To believe in such a far-reaching conspiracy theory, one would have to first deny all the evidence before our eyes. But then one would also have to believe that the US, China, and Europe, as well as other countries, are in league. You would also have to assume that thousands of tenured scientists� ��"a group with a disproportionate number of large egos and people with a penchant for disputation and controversy, I might add� ��"are all working in concert to bury information and create a false theory. Finally, you would have to believe that all this effort is being made in order to pursue an economy-crippling strategy of making fossil fuels more expensive that is directly in opposition to the wishes of virtually the entire capitalist system.
When, I have to ask, has the US government ever acted deliberately against the interests of the major capitalist enterprises? When, except during revolutionary moments, have any nations acted against the wishes of the assembled commercial interests within their borders? The short answer is: never.
Unless you think the Jews, or alternatively the Freemasons or Opus Dei or the Federalist Society, or maybe all these disparate groups together, are behind this vast conspiracy, and have successfully terrorized and bribed the tens of thousands of scientists and government officials into complicity, the idea of a conspiracy so huge and far-reaching is simply laughable.
And yet with almost half of Americans ready to believe it, the corporate media, eager for ratings, are playing along, giving equal billing to the global warming deniers. Just last night, ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson offered a story on climate change that featured competitor Fox TV's ardent climate change denier and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck as a suppsedly credible advocate for the argument that global warming is an elaborate hoax.
We might as well be watching news stories about how we've all been duped into believing that the earth revolves around the sun, or that, god help us, the damned thing is round.
The truth is, if there is a conspiracy regarding climate change, it is a conspiracy by our government to minimize the threat (we saw that concretely with the attempt by the Bush administration to muzzle climate scientists like NASA's James Hansen), avoid taking serious action, and pretend that the actions being proposed, like � ���"cap and trade,� �� � will solve the problem.
As I sit here in southeastern Pennsylvania on December 10, looking
out at the green grass on my lawn, which has yet to feel a hard frost
just two weeks before Christmas, I'm reminded of Mr. Malone's old
banner: � ���"If you can't measure it, it doesn't exist.� �� � The corollary is
clearly: � ���"If you can measure it, it does exist.� �� �
_________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is � ���"The Case for Impeachment� �� � (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net
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