacoste. It depicts a glamorous blonde woman reclining, and officers from each branch of the Armed Forces about her talking to each other. It is implied that the officers are talking military secrets, on the (wrongful) assumption that the woman is only a "dumb blonde" and so will not pass these secrets onto the enemy.
The campaign was issued in 1942 to all ranks, with this particular image intended for messes and other places where officers met. Advertiser's Weekly noted that "sex appeal" had been introduced in the form of a beautiful spy, whom they insisted on "christening Olga Polovsky after the famous song."
Advertising techniques work most effectively when an audience is manipulated into thinking about the idea in the ad's foreground. Thus distracted from the real message that, meanwhile, is mobilized through a link to resonances that feedback into the "unconscious", whatever that is! So SEX is effective, and so is NATURE!
Distracted from distraction by distraction
The consequence of the images are the images of the consequences
Shell Oil was a pioneer in the 1930s with its advertising strategy. Its advertising seldom visualized Shell's petrol or oil, let alone its drilling rigs, refineries or ocean tankers. Instead its artists were called on to depict bucolic country scenes, rural townscapes, and historic structures.
This is Althusser's notion of "ideology" in action. Shell Oil is a "dirty business" that is substituted by a cascade of images of "unspoiled nature"!
Stanlow Refinery is an oil refinery owned by Essar Energy in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England. It was previously owned by Royal Dutch Shell until 2011. The refinery is situated on the south bank of the Manchester Ship Canal, which is used to transport seaborne oil for refining and chemicals for Essar and Shell.
So, welcome to World War III (Capitalism at war with Planet Earth), where it is the case that just as in WWI and WWII, it is a war of words and images.
What the world needs now is feedforward NOT feedback!
We’ve all heard of the oil and gas tycoon Shell, or as it is officially called today – Royal Dutch Shell. As the name suggests, its headquarters is in The Hague, Netherlands, and was founded by Marcus Samuel. And whilst most of the people may think this is a random name chosen, there is actually a story behind the company’s brand name origin.
It begins in 1833, when the founder’s father started a business selling seashells to collectors from London. While bringing his son on a boat trip for seashell collecting in the Caspian and Black Sea, the young Samuel realised the potential of oil trading.
In 1897 Shell was founded by the name of Shell Transport and Trading Company Ltd. The name was chosen as a tribute to the previous occupation of the family – the seashell trading business.
In an article for the Guardian, Media (Sat 11 Mar 2017), in a section headed The 1930s revisited, Piers Brendon concludes his piece with a reference to Percy Wyndham Lewis, who had a direct influence on the developing ideas of Marshall McLuhan, and that proved to be of major significance and value to McLuhan's approach to understanding media:
During this period, the artist and writer Percy Wyndham Lewis claimed, the masses were “hypnotised into a sort of hysterical imbecility by the mesmeric methods of Advertisement”. In fact, propaganda, however ubiquitous and ingenious, cannot brainwash an entire people. Most individuals remained free in their heads. But there is no doubt that propaganda was highly influential, particularly when projected on to a screen or over the airwaves, at a time when minds as well as bodies were being battered by the economic blizzard.
Where it did not convince, it confused. It muddied the wells of knowledge and polluted the sources of understanding. It sanctioned the suspension of belief and disbelief. Propaganda helped to make the 1930s an age of obfuscation, of darkness at noon.
Good Heavens—that's where I got it! [Laughter] It was Lewis who put me on to all this study of the environment as an educational—as a teaching machine. To use our more recent terminology, Lewis was the person who showed me that the manmade environment was a teaching machine—a programmed teaching machine. Earlier, you see, the Symbolists had discovered that the work of art is a programmed teaching machine. It's a mechanism for shaping sensibility. Well, Lewis simply extended this private art activity into the corporate activity of the whole society in making environments that basically were artifacts or works of art and that acted as teaching machines upon the whole population.
In McLuhan and Fiore's War and Peace in the Global Village there is a section called:
War as Education
This is followed by another section called:
Education as War
It seems to be the case that Re:LODE Radio is becoming a project that attempts to reveal both sides of this phenomenon through the examples that are presented to us in the daily information environment we are exposed to, in our global village.
Business NOT as usual . . .
Leaked report for world’s major fossil fuel financier says Earth is on unsustainable trajectory
Patrick Greenfield and Jonathan Watts write up on a leaked report for JP Morgan (Fri 21 Feb 2020), the world’s largest financier of fossil fuels, that was obtained by Rupert Read, an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson and philosophy academic at the University of East Anglia, and seen by the Guardian. Here are a couple of extracts from their report:
The world’s largest financier of fossil fuels has warned clients that the climate crisis threatens the survival of humanity and that the planet is on an unsustainable trajectory, according to a leaked document.
The JP Morgan report on the economic risks of human-caused global heating said climate policy had to change or else the world faced irreversible consequences.
The study implicitly condemns the US bank’s own investment strategy and highlights growing concerns among major Wall Street institutions about the financial and reputational risks of continued funding of carbon-intensive industries, such as oil and gas.
JP Morgan has provided $75bn (£61bn) in financial services to the companies most aggressively expanding in sectors such as fracking and Arctic oil and gas exploration since the Paris agreement, according to analysis compiled for the Guardian last year.
The research by JP Morgan economists David Mackie and Jessica Murray says the climate crisis will impact the world economy, human health, water stress, migration and the survival of other species on Earth.
“We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened,” notes the paper, which is dated 14 January.
Drawing on extensive academic literature and forecasts by the International Monetary Fund and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the paper notes that global heating is on course to hit 3.5C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. It says most estimates of the likely economic and health costs are far too small because they fail to account for the loss of wealth, the discount rate and the possibility of increased natural disasters.
The authors say policymakers need to change direction because a business-as-usual climate policy “would likely push the earth to a place that we haven’t seen for many millions of years”, with outcomes that might be impossible to reverse.
“Although precise predictions are not possible, it is clear that the Earth is on an unsustainable trajectory. Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive.”
The investment bank says climate change “reflects a global market failure in the sense that producers and consumers of CO2 emissions do not pay for the climate damage that results.” To reverse this, it highlights the need for a global carbon tax but cautions that it is “not going to happen anytime soon” because of concerns about jobs and competitiveness.
The authors say it is “likely the [climate] situation will continue to deteriorate, possibly more so than in any of the IPCC’s scenarios”.
Without naming any organisation, the authors say changes are occurring at the micro level, involving shifts in behaviour by individuals, companies and investors, but this is unlikely to be enough without the involvement of the fiscal and financial authorities.
Last year, analysis compiled for the Guardian by Rainforest Action Network, a US-based environmental organisation, found JP Morgan was one of 33 powerful financial institutions to have provided an estimated total of $1.9tn (£1.47tn) to the fossil fuel sector between 2016 and 2018.
A JP Morgan spokesperson told the BBC the research team was “wholly independent from the company as a whole, and not a commentary on it”, but declined to comment further. The metadata on the pdf of the report obtained by Read said the document was created on 13 January and that the author of the file was Gabriel de Kock, an executive director at JP Morgan. The Guardian has approached the investment bank for comment.
Pressure from student strikers, activist shareholders and divestment campaigners has prompted several major institutions to claim they will make the climate more of a priority. The business model of fossil fuel companies is also weakening as wind and solar become more competitive. Earlier this month, the influential merchant bank Goldman Sachs downgraded ExxonMobil from a “neutral” to a “sell” position. In January, BlackRock – the world’s biggest asset manager – said it would lower its exposure to fossil fuels ahead of a “significant reallocation of capital”.
Environmental groups remain wary because huge sums are invested in petrochemical firms, but some veteran financial analysts say the tide is changing. The CNBC money pundit Jim Cramer shocked many in his field when he declared: “I’m done with fossil fuels. They’re done. They’re just done.” Describing how a new generation of pension fund managers was withdrawing support, he claimed oil and gas firms were in the death knell phase. “The world has turned on them. It’s actually happening kind of quickly. You’re seeing divestiture by a lot of different funds. It’s going to be a parade that says, ‘Look, these are tobacco. And we’re not going to own them,’” he said. “We’re in a new world.”
This might be a "new world" for capitalism, but it is the real world we live in now that we have to look after. This actual world we live in includes oil industries with methane emissions 40% higher than they are reporting.
Jonathan Watts writing for the Guardian (Wed 19 Feb 2020) reports on how the lead author of the study, Benjamin Hmiel, said the paper was cause for optimism because it showed that action on methane – which has a relatively short shelf life, persisting in the atmosphere for about nine years – could give a strong short-term boost to efforts to stabilise the climate. Here are some extracts from this story:
In the past two centuries, the amount of methane in the atmosphere has more than doubled, though there has long been uncertainty about whether the source was biological – from agriculture, livestock or landfills – or from fossil fuels. There were also doubts about what share of fossil methane was naturally released and what share was from industry.
Earlier estimates were based on intermittent, bottom-up monitoring of oil and gas companies and comparisons with geological evidence from the end of the Pleistocene epoch, about 11,600 years ago.
For a more accurate comparison, a team at the University of Rochester in the US examined levels of methane in the pre-industrial era about 300 years ago. This was achieved by analysing air from that period trapped in glaciers in Greenland. The sample – made up of about a tonne of ice – was extracted with a Blue Ice Drill, capable of producing the world’s biggest ice cores.
The findings, published in Nature, suggest the share of naturally released fossil methane has been overestimated by “an order of magnitude”, which means that human activities are 25-40% more responsible for fossil methane in the atmosphere than thought.
This strengthens suspicions that fossil fuel companies are not fully accounting for their impact on the climate, particularly with regard to methane – a colourless, odourless gas that many plants routinely vent into the atmosphere.
An earlier study revealed methane emissions from US oil and gas plants were 60% higher than reported to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Accidents are also underreported. A single blowout at a natural gas well in Ohio in 2018 discharged more methane over three weeks than the oil and gas industries of France, Norway and the Netherlands released in an entire year. At the time, the company said it was unsure of the size of the leak. The immense scale was only revealed a year later when scientists analysed satellite data provided by the European Space Agency.
Fracking also appears to have worsened the problem. Atmospheric methane had started to flatten off at the turn of the century, but rose again after a surge in fracking activity in the US and elsewhere. The industry, however, continues to claim that the energy source can be used as a “bridge fuel” because it has lower carbon emissions than oil or coal, but this fails to account for leaks and flares of methane and other gases during extraction.
Growing calls for tighter controls will be strengthened by the new study. The lead author, Benjamin Hmiel, said the paper was cause for optimism because it showed that action on methane – which has a relatively short shelf life, persisting in the atmosphere for about nine years – could give a strong short-term boost to efforts to stabilise the climate.
“Placing stricter methane emission regulations on the fossil fuel industry will have the potential to reduce future global warming to a larger extent than previously thought,” Hmiel said. “Methane is important to study because if we make changes to our current methane emissions, it’s going to reflect more quickly.”
Other scientists who were not involved in the research concurred there were positive implications in the findings, but only if governments were able to rein in fossil fuel companies, which has not been the case until now.
“This indicates that the fossil fuel sector has a much more polluting impact beyond being responsible for the overwhelming majority of carbon dioxide emissions. This is worrying and overall bad news,” said Dr Joeri Rogelj, a climate change lecturer at the Grantham Institute.
The good news, Rogelj said, was that measures to prevent leaks, reduce flaring and switch to renewables would be more effective than expected. “What this study shows is that we can have a bigger impact on methane in the atmosphere than earlier thought. This allows us to set climate policy priorities right.”
Dave Reay, the executive director of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation, said one of the key messages from the study was that the old bottom-up method of measuring methane emissions was “woefully inadequate”.
“We knew fossil fuel extraction – including fracking – was a major part of global methane emissions, but this impressive study suggests it is a far bigger culprit in human-induced climate change than we had ever thought,” he said.
“If correct, gas, coal and oil extraction and distribution around the world are responsible for almost half of all human-induced methane emissions. Add to that all the carbon dioxide that is then emitted when the fossil fuels are burned, and you need look no further for the seat of the climate emergency fire.”
Silver linings are OK but only gold is hot enough, according to Panic At The Disco
To the old, and to the new We dedicate this song to you Fuck a silver lining Fuck a silver lining 'Cause only gold is hot enough, hot enough Fuck a silver lining Fuck a silver lining 'Cause only gold is hot enough, hot enough One more, one more
To compromise is NOT an option . . .
This report by Damian Carrington for the Guardian (Thu 20 Feb 2020) should cause extreme concern. However, this a story with a history that goes way back to the 1960's.
Silent Spring is an environmental science book by Rachel Carson. The book was published on September 27, 1962, documenting the adverse environmental effects caused by the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation, and public officials of accepting the industry's marketing claims unquestioningly.
Starting in the late 1950s, prior to the book's publication, Carson had focused her attention on environmental conservation, especially environmental problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result of her research was Silent Spring, which brought environmental concerns to the American public. The book was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, but, owing to public opinion, it brought about numerous changes. It spurred a reversal in the United States' national pesticide policy, led to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses, and helped to inspire an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The book's title was inspired by a poem by John Keats, "La Belle Dame sans Merci", which contained the lines "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.""Silent Spring" was initially suggested as a title for the chapter on birds. By August 1961, Carson agreed to the suggestion of her literary agent Marie Rodell:
Silent Spring would be a metaphorical title for the entire book—suggesting a bleak future for the whole natural world—rather than a literal chapter title about the absence of birdsong.
With Carson's approval, editor Paul Brooks at Houghton Mifflin arranged for illustrations by Louis and Lois Darling, who also designed the cover.
The final writing was the first chapter, "A Fable for Tomorrow", which was intended to provide a gentle introduction to a serious topic. In Silent Spring, Carson relied on evidence from two New York state organic farmers, Marjorie Spock and Mary Richards, and that of biodynamic farming advocate Ehrenfried Pfeiffer in developing her case against DDT.
The overarching theme of Silent Spring is the powerful—and often negative—effect humans have on the natural world. Carson's main argument is that pesticides have detrimental effects on the environment; she says these are more properly termed "biocides" because their effects are rarely limited to the target pests. DDT is a prime example, but other synthetic pesticides—many of which are subject to bioaccumulation—are scrutinized. Carson accuses the chemical industry of intentionally spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting industry claims uncritically. Most of the book is devoted to pesticides' effects on natural ecosystems, but four chapters detail cases of human pesticide poisoning, cancer, and other illnesses attributed to pesticides. About DDT and cancer, Carson says only:
In laboratory tests on animal subjects, DDT has produced suspicious liver tumors. Scientists of the Food and Drug Administration who reported the discovery of these tumors were uncertain how to classify them, but felt there was some "justification for considering them low grade hepatic cell carcinomas." Dr. Hueper [author of Occupational Tumors and Allied Diseases] now gives DDT the definite rating of a "chemical carcinogen."
Carson predicts increased consequences in the future, especially since targeted pests may develop resistance to pesticides and weakened ecosystems fall prey to unanticipated invasive species. The book closes with a call for a biotic approach to pest control as an alternative to chemical pesticides.
Carson never called for an outright ban on DDT. She said in Silent Spring that even if DDT and other insecticides had no environmental side effects, their indiscriminate overuse was counterproductive because it would create insect resistance to pesticides, making them useless in eliminating the target insect populations:
No responsible person contends that insect-borne disease should be ignored. The question that has now urgently presented itself is whether it is either wise or responsible to attack the problem by methods that are rapidly making it worse. The world has heard much of the triumphant war against disease through the control of insect vectors of infection, but it has heard little of the other side of the story—the defeats, the short-lived triumphs that now strongly support the alarming view that the insect enemy has been made actually stronger by our efforts. Even worse, we may have destroyed our very means of fighting.
Carson also said that "Malaria programmes are threatened by resistance among mosquitoes", and quoted the advice given by the director of Holland's Plant Protection Service: "Practical advice should be 'Spray as little as you possibly can' rather than 'Spray to the limit of your capacity'. Pressure on the pest population should always be as slight as possible."
Carson and the others involved with publication of Silent Spring expected fierce criticism and were concerned about the possibility of being sued for libel. Carson was undergoing radiation therapy for cancer and expected to have little energy to defend her work and respond to critics. In preparation for the anticipated attacks, Carson and her agent attempted to amass prominent supporters before the book's release.
Most of the book's scientific chapters were reviewed by scientists with relevant expertise, among whom Carson found strong support. Carson attended the White House Conference on Conservation in May 1962; Houghton Mifflin distributed proof copies of Silent Spring to many of the delegates and promoted the upcoming serialization in The New Yorker. Carson also sent a proof copy to Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas, a long-time environmental advocate who had argued against the court's rejection of the Long Island pesticide spraying case and had provided Carson with some of the material included in her chapter on herbicides.
Though Silent Spring had generated a fairly high level of interest based on pre-publication promotion, this became more intense with its serialization, which began in the June 16, 1962, issue of The New Yorker magazine. This brought the book to the attention of the chemical industry and its lobbyists, as well as the American public. Around that time, Carson learned that Silent Spring had been selected as the Book-of-the-Month for October; she said this would "carry it to farms and hamlets all over that country that don't know what a bookstore looks like—much less The New Yorker."
Other publicity included a positive editorial in The New York Times and excerpts of the serialized version were published in Audubon Magazine. There was another round of publicity in July and August as chemical companies responded.
In the weeks before the September 27, 1962, publication, there was strong opposition to Silent Spring from the chemical industry. DuPont, a major manufacturer of DDT and 2,4-D, and Velsicol Chemical Company, the only manufacturer of chlordane and heptachlor, were among the first to respond. DuPont compiled an extensive report on the book's press coverage and estimated impact on public opinion. Velsicol threatened legal action against Houghton Mifflin, and The New Yorker and Audubon Magazine unless their planned Silent Spring features were canceled.
Chemical industry representatives and lobbyists lodged a range of non-specific complaints, some anonymously. Chemical companies and associated organizations produced brochures and articles promoting and defending pesticide use.
However, Carson's and the publishers' lawyers were confident in the vetting process Silent Spring had undergone. The magazine and book publications proceeded as planned, as did the large Book-of-the-Month printing, which included a pamphlet by William O. Douglas endorsing the book.
American Cyanamid biochemist Robert White-Stevens and former Cyanamid chemist Thomas Jukes were among the most aggressive critics, especially of Carson's analysis of DDT. According to White-Stevens, "If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth".
Others attacked Carson's personal character and scientific credentials, her training being in marine biology rather than biochemistry. White-Stevens called her "a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature", while former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson in a letter to former President Dwight D. Eisenhower reportedly said that;
because she was unmarried despite being physically attractive, she was "probably a Communist".
Monsanto published 5,000 copies of a parody called "The Desolate Year" (1962) which projected a world of famine and disease caused by banning pesticides.
Monsanto scandals . . .
. . . too many to count!
Up until Monsanto was taken over by Bayer in 2018, the Monsanto corporation made their money by producing man-made crops,
but the company behind some controversial GMOs isn't spared from
scandals. Bayerhas its own very dark past.
In 2012 RT's Abby Martin discusses with Liz Wahl Monsanto's sordid
past and their often untold history with America's agriculture business.
Agent Orange . . .
. . . another Monsanto product!
The "Streisand Effect" and Carson's critics!
The Streisand effect is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, they are significantly more motivated to access and spread that information.
Many critics repeatedly said Carson was calling for the elimination of all pesticides, but she had made it clear she was not advocating this but was instead encouraging responsible and carefully managed use with an awareness of the chemicals' impact on ecosystems. She concludes her section on DDT in Silent Spring with advice for spraying as little as possible to limit the development of resistance. Mark Hamilton Lytle writes, Carson "quite self-consciously decided to write a book calling into question the paradigm of scientific progress that defined postwar American culture".
The academic community—including prominent defenders such as H. J. Muller, Loren Eiseley, Clarence Cottam and Frank Egler—mostly backed the book's scientific claims and public opinion backed Carson's text. The chemical industry campaign was counterproductive because the controversy increased public awareness of the potential dangers of pesticides, an early example of the Streisand Effect. Pesticide use became a major public issue after a CBS Reports television special, The Silent Spring of Rachel Carson, which was broadcast on April 3, 1963.
CBS Reports
Wild-eyed, white, male (wearing glasses), in white lab coat insists woman scientist is wrong, because . . .
The program included segments of Carson reading from Silent Spring and interviews with other experts, mostly critics including White-Stevens.
According to biographer Linda Lear, "in juxtaposition to the wild-eyed, loud-voiced Dr. Robert White-Stevens in white lab coat, Carson appeared anything but the hysterical alarmist that her critics contended".
Reactions from the estimated audience of ten to fifteen million were overwhelmingly positive and the program spurred a congressional review of pesticide hazards and the public release of a pesticide report by the President's Science Advisory Committee. Within a year of publication, attacks on the book and on Carson had lost momentum.
A pioneer . . . Carson's work had a powerful impact on the environmental movement. Silent Spring became a rallying point for the new social movement in the 1960s. According to environmental engineer and Carson scholar H. Patricia Hynes, "Silent Spring altered the balance of power in the world. No one since would be able to sell pollution as the necessary underside of progress so easily or uncritically."
Science and art . . .
Rachel
Carson was a writer before becoming a scientist and writer. As a young
girl Carson spent a lot of time exploring around her family's 65-acre
farm.
An avid reader, she began writing stories (often involving animals) at age eight and had her first story published at age ten. She especially enjoyed the St. Nicholas Magazine (which carried her first published stories), the works of Beatrix Potter, and the novels of Gene Stratton-Porter, and in her teen years, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad and Robert Louis Stevenson.
The natural world, particularly the ocean, was the common thread of her favorite literature. The oceans of Melville, Conrad and Stevenson became both the focus of her studies, and later, her professional, literary and scientific livelihood.
At the Pennsylvania College for Women she originally studied English, but switched her major to biology in January 1928, though she continued contributing to the school's student newspaper and literary supplement and she graduated magna cum laude in 1929. After a summer course at the Marine Biological Laboratory, she continued her studies in zoology and genetics at Johns Hopkins in the fall of 1929.
While working in a temporary position with the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, she was engaged in writing radio copy for a series of weekly educational broadcasts entitled Romance Under the Waters.
The series of 52 seven-minute programs focused on aquatic life and was intended to generate public interest in fish biology and in the work of the bureau, a task the several writers before Carson had not managed. Carson also began submitting articles on marine life in the Chesapeake Bay, based on her research for the series, to local newspapers and magazines.
Sitting for the civil service exam, she outscored all other applicants and, in 1936, became the second woman hired by the Bureau of Fisheries for a full-time professional position, as a junior aquatic biologist.
In July 1937, the Atlantic Monthly accepted a revised version of an essay, The World of Waters, that she originally wrote for her first fisheries bureau brochure. Her supervisor had deemed it too good for that purpose. The essay, published as Undersea, was a vivid narrative of a journey along the ocean floor. It marked a major turning point in Carson's writing career. Undersea was expanded to form her first book Under the Sea Wind. By 1948, Carson was working on material for a second book and had made the conscious decision to begin a transition to writing full-time. Oxford University Press expressed interest in Carson's book proposal for a life history of the ocean, spurring her to complete by early 1950 the manuscript of what would become The Sea Around Us. Her work was described as being "poetic," and it was this book that launched her into the public eye and a second career as a writer and conservationist; in retrospect it is counted the second book of her so-called sea trilogy. In 1955, she completed the third volume of her sea trilogy, The Edge of the Sea, which focuses on life in coastal ecosystems, particularly along the Eastern Seaboard. It had ppeared in The New Yorker in two condensed installments shortly before its October 26 book release. By this time, Carson's reputation for clear and poetical prose was well established.
A film version was made in 1952, but written and produced by Irwin Allen, although based on the book by Carson. Released in 1953, and although it won the 1953 Oscar for Best Documentary Carson was extremely disappointed with the script and would never sell film rights to her work again. Nevertheless, as evidenced in this clip taken from the end of the film, this documentary included a clear statement on the way the condition of the world's oceans govern the global climate. This clip also contains a prescient warning on the impact of ice melt resulting in dramatic sea level rise.
The condition of the oceans governs the global climate . . .
Grassroots environmental awareness . . .
Carson's work and the activism it inspired are partly responsible for the deep ecology movement and the strength of the grassroots environmental movement since the 1960s. It was also influential on the rise of ecofeminism and on many feminist scientists.
The creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in the US by the Nixon Administration in 1970 addressed another concern that Carson had written about. Until then, the USDA was responsible both for regulating pesticides and promoting the concerns of the agriculture industry; Carson saw this as a conflict of interest, since the agency was not responsible for effects on wildlife or other environmental concerns beyond farm policy.
The creation of the EPA can be seen as the extended dynamic of Silent Spring. Much of the agency's early work, such as enforcement of the 1972 Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, was directly related to Carson's work.
Contrary to the position of the pesticide industry, the DDT phase-out action taken by the EPA (led by William Ruckelshaus) implied that there was no way to adequately regulate DDT use. Ruckelshaus' conclusion was that DDT could not be used safely.
History professor Gary Kroll wrote:
"Rachel Carson's Silent Spring played a large role in articulating ecology as a 'subversive subject'—as a perspective that cuts against the grain of materialism, scientism, and the technologically engineered control of nature."
Damian Carrington Environment editor writes (Wed 18 Oct 2017):
The abundance of flying insects has plunged by three-quarters over the past 25 years, according to a new study that has shocked scientists.
Insects are an integral part of life on Earth as both pollinators and prey for other wildlife and it was known that some species such as butterflies were declining. But the newly revealed scale of the losses to all insects has prompted warnings that the world is “on course for ecological Armageddon”, with profound impacts on human society.
The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said.
The cause of the huge decline is as yet unclear, although the destruction of wild areas and widespread use of pesticides are the most likely factors and climate change may play a role. The scientists were able to rule out weather and changes to landscape in the reserves as causes, but data on pesticide levels has not been collected.
'Insect apocalypse' pose risk to all life on Earth, conservationists warn
Recently (Wed 13 Nov 2019), and just over two years from the previous report Damian Carrington Environment editor writes under the subheading:
The “unnoticed insect apocalypse” should set alarm bells ringing, according to conservationists, who said that without a halt there will be profound consequences for humans and all life on Earth.
A new report suggested half of all insects may have been lost since 1970 as a result of the destruction of nature and heavy use of pesticides. The report said 40% of the 1million known species of insect are facing extinction.
The analysis, written by one of the UK’s leading ecologists, has a particular focus on the UK, whose insects are the most studied in the world. It said 23 bee and wasp species have become extinct in the last century, while the number of pesticide applications has approximately doubled in the last 25 years.
Business as usual?
Along the LODE Zone Line in Germany, Australia and Puerto Rico, the scale of the current mass extinction event is being revealed in recent scientific studies. Damian Carrington (Tue 15 Jan 2019) reports:
“We knew that something was amiss in the first couple days,” said Brad Lister. “We were driving into the forest and at the same time both Andres and I said: ‘Where are all the birds?’ There was nothing.”
His return to the Luquillo rainforest in Puerto Rico after 35 years was to reveal an appalling discovery. The insect population that once provided plentiful food for birds throughout the mountainous national park had collapsed. On the ground, 98% had gone. Up in the leafy canopy, 80% had vanished. The most likely culprit by far is global warming.
“It was just astonishing,” Lister said. “Before, both the sticky ground plates and canopy plates would be covered with insects. You’d be there for hours picking them off the plates at night. But now the plates would come down after 12 hours in the tropical forest with a couple of lonely insects trapped or none at all.”
“It was a true collapse of the insect populations in that rainforest,” he said. “We began to realise this is terrible – a very, very disturbing result.”
Not just a "silent spring"?
Carson's work, because of what it represents in the environmental movement, continues to be attacked by neo-liberal, fake libertarian, free-market servants of entrenched capitalist interests. For example Carson's legacy has been targeted by organizations opposed to the environmental movement, including Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria and the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute.
According to Wikipedia, Roger Bate is a British educated economist who has held a variety of positions in free market oriented organizations. His work focuses on solving the problem of counterfeit and substandard medicines, particularly those in the developing world. He also works on US and international aid policy, performance of aid organisations, and health policy in developing countries, particularly with regard to malaria control and the use of DDT. He consulted for the tobacco industry in the mid-'90s, though the extent of this work is disputed.
"to defend the principles and improve the institutions of American freedom and democratic capitalism—limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate".
AEI is closely associated with conservatism and neoconservatism, although it is officially non-partisan. Roger Bate is also a fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank that says that its experts; "further the dissemination of free-market thinking", and that it "analyses and expounds the role of markets in solving economic and social problems". It subscribes to a right-wing and neoliberal worldview. It is based in Westminster, London, England. Founded by businessman and battery farming pioneer Antony Fisher in 1955, it promotes monetarist economics.
There has been discussion in the press and among parliamentarians as to whether the IEA is more accurately described as a lobbying operation than as a think tank.
Roger Bate is also on the board of directors of Africa Fighting Malaria, an NGO based in Washington D.C., United States and South Africa which states it;
"seeks to educate people about the scourge of Malaria and the political economy of malaria control".
The organization generally "promotes market based solutions and economic freedom as the best ways to ensure improved welfare and longer life expectancy in poor countries". Founded in 2000 during the Stockholm Negotiations on Persistent Organic Pollutants, AFM's original focus was the promotion of a public health exemption for the insecticide DDT for malaria control. According to their current website, their mission is to "make malaria control more transparent, responsive and effective by holding public institutions accountable for funding and implementing effective, integrated and country-driven malaria control policies."
According to IRS filings, the organization spends money entirely on executive compensation, with no program expenses of any kind. It has been described as a front group established to discredit environmentalists. In documents obtained during state litigation against tobacco companies, founder Roger Bate described the organization's purpose as part of a larger strategy to portray first-world environmentalists as unconcerned with Black Africans.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a non-profit libertarian think tank founded by political writer Fred L. Smith Jr. in 1984, in Washington, D.C., to advance principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty.
CEI is one of a group of Conservative think tanks funded to overturn the environmentalism of the 1960s, central to what has been called the climate change denial machine. It was involved in assisting the anti-environmental climate change policy of the George W. Bush administration. CEI promotes environmental policies based on limited government regulation and property rights and rejects what they call "global warming alarmism".
The organization's largest program, the Center for Energy and Environment, focuses on energy policy, chemical risk policy, Clean Air Act regulation, land and water regulation, the Endangered Species Act, and private conservation policies.
CEI is an outspoken opponent of government action by the Environmental Protection Agency that would require limits on greenhouse gas emissions. It favors free-market environmentalism, and supports the idea that market institutions are more effective in protecting the environment than is government. CEI President Kent Lassman wrote on the organization's blog that, "there is no debate about whether the Earth’s climate is warming", that "human activities very likely contribute to that warming", and that "this has long been the CEI's position".
In March 1992, CEI's founder Fred Smith said of anthropogenic climate change: "Most of the indications right now are it looks pretty good. Warmer winters, warmer nights, no effects during the day because of clouding, sounds to me like we're moving to a more benign planet, more rain, richer, easier productivity to agriculture."
In May 2006, CEI's global warming policy activities attracted attention as it embarked upon an ad campaign with two television commercials. These ads promote carbon dioxide as a positive factor in the environment and argue that global warming is not a concern. One ad focuses on the message that CO2 is misrepresented as a pollutant, stating that "it's essential to life. We breathe it out. Plants breathe it in... They call it pollution. We call it life." The other states that the world's glaciers are "growing, not melting... getting thicker, not thinner." It cites Science articles to support its claims. However, the editor of Science stated that the ad "misrepresents the conclusions of the two cited Science papers... by selective referencing".
The author of the articles, Curt Davis, director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence at the University of Missouri, said CEI was misrepresenting his previous research to inflate their claims. "These television ads are a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate," Davis said.
In 2009, CEI's director of energy and global warming policy told The Washington Post, "The only thing that's been demonstrated to reduce emissions is economic collapse".
CEI has a longstanding project to recapture the moral legitimacy of capitalism through research, writing, events, and other outreach activities. In 2019, CEI’s Vice President for Strategy Iain Murray argued, in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, that advocates of capitalism and free markets had taken the support of social conservatives for granted.
This nexus of right wing free market climate change deniers oppose
restrictions on DDT, asserting that large numbers of deaths to such
restrictions, and argue that Carson was responsible for them. This is an example of the climate change denial machine creating a "black legend" for our current culture wars.
Eco-writer, loathed by McCarthyite right, is honoured on 107th birthday
An article by Guardian staff was prompted by the appearance of this Google Doodle on Rachel Carson's 107th birthday. They write:
Rachel Carson, author of one of the most influential eco-manuals ever written, has been picked for today's Google Doodle, on the admittedly slightly random occasion of her 107th birthday.
Anyone unfamiliar with Carson's book The Silent Spring should take a look at this paean by Margaret Atwood, who honoured her in the second part of her Oryx and Crake trilogy, The Year of the Flood, as Saint Rachel of All Birds.
By the time Margaret Atwood was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of "Silent Spring" in 2012, all hell had already broken loose with the attempt to destroy Carson's legacy and reputation by the climate denial machine.
"spearhead a cultural renaissance that will reverse the anti-reason, anti-individualism, anti-freedom, anti-capitalist trends in today's culture"
The ARI website banner pronounces:
OBJECTIVISM AND TODAY'S ISSUES Our perspectives on issues of the day are based on the principles of a free society: genuine laissez-faire capitalism, its moral foundations, its life-promoting consequences, and the pro-reason culture that makes it possible.
However, the information ARI disseminates has an objective problem with factual accuracy, and a blatant tendency to deliberately mislead.
Keith Lockitch, writing for ARI May 23, 2007:
On May 27, environmentalists will celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson, the founding mother of their movement.
But Carson’s centenary is no cause for celebration. Her legacy includes more than a million deaths a year from the mosquito-borne disease malaria. Though nearly eradicated decades ago, malaria has resurged with a vengeance because DDT, the most effective agent of mosquito control, has been essentially discarded — discarded based not on scientific concerns about its safety, but on environmental dogma advanced by Carson.
. . . to quote Adolph Hitler from his evil tract Mein Kampf:
.
. . in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility;
because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in
the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or
voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they
more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they
themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed
to resort to large-scale falsehoods
Kirsten Weir sets out in her article how the right wing climate denial machine claims are easily dismissed as being the big lies they truly are.
The right has revved up its claim that the environmental pioneer who criticized DDT was responsible for the spread of malaria that killed millions. The facts say otherwise.
Kirsten Weir begins her article, writing on June 29, 2007:
Rachel Carson has been shouldering a lot of blows lately, especially for a woman who has been dead more than 40 years. Last month marked the 100th birthday of the woman whose 1962 book, "Silent Spring," is credited with launching the modern environmental movement. While environmentalists paused to celebrate Carson's legacy, those politically opposed to environmental regulation took the opportunity to engage in some birthday-bashing. They blame Carson and her successors for millions of deaths by malaria -- deaths, they say, that could have been prevented if she hadn't scared the world away from the potent pesticide DDT.
When it comes to matters of factual accuracy and scientific analysis, as in the commentary of John Quiggin and Tim Lambert;
"the most striking feature of the claim against Carson is the ease with which it can be refuted".
As the Wikipedia article says of Silent Spring;
DDT was never banned for anti-malarial use, and its ban for agricultural use in the United States in 1972 did not apply outside the U.S. nor to anti-malaria spraying.
The international treaty that banned most uses of DDT and other organochlorine pesticides—the 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (which became effective in 2004)—included an exemption for the use of DDT for malaria control until affordable substitutes could be found.
Mass outdoor spraying of DDT was abandoned in poor countries subject to malaria, such as Sri Lanka, in the 1970s and 1980s; this was not because of government prohibitions but because the DDT had lost its ability to kill the mosquitoes. Because of insects' very short breeding cycle and large number of offspring, the most resistant insects survive and pass on their genetic traits to their offspring, which replace the pesticide-slain insects relatively rapidly. Agricultural spraying of pesticides produces pesticide resistance in seven to ten years.
Some experts have said that restrictions placed on the agricultural use of DDT have increased its effectiveness for malaria control. According to pro-DDT advocate Amir Attaran, the result of the (activated in 2004) Stockholm Convention banning DDT's use in agriculture "is arguably better than the status quo ... For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before.
Adam Sarvana likens Roger Bate to Nick Naylor, the charismatic and smooth-talking tobacco lobbyist Christopher Buckley created in the film Thank You For Smoking.
Furthermore, these arguments have been dismissed as "outrageous" by former World Health Organization (WHO) scientist Socrates Litsios. May Berenbaum, University of Illinois entomologist, says, "to blame environmentalists who oppose DDT for more deaths than Hitler is worse than irresponsible."
Merchants of doubt . . .
The image used by the Observer when reviewing Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway, in a section on Science and nature, is taken from the TV drama Mad Men. This series about Ad Men is set in the 1960's, when the tobacco industry argued that lung cancer was caused by a number of environmental factors, even though it knew there was a link with smoking.
It identifies parallels between the global warming controversy and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain, DDT, and the hole in the ozone layer.
Oreskes and Conway write that in each case "keeping the controversy alive" by spreading doubt and confusion after a scientific consensus had been reached was the basic strategy of those opposing action. In particular, they show that Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on many contemporary issues.
A film, Merchants of Doubt, directed by Robert Kenner, was released in 2014.
Robin McKie reviewing this book for the Observer (Sun 8 Aug 2010) says:
This exposé of the coterie of rightwing scientists hell-bent on destroying the cause of environmentalism is outstanding
And, of the vilification of Carson, asks:
Why these sudden denunciations of Carson?
The answer – provided by Oreskes and Conway in this painstakingly assembled but nevertheless riveting piece of investigative reporting – is simple. The far right in America, in its quest to ensure the perpetuation of the free market, is now hell-bent on destroying the cause of environmentalism.
According to this distorted view of life, environmentalists are watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside – who want to impose regulation, "the slippery slope to socialism", on the use of tobacco, ozone-destroying chemicals and greenhouse gases. "And in the demonising of Rachel Carson, free marketeers realised that if you could convince people that an example of successful government regulation wasn't, in fact, successful – that it was actually a mistake – you could strengthen the argument against regulation in general," state Oreskes and Conway.
Hence the monstering of Carson's reputation, an act of deliberate misinformation, say Oreskes and Conway, that has become the hallmark of a group of far-right institutions that are funded by businesses and conservative foundations and supported by a coterie of rightwing scientists who believe ecological threats are made up by lefty researchers as part of a grand plan to expand government control over our lives. These are the villains of Merchants of Doubt, and the same names pop up throughout its pages: scientists such as Fred Seitz, Robert Jastrow and Bill Nierenberg, along with the institutes through which they, and their kind, have lent their services to a range of rightwing, free-market foundations and institutions including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the source of that anti-Carson diatribe that I quoted earlier. When not funded by the tobacco industry, many of these outfits often receive backing from fossil-fuel companies such as Exxon.
Business as usual? Science versus lies. Lies paid for by big business interests.
Naomi Klein: On Fire: The (Burning) Case For A Green New Deal
Naomi Klein is right and the right are wrong
In this review of On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal, by Naomi Klein (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Alyssa Battistoni, writing for Jacobin Magazine, provides us with both the focus and the overview so we can see Why Naomi Klein Has Been Right, and why the right are wrong.
In the twenty-first century, all politics are climate politics
The age of climate gradualism is over, as unprecedented disasters are exacerbated by inequalities of race and class. We need profound, radical change.
A Green New Deal can tackle the climate emergency and rampant inequality at the same time. Cutting carbon emissions while winning immediate gains for the many is the only way to build a movement strong enough to defeat big oil, big business, and the super-rich—starting right now.
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