Sometimes
the attacks on education and the common good are very closely linked. There’s a
current illustration which is pretty striking. Several--one of them is what’s
called the Environmental Literacy Improvement Act, which is now being proposed
to state legislatures by ALEC. That’s the American Legislative Exchange
Council. It’s a corporate-funded lobby with tremendous wealth, that designs
legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and the extreme wealth.
It has been quite influential. Well, this particular act, which is just now
being proposed, the Environmental Literacy Improvement Act, mandates what they
call “balanced teaching,” of climate science in K-12 classrooms. “Balanced
teaching,” as you probably know, is a code word that refers to teaching climate
change denial. That’s to “balance” authentic climate science--that stuff you read in science journals and
other serious publications. And legislation based on these ALEC models have [sic] already been introduced in several states will probably be
instituted {inaudible} soon.
This
ALEC legislation is based on a project of the Heartland Institute. That's a corporate-funded institute which
is dedicated to rejection of the scientific consensus on what’s happening to
the climate. The Institute has a project which calls for, in their words, “a
global warming curriculum for K-12 classrooms.” And its aim (I’m quoting from
it) is “to teach that there is a major
controversy over whether or not humans are changing the weather.” Of course all
of this is dressed up in rhetoric about teaching critical thinking and all
sorts of nice things. It’s very similar and parallel, in fact, to the current
assault on teaching children about evolution and about science quite generally.
All of that has to be balanced with raging controversies.
And
there is indeed a controversy. On one side is the overwhelming majority of
scientists, all of the worlds’ greatest national academies of sciences, the
professional societies of science, the professional science journals, the IPCC
(the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the
general groupings of scientists
that deals with this. They all agree that global warming is taking place, that there's a substantial human component, that the situation is serious and quite possibly
dire, and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world might reach a kind of
a tipping point when the process will escalate sharply and will be
irreversible. The end of life as we know it, very severe affects on the
possibility of decent human survival. Actually it’s very rare to find such overwhelming
scientific consensus on complex scientific issues like this.
Now
it’s true that it’s not unanimous. There is a controversy. And the media
commonly reports, presents, a
controversy between the overwhelming scientific consensus, the national
institutes of science, the science
journals and so on the one side, and on
the other side, the skeptics. Actually, among the skeptics, there are a few
quite respected scientists who caution that there’s a lot that is unknown--which is correct. The fact that there’s a
lot that’s unknown means that things might not be as bad as the consensus
claims or they might be a lot worse. That’s what it means to say that much is
not known, but only the first alternative is ever brought up. And there’s
something omitted from this contrived debate. There’s actually a much larger
group of skeptics among scientists, highly regarded climate scientists who
regard the regular reports of the IPCC as much too conservative. That includes,
for example, the climate change study group at my own university, at MIT.
They’ve repeatedly been proven correct over the years. The consensus apparently
is too conservative. Things are much worse. But they’re scarcely part of the
public debate at all, although they’re very prominent in the scientific literatures you can find if you read the
science journals.
Well,
the Heartland Institute and ALEC are part of a huge campaign by corporate
lobbies. To sew doubt about the near unanimous consensus of scientists that
human activities are having a major impact on global warming, with perhaps
ominous consequences and not that far off. The campaign is not a secret. It’s
openly announced, publicly announced, including the lobbying organizations of
the fossil fuel industry, American Chamber of Commerce, the major business
lobby and others. It’s had a certain effect on public opinion. So, public
opinion in the United States is not quite as concerned about the dangers of
what we are doing to the climate as in other comparable countries. But actually
a careful study showed that public opinion remains much closer to the
scientific consensus than policy is, which is an interesting fact. And that’s
undoubtedly why major sectors of the corporate world are launching their attack
on the educational system to try to counter the tendency of the public to pay
attention to the conclusions of serious scientific research.
You
probably heard that at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, a
few weeks ago, Governor Bobby Jindal warned the Republican leadership, as he
put it, that, "We must stop being
the stupid party... We must stop
insulting the intelligence of voters."
Actually, ALEC and its corporate backers have a different view. They want the
country to be the stupid nation. And maybe, if it is, they’ll even join the
stupid party that Jindal warned about.
The
major scientific journals give a very clear sense of how surreal all of this
is, how, what would it look like to observers, say, watching what’s going on on
earth, in fact what it does look like in other countries. So, take Science
magazine, the major science weekly, a journal of the American Association for
the Advancement Science. A couple of weeks ago, it had three news items side by
side. One of them reported that the year 2012 was the hottest year on record in
the United States with all kind of harmful consequences all over the
country—the drought, the hurricanes, all sorts of things. And, as it pointed out, this is continuing a long trend. The second news item
reported a new study by the United States Global Climate Change Research
Program, which provided some new evidence for rapid climate change as a result
of human activities and also discussed likely severe impacts. The third news
item reported the new appointments to chair the committees on science policy
chosen by the House of Representatives where a minority of voters elected a
large majority of Republicans, thanks to the shredding of the democratic system
in recent years. In Pennsylvania, as you probably know, a considerable majority
voted for Democrats for the House, but they won barely over a third of the
House seats.
So,
now we have the three science committees. All of the three chairs deny that
humans contribute to climate change. Two of the three chairs deny that climate
change is even taking place. And one of them,
who denies everything, is also a long
time advocate lobbyist for the fossil fuel industry. The same issue of the
journal has a detailed technical article which provides new evidence that the
irreversible tipping point may be ominously close. That’s a picture of what’s
going on, in the context in which the ALEC effort is being introduced to ensure
that we become a stupid nation.
For
those who Adam Smith called “the masters of mankind,” it’s very important that
we become a stupid nation in the interest of their short term profits. Damn the
consequences. That’s the conception of the Common Good that they want to
institute. These are essential properties of the
reigning contemporary doctrines, sometimes called the market fundamentalist
doctrines, inherent in these doctrines that you have to have these things going
on.
ALEC
and its corporate sponsors understand the importance of ensuring that public
education train children to belong to the stupid nation and not to be misled by
science and rationality. Well, what I mentioned is not the only case by far of
pretty sharp diversions between public opinion and public policy. That’s
important. It tells us a lot about the state of current American democracy and
what it means for us and in fact for the world.
The
corporate assault on education and independent thought, of which this incidentally is only one striking
illustration, tells us a good deal more.
Let’s turn to policy. In climate policy, the US, which
is the richest country in the world with enormous advantages, lags behind other
countries. I’ll quote a current scientific review. “109 countries have enacted
some form of policy regarding renewable power and 118 countries have set targets for renewable
energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and
stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable
energy.” It’s a current article. Or for that matter, has the US adopted other means that are pursued by countries
that have national policies--that means
virtually everyone.
Some
things are being done, but sporadically
and with no organized national commitment--which
make some fairly ineffective. Now that’s not a slight problem for us, for your
children, grandchildren, maybe not too far off,
and for the world, in the light of the great predominance of American
power. Indeed, it is declining. It has been for a long time as power is becoming more diversified
internationally. But it’s still completely without challenge. It’s also worth
mentioning that there are sectors of the world population that are really in
the lead in trying to do something about these very dire consequences. It's throughout the world. It's the remnants of the indigenous
populations. That’s true just about everywhere, whether they're tribal societies, first nations, aboriginals, whatever
they are called.
They’re
the leaders worldwide in trying to force some attention to these extremely
grave matters. Actually, it’s the first time in human history that humans have
been on the verge of destroying themselves,
and not too far off. In the countries that have substantial indigenous
populations, either majority or near majority, the countries themselves have taken very strong measures. Bolivia,
which has an indigenous majority, and Ecuador, near majority, have legislation
to preserve the rights of nature, as it's
called. In Ecuador, which has substantial oil deposits, there are efforts by the government,
under pressure from the indigenous population,
to leave the oil in the ground. In fact, now their
government is attempting to get some support from European Union, I don’t think
they’re approaching the United States to subsidize them in leaving the oil
underground so that it won’t destroy all of us. We’re doing the opposite, in
fact, right here in Pennsylvania--get
it to be used as quickly as possible so it can be as harmful as possible to
future generations and to the world. The same is true with indigenous
populations elsewhere. India is practically at war over it. Columbia, Australia, wherever you go,
Canada--the indigenous populations is trying hard to save the human species while the educated, civilized
sectors of the world are trying to destroy the
human species.(…)
Question
on Fracking
Chomsky: …a very
interesting topic, I think I mentioned that in Ecuador, where there’s a large indigenous population, they’ve … [the issue is] not to not be fracking
... they have plenty of oil
reserves. There are efforts by government not to use the oil and keep it
underground because the understanding of the indigenous population is we’re
better off if we don’t use it because every bit of it that we use, it harms us. It harms
our children. It harms the world--and
maybe severe harm. So one possibility
is to take the stand of, say, the
indigenous tribes in Ecuador and the same much around the world. The other is
to take the stand on which, say, Obama
and Romney completely agree: "Let's get all of the oil, the hydrocarbons that are
underground, huge quantities. Let's use
them all as efficiently as possible. It'll
give us a hundred years of energy
independence. What’s the world going to look like in a hundred years? That's somebody else’s problem. What’s
important is how much money I can make tomorrow."
Incidentally, the oil independence issue is almost totally meaningless. I mean, if all of our oil came from, say,
Saudi Arabia, we'd have no more
dependence than we have today. You can easily see that. The US policies towards
the Middle East, say, were exactly the same in the 1950s under Eisenhower, when
we didn’t get any oil from the Middle East. In
fact, we were the biggest oil exporter. And the US at that time, in the
1950s initiated a program to exhaust domestic oil in the interest of profits
for Texas oil producers, so, to use domestic oil, Texas oil, instead of
cheaper Saudi oil. Because Texas oil
producers would make more profit and
then we’d have big holes in the ground which we could fill in, later calling them “the strategic energy reserve.”
But
the policies towards controlling the
Middle East and controlling Middle East
oil were the same. So, forget the
energy independent issue. The real issue is “Do we want the consequences of
extracting, as hydrocarbons, natural
gas and oil to the maximum extent as
possible. Well, you can figure out what the consequences are. So, take, say, fracking. I mean it has a lot of local
affects. You know, I’m sure you all
know about this. It harms water supplies--you
know, toxic effects. It's very
energy intensive. Natural gas is more efficient than oil, you know, less CO2, but it also releases methane, which is worse than CO2, and it's energy intensive to extract it. But there are other effects like the ... You know, the economic arguments are that fracking and shift to natural gas
will give us a transition period in which we’ll have cheap energy which will enable us to transition to renewable
energies. OK, so, therefore it's ....
A
couple of problems with that. Namely it has the opposite effect. The main one: it has the opposite effect. If you have cheap hydrocarbons in a capitalist
society, there’s going to be no incentive to develop renewables. So the more
cheap hydrocarbons you have, the longer you put
off the time until we begin to do what we got to do if we want to survive turn
to renewables. And what is being done in other countries? I mentioned that out
of 110 countries, the US is the only one that doesn’t have a national energy
policy. If you look elsewhere, countries are doing various things, like in Ecuador.
I told you what they were doing to try
to keep the oil underground. In China, which
is a huge polluter, but it's also
by now in the lead internationally in solar energy. It’s producing most of the
solar panels and advanced solar panels, the
most high-tech, advanced, sophisticated
solar panels. So so they’re
ahead in the technology and they’re
ahead in the scale. We’ve been falling
behind. Germany and Denmark are pretty much switching to renewables. They're rich countries. So there are plenty
of things that can be done. One of them is to try to maximize the damage, and to put off as long as possible the step towards trying to repair it, which may mean putting it off until it’s
all over. That’s what the fracking is. And that’s the national consensus. From
Obama to Romney, and everyone in between. I think
that’s pathological, frankly.
(Filmed
at the East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, February 6, 2013) by Leigha
Cohen Production
