DAILY TRIFECTA: The Changing Climate's Implausible Deniability
We've known for a long, long time
TITLE: The lost history of what Americans knew about climate change in the 1960s
https://grist.org/science/lost-history-climate-1960s-clean-air-act-supreme-court/
EXCERPT: By the mid-1960s, climate change was already becoming a matter of concern to the federal government, the new analysis shows. A 1965 report from the National Science Foundation found that the ways humans were inadvertently changing the world — through urban development, agriculture, and fossil fuels — were “becoming of sufficient consequence to affect the weather and climate of large areas and ultimately the entire planet.”
And the science was well-understood by many members of Congress, [historian Naomi] and her colleagues discovered when they looked through the papers of Edmund Muskie, a Democratic senator from Maine who helped write the Clean Air Act, located at Bates College. The documents show that Muskie was deeply involved in conversations about climate change with scientists, and his staff tracked coverage of the topic closely in the press. In 1970, Muskie warned his fellow senators that if air pollution went unchecked, it would “threaten irreversible atmospheric and climatic changes.” (The Clean Air Act allows the EPA to regulate air pollutants that endanger public health, specifically including effects on weather and climate.)
Scientists generally recognized carbon dioxide as a pollutant in the 1960s, albeit a different kind of pollutant from the gases and particulate matter that were contributing to thick smog that dimmed cities in the middle of the day. By 1970, President Richard Nixon’s task force on air pollution proclaimed in a report that “the greatest consequences of air pollution for man’s continued life on earth are its effects on the earth’s climate.”
Oreskes and her team also unearthed documents from the National Air Pollution Control Administration — a federal agency established in 1968, later folded into the EPA — at a repository of federal records near Saint Louis. “Almost everyone has completely forgotten about NAPCA, if they ever even knew it existed,” Oreskes said. The head of the agency, John Middleton, testified in congressional hearings leading up to the Clean Air Act, discussing carbon dioxide and the potential economic impact of regulations, she said.
Ominous warnings of climate change had also reached the wider public. In 1958, Frank Capra, the famous filmmaker, produced an animated movie, The Unchained Goddess, that warned that just a few degrees of temperature rise could cause the seas to rise, so that tourists in glass-bottom boats would one day see “the drowned towers of Miami through 150 feet of tropical water.” It was shown to almost 5 million children in classrooms across the country. On The Merv Griffin Show in 1969, Americans were warned that a rapidly heating Earth could melt the polar ice caps. The next year, an article in Sports Illustrated, a magazine seemingly far-removed from environmental concerns, explained the science of climate change in detail, advising people “not to take 99-year leases on properties at present sea level.”
TITLE: The religion of opposing government climate action
https://www.ncronline.org/earthbeat/politics/religion-opposing-government-climate-action
EXCERPT: Back in the 1990s, political opposition to fighting climate change came about through an unholy alliance (funded by the fossil fuel industry) of economic libertarianism and conservative Christianity. At its helm was an organization initially called the Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship and ultimately the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
Its ideology was encapsulated in the 2000 Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, which declared, "We aspire to a world in which liberty as a condition of moral action is preferred over government-initiated management of the environment as a means to common goals." Claims of global warming were "speculative" and "exaggerated."
If the libertarians opposed government intrusion as a matter of principle, the Christians — particularly the evangelical ones — had grown accustomed to considering the government to be a secular humanist enterprise hostile to their religion. In this century, that view has grown apace.
In a talk at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor this week, journalist Tim Alberta — the evangelical preacher’s kid whose recent book, "The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory," explores the current state of evangelical politics — argued that the COVID-19 pandemic locked evangelicals into support for Donald Trump. That’s because, in their view, official injunctions — federal, state or local — to suspend in-person worship seemed to be proof positive that the government was bent on destroying their religion.
For them, the lesson with respect to climate change, as well as to the pandemic, was: "Sure, the threats to health and life on earth may be real, and the proposed remedies, de-carbonization and vaccines, may actually work. But the government is using them in its campaign against Christianity, and that is more than enough reason to oppose them."
In a recent article, Robin Veldman, a religious studies professor at Texas A&M who studies religion and climate, makes a case that faith-based opposition to climate action is part of a conservative Christian civil religion that serves to unite conservative Christians against a state perceived as intent on persecuting them.
Whether or not "civil religion" is the right term here — a discussion for another day — there’s little question that climate action has joined with abortion and LGBTQ rights as the triune abomination of faith-based conservatism today.
TITLE: Christian Right Split on Climate Change: Some Say It’s Fake, Others Say It’s Punishment for Sins Like Abortion
https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2024/07/christian-right-split-on-climate-change-some-say-its-fake-others-say-its-punishment-for-sins-like-abortion/63411/
EXCERPT: The scientific consensus is that human-caused greenhouse gases make these problems worse, but conservative Christian groups deny this consensus, claim it’s not really that hot, and suggest weather woes may be signs of God’s divine wrath or the second coming of Christ.
“Happy people see a romance to summer, its warmth making family and friend gatherings easier and more enjoyable,” said Focus on the Family’s Daily Citizen. “Radical activists see it as a threat to life itself.”
“Don’t let the radicals ruin the joy of this glorious summer. Sit in the sun. Savor the beach or pool. Take a swim. Go out in a boat. Go fishing. Sit on your porch and read. Take the kids camping. Barbeque, play ball, take a walk, go for a bike ride. Make memories even while the alarmists try to make mischief.”
Focus claims mainstream media are “party poopers” whose coverage of the earth’s changing climate is designed to “leverage a current heat wave to try and advance their belief that a man-induced climate crisis is threatening our very existence.”
“Radicals … are in a constant state of agitation, looking to fabricate and manufacture something out of nothing,” Focus claims.
The Focus-founded Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins says he has been “looking for a deeper meaning behind” the “increasing incidence of extreme weather.”
“What’s going on, God?” has asks. “What are you doing?”
His 1,400-word article asks, “Is America’s forecast stormy with a chance of divine wrath because of the nation’s sinful provocations?” It suggests two answers:
God “does send natural disasters as judgment for specific sins”
“And, heaven knows, America has accumulated plenty of sins worthy of provoking divine wrath; we have permitted the killing of millions of unborn babies, systematically dismantled God’s design for the family, and celebrated lies and liars while kicking God’s word to the curb.”
“How should Christians respond when our country experiences extreme weather events?” asked an article in FRC’s Washington Stand titled “Divine Displeasure in Severe Storms?” “We keep ourselves ready for his return.”
Focus and other groups that deny a human role in climate change promote a theology of divine sovereignty that claims humans lack the ability to harm God’s creation.
“Man cannot destroy the earth,” writes young-earth creationist Ken Ham in his book Climate Change for Kids … and Parents Too! which is published by his ministry, Answers in Genesis. “God promised that. But God’s word makes it clear that one day, Jesus, who returned to the Father in heaven after his resurrection, will one day return to this fallen, groaning earth and judge this earth and the whole universe with a fiery end!”
Meanwhile, Focus on the Family says, “As we read in Genesis, we need not fret about the ever-changing nature of weather.”
SEE ALSO:
Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of US Congress
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/05/climate-change-denial-congress
Girls are more anxious about climate change than boys, new research reveals
https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/08/06/girls-are-more-anxious-about-climate-change-than-boys-new-research-reveals
In the face of global warming, students are dreaming up a better climate future
https://www.npr.org/2024/08/05/nx-s1-5013643/indiana-students-climate-change