Thanks for posting this extract Chris. There are a number of other articles and blogs by Clive Hamilton, as well as some video and audio related to Requiem for a Species at www.earthscan.co.uk/requiem.

Clive also has a blog on the Earthscan website, and responds to comments about the book there - http://www.earthscan.co.uk/blog/category/Clive-Hamilton.aspx

Thanks

Gudrun

Gudrun Freese
Marketing Executive
Earthscan
Tel: +44 (0)20 7841 1930
www.earthscan.co.uk

Earthscan is the 2010 Independent Publisher of the Year.

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Keene
Sent: 28 May 2010 19:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Extract: Requiem for a Species by Clive Hamilton | Books | guardian.co.uk

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/16/requiem-for-a-species-clive-hamilton/print


Extract: Requiem for a Species by Clive Hamilton

In an exclusive extract from his new book addressing the resistance to
the truth about climate change, Clive Hamilton examines the roots of the
denial lobby in US conservatism's reaction to the fall of communism

* Clive Hamilton
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 April 2010 10.19 BST


A drop of water falls from a melting ice on Argentina's Perito Moreno
glacier

A drop of water falls from melting ice on Argentina's Perito Moreno
glacier. Scientists warn that glaciers in the Andes are melting because
of the effects of climate change. Photograph: Marcos Brindicci/Reuters

If we search for the roots of climate denial it soon becomes apparent
that they lie in the reaction of American conservatism to the fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As
the threat of the 'red menace' receded, the energy conservatives had put
into opposing communism sought other outlets. Islamism had for some time
been building as a threat, as it seemed to challenge the achievements of
the West and the inevitable march of its influence. But there was an
internal enemy too. Since the 1970s 'neo-conservatism' had set itself
against the influence of the 'new class' of liberal intellectuals who
had betrayed the Western tradition with a sustained critique of its
assumptions and achievements. Feminism, multi-culturalism and
anti-colonialism not only sought to correct injustices, but uncovered
oppressive structures buried deep within the foundations of Western
civilisation.

1. Requiem for a Species
2. by Clive Hamilton
3. 240pp,
4. Earthscan Ltd,
5. £14.99
6.

1. Buy Requiem for a Species at the Guardian bookshop

Environmentalism posed a particular threat because it called into
question the benign nature of the system not from the perspective of an
oppressed group but from the perspective of science, the very basis of
Western civilisation. In the emergence of the 'green scare' the Rio
Earth Summit in 1992 was a critical moment, one that brought to a head
three decades of rising environmental concerns around the world.
Attended by 108 heads of state or government, it put environmentalism at
the centre of global action and, among other important agreements,
adopted the Framework Convention on Climate Change which to this day
provides the architecture for international climate negotiations. The
Earth Summit not only highlighted the growing body of science that
identified environmental decline but signalled a marked shift in values.

President George Bush senior was well aware of the political dangers of
the Rio Summit and instructed the US delegation to water down or block
most diplomatic initiatives, including the Framework Convention. Bush
and fellow conservatives recognised that after the Cold War a new threat
to their worldview had emerged.

 From the outset, environmentalism was seen as a threat to US national
sovereignty. Before Rio, a senior Bush Administration official had
expressed it this way: 'Americans did not fight and win the wars of the
twentieth century to make the world safe for green vegetables.' This
nationalistic framing of the issue has had a powerful and enduring
impact in the United States. In his 2008 presidential campaign Barack
Obama's climate policy emphasised greater energy efficiency in order to
free the United States from the influence of 'foreign oil'. In defending
the expansion of nuclear power, climate sceptic Frederick Seitz had put
it more bluntly: 'We have more control over the cost of nuclear power.
The Muslims can raise the price of oil to any level they want.' Among
the 17,000 people attending the Rio Summit was Dixie Lee Ray, an
influential conservative activist. A marine biologist with a doctorate
from Stanford on the nervous system of a type of lanternfish, in 1973
Ray was appointed by President Nixon to chair the Atomic Energy
Commission and was subsequently elected governor of Washington State.
She co-authored Environmental Overkill, a 1994 book critical of
environmentalism, and was closely associated with the heads of two
right-wing think tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Competitive
Enterprise Institute, both active in denying climate science. At Rio Ray
expressed alarm because the summit was sponsored by UN officials who,
she said, were members of the 'International Socialist Party'. She saw
the summit's Agenda 21 as designed to impose 'world government under the
UN, [so] that essentially all governments give up their sovereignty, and
that nations will be, as they said quite openly, frightened or coerced
into doing that by threats of environmental damage'.

Ray was expressing one of the deepest fears of US conservatives, but
their anxiety over national sovereignty was matched by the disquiet they
felt at environmentalism's destabilisation of the idea of progress and
mastery of nature. For conservatives, these beliefs define modernity
itself. Their refrain that environmentalists want to take us back to
living in caves reflects not just an inability to imagine a third path
other than affluence and poverty, but their unquestioned identification
of progress with unfettered growth. Any challenge to growth could only
mean the end of progress, of civilisation and of the American way of life.

Yet within the collection of core ideas that defined conservative belief
a contradiction had emerged. Science itself seemed to be saying that
continued human advancement was inconsistent with endless growth and the
desire to master the natural world.

The easiest resolution of the cognitive dissonance this generated was to
reject the science that causes the discomfort. For some, the
creationists, this was not difficult as a prior decision had been made
to accept science conditional on its consistency with deeper beliefs.
For more sophisticated conservatives, those who led the movement and
privileged science over biblical literalism, the solution was not to
reject science per se but to reinterpret some scientific practice with
the claim that its objectivity had been corrupted by biases introduced
by scientists themselves, those who had become infected by the values of
liberalism that spread in the 1960s and 1970s.

These sentiments help explain why a handful of scientists with genuine
climate science credentials broke from the bulk of their colleagues and
joined the anti-environment movement in the 1980s. Myanna Lahsen has
studied in detail the life experiences and beliefs of three prominent
physicists who have participated in the conservative backlash against
climate science. In the post-war decades Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow
and William Nierenberg were physicists at the pinnacle of the
profession, where they enjoyed the respect of society and the patronage
of governments who understood scientific endeavour as the source of
national power and prestige. Part of the nuclear science establishment
with links to the defence effort, their influence reached a peak in the
1970s, just as the environment and peace movements began to challenge
the benefits of nuclear technology and the undue power of the
'military-industrial complex'.

The social benefits of science and technology were no longer accepted
uncritically and these challenges found expression in political demands
for independent evaluation of science and technology. The scientific
power and privilege of the elite went into decline. Lahsen reports that
Seitz himself wrote of his depression over the new political environment
and its attacks on the modernist program of progress through
technological advance. 'Their discourses generally', writes Lahsen,
'reveal a pre-reflexive modernist ethos characterized by strong trust in
science and technology as providers of solutions to problems ... an
understanding of science and progress that prevailed during the first
half of the twentieth century'. They do not see nature as fragile and
they believe in the right of humans to use technology to exert mastery,
and it is in respect to this supreme ability of humans that elite
scientists such as themselves have a unique entitlement to shape
opinion. They express outrage at those who challenge this view of
science and progress, experiencing it as a personal affront, as a 'sense
of violated entitlement'. Their intolerance of scientific ignorance can
perhaps be forgiven, but how do they respond to those better informed?
When asked why most scientists reject his sceptical views on global
warming, Seitz (who has been president of the US National Academy of
Sciences) opined: 'Most scientists are Democrats ... I think it's as
simple as that.'

Among the characteristics of elite physicists like the trio is an
intellectual arrogance that leads them to believe, as one close observer
put it, that global environmental problems are 'trivia that can be
handled by a good physicist on a Friday afternoon over a beer'. Being
the stars of the sciences, with a rigour others want to emulate, gives
them a sense of intellectual superiority and permission to be contrarian.

In 1984 Seitz, Jastrow and Nierenberg founded the George C Marshall
Institute, a Washington think tank initially devoted to defending
President Ronald Reagan's embattled Strategic Defense Initiative, or
'Star Wars' program, panned by most experts as unworkable and a massive
waste. Although still campaigning on missile defence, in the 1990s the
Marshall Institute's foremost activity became attacking climate change
science. It is no surprise to find that Exxon began providing funding.
Claiming its purpose is to counter the politicisation of science 'by
providing policymakers with rigorous, clearly written and unbiased
technical analyses', every paper on the subject of climate science it
publishes or links to on its website aims to debunk the science.

The way in which conservative think tanks amplified the message of
sympathetic scientists is well documented; given their status as a very
small minority, it is a sign of their effectiveness that, in appearances
before congressional hearings on climate change, representatives of
conservative think tanks achieved virtual parity with scientists
representing the consensus view.

Climate scepticism grew directly out of the conservative
counter-movement against environmentalism. Its first task was to erode
confidence in the science on which environmental concerns were based by
arguing that the scientists had become politicised and were using their
research, or allowing it to be used, to advance an anti-corporate
political agenda. An analogy is sometimes drawn between those who have
resisted the tide of scientific evidence on the dangers of climate
change and those who once questioned the link between smoking and lung
cancer in the face of overwhelming medical evidence. It turns out that
the links between denialists in the climate change and smoking
controversies go much deeper than mere analogy. In response to the 1992
report of the US Environmental Protection Agency linking passive smoking
with cancer, Philip Morris hired a public relations company named APCO
to develop a counter-strategy. Acknowledging that the views of tobacco
companies lacked credibility, APCO proposed a strategy of
'astroturfing', the formation and funding of apparently independent
front groups to give the impression of a popular movement opposed to
'overregulation' and in support of individual freedom. Foremost among
the fake citizens' groups was The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition
(TASSC). According to secret documents uncovered in a court case, and
reported by George Monbiot, it was to be 'a national coalition intended
to educate the media, public officials and the public about the dangers
of 'junk science' ... Upon formation of Coalition, key leaders will
begin media outreach, e.g. editorial board tours, opinion articles, and
brief elected officials in selected states.'

The strategy was to link concerns about passive smoking with a range of
other popular anxieties, including global warming, nuclear waste
disposal and biotechnology, in order to suggest that these were all part
of an unjustified social panic, so that calls for government
intervention in people's lives were unwarranted. It set out to cast
doubt on the science, to link the scare against smoking with other
'unfounded fears' and to contrast the 'junk science' of their opponents
with the 'sound science' they promoted. As one tobacco-company memo
noted: 'Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing
with the "body of fact" that exists in the mind of the general public.
It is also the means of establishing a controversy.'

As the 1990s progressed and the rear-guard action against restrictions
on smoking faded, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition started
receiving funds from Exxon (among other oil companies) and its 'junk
science' website began to carry material attacking climate change
science. Monbiot wrote that this website 'has been the main entrepôt for
almost every kind of climate-change denial that has found its way into
the mainstream press'. Having been set up by Philip Morris, TASSC 'was
the first and most important of the corporate-funded organisations
denying that climate change is taking place. It has done more damage to
the campaign to halt it than any other body.' So the tactics, personnel
and organisations mobilised to serve the interests of the tobacco lobby
in the 1980s were seamlessly transferred to serve the interests of the
fossil fuel lobby in the 1990s. Frederick Seitz had in the 1980s served
as principal scientific adviser for cigarette-maker R.J. Reynolds, from
which position he challenged the link between tobacco smoke and cancer.
The task of the climate sceptics in the think tanks and PR companies
hired by fossil fuel companies was to engage in 'consciousness lowering
activities', to 'de-problematise' global warming by characterising it as
a form of politically driven panicmongering.

As a result, climate denial and political conservatism have become, at
least in the United States, entwined. Although some evangelical churches
now encourage action to avert global warming as an expression of good
stewardship of God's Earth, climate scepticism has become part of the
worldview of some Christian fundamentalists. This stew of paranoia finds
expression in figures such as Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann,
who attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her 'global warming
fanaticism ... She has said that she's just trying to save the planet.
We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago.'

* This is an edited extract from Requiem for a Species by Clive
Hamilton, published by Earthscan