Climate of Denial

While surfing, I discovered a series of articles about global warming from Mother Jones magazine. This article was published last year, but it's still absolutely worth reading. It outlines how, even as much of the rest of the world has taken significant steps in lessening the effects of global warming, we have gone in the opposite direction. There are many reasons for this, but one this article argues is due to the pressure of lobbyists and talking heads who are paid to be in denial about global warming. And the way the corporate media presents a story is that one side is just as important and significant as the other, even if that one side has, like, two people speaking for it, while the other side has thousands. By the "other side", I mean the scientists and many other people who have determined beyond a reasonable doubt that global warming is real and poses a real danger to our future.

Climate of Denial
One morning in Kyoto, we won a round in the battle against global warming. Then special interests and pseudoscience snatched the truth away. What happened?

Bill McKibben
May/June 2005 Issue

It was around eight in the morning in the vast convention hall in Kyoto. The negotiations over a worldwide treaty to limit global warming gases, which were supposed to have ended the evening before, had gone on through the night. Drifts of paper—treaty drafts, industry talking points, environmentalist press releases—overflowed every wastebasket. Delegates in suits and ties were passed out on couches, noisily mouth breathing. And polite squadrons of workers were shooing people out of the hall so that some trade show—tool and die makers, I think—could set up its displays.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/mckibben_introduction.html