Month 6, Day 20: Whatever You Do, Don’t Mention The Oil!

The New Orleans Times-Picayune ran an AP story on global warming; it was written by Joe Conason, who is excellent. So I built on that. This letter, remarkably for something sent to Louisiana, doesn’t mention the Gulf spill once.

It is certainly true that “global warming has lost momentum as a public concern” since 2007. It is also true that our media have contributed to this problem. Through superficial reporting and an editorial policy built around a specious equivalency between scientific truth and industry-funded denialism, print and broadcast media have fostered the illusion that there is still a “debate” about the reality of global climate change. There is no debate; climate scientists are overwhelmingly in agreement that anthropogenic global warming is both real and dangerous. Of course some scientists’ predictions or analyses don’t match the work of others; that’s inherent in scientific processes. Enabled and encouraged by an inattentive and irresponsible media, our politicians refuse to come to terms with the reality: shared sacrifice is essential for shared survival.

Warren Senders