http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0716-09.htm
Published on Tuesday,
July 16, 2002 by CommonDreams.org
Advice to Green Team:
Take Off the Gloves
by John Borowski
Stung by the documentation of children manipulation, defenders
of those powers who abuse resources and try to hoodwink teachers
into using manufactured lies about old growth forests or global
warming have struck back with vicious accusations. An expose titled,
"Bastion of Ecological Literacy Under Siege: Our Public Schools",
offered insights into the powerful "Wise Use" movement’s
foray
into environmental education and documented their fabrications,
allegiance to corporate polluters and utter shamelessness in
using children as mere pawns to further their agenda.
Having penned this
piece, I have received blistering email.
There is a common thread in these diatribes, a redundant
use of words like communist, socialist, eco-maniac, and
wacko-environmentalist. My favorite was a commentary
written by Alan Caruba for CNSNews.com entitled, "Specious
Science in Our Schools". And the outcome was predictable
and seems to take on a well-worn, yet effective pattern:
use aggressive language, invent data, and ignore scientific
truth and defend rape and pillage of nature as humankind’s
birth-right.
As an ex-iron worker,
now teacher of environmental science
for two decades, I have come to a gut felt conclusion:
despite their lies, the friends of environmental despoilers
play hardball. They make no excuses, they stay on message,
they use fiery rhetoric, and they give no apologies for
misinformation or inaccuracies. Some members of the
environmental community, especially the environmental
education community, have chastised me for what they call,
"playing the bad guy’s game" or using inflammatory
responses.
Based on the current state of globe’s ill health, I say,
"Take off the gloves green team." When your children’s
future is being mortgaged, when corporate America sees
your children as part of a cost/benefit analysis that
justifies profit over illness and the sanctity of public
school is threatened to be flooded by the worst of
PR campaigns to purport the myth of sustainable growth,
it is time to say: no more.
Pragmatists in the
environmental movement, an eclectic
hodgepodge of entities that rarely agree on any forceful
strategy to combat those who defend tobacco or DDT needs
to make a comeback, will claim; "woe is us". The bad
guys
have appurtenance beyond a calculator’s count, intoxicating
arrogance of having one too many politicians in their stables,
and surrogate mouthpieces galore on the television and radio.
Yes, their propaganda ability is legendary and they have
clones that preach the doctrine of ecological illiteracy.
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Alan Caruba, Steve Milloy,
John Stossel, and Tony Snow form a puppet troupe that
predictably refute the danger of climate change, our mass
extinction of species and our shrinking supply of drinkable
fresh water.
I pray a clarion call
will rise from parents. Their maternal
and paternal instincts will trigger a mass response to the
theft of their children’s inheritance and this document
may be the catalyst.
One reasonable glance
at the World Wildlife Fund’s "Living
Planet Report 2002" a remarkable document by an environmental
organization with some backbone illuminates scientific trends
that are undeniably sobering.
- Human economic activity
has reduced by 35% the number of
surviving animal and bird species, as well as freshwater
and marine fish species.
- Led by the United
States’ consumptive prone lifestyle,
we are using the world’s resources by more than 20% higher
than replacement levels.
- Within 50 years the
planet will face a sharp drop in
living standards.
This ominous set of
facts is no surprise for the ecologically
literate. And you can be sure that industry’s "Pinocchio’s"
(Hannity, Limbaugh, and their merry band of obfuscators
and illusionists) will put the best spin on this information.
The mean, anti-green
team has an Achilles’ heel of immense
proportions, and now is the time to sever it. Despite
their bite, pundits like Caruba and Stossel epitomize the
weakness in their common used arsenal. They are woefully
ignorant in ecological science and never will deal with
hard questions. I have emailed a number of these charlatans
and they never address the direct questions.
I call it the Project
Learning Tree strategy (Project
Learning Tree is the vehicle for the timber industry to
avoid answering hard questions in schools)... or the worst
type of a lie is omission. The Alliance for America,
who defends the likes of Weyerhaeuser, Peabody Coal, and
Exxon will not answer my questions about why they are mute
on the 1872 Mining Law, massive timber subsidies and illegal
timber cutting on public lands and the slaughter of predators
on federal lands. And their silence speaks volumes about
the contempt they have for common working people, their
health, their communities, their children and their right
to a sustained planet. When was the last time you saw or
heard an educated environmentalist on the talk show circuit?
Why... because once confronted with the truth, these pundits
dry up and blow away. John Stossel will not answer questions
about using children to further his anti-environmental education
mantra, even though his own producers tried to dupe me into
being on his "Tampering With Nature" debacle and lied
several
times when questioned.
Environmental activists
need to turn up the heat on these
empty suits, and show them for what they are: highly paid
liars and cheats. Parents must demand that environmental
science be a prerequisite for graduation of high school,
citizens must boycott television stations that refuse
to have rational discussions on pressing issues like
extinction or corporate sponsored educational materials
in schools. Politicians who use the Senator John Kyl
approach (Kyl glibly stated that environmentalists are
to blame for forest fires on national forests, and
when he found out his data was wrong, he didn’t apologize)
must be shamed in public and held to the highest standards
of representing the will of the people, not the will of
their corporate task masters.
There are no "win-win"
scenarios, to be found with those
who spike tobacco or justify poisoning children to sell
pesticides for profit, there is no compromise to be made
those who are liquidating our children’s options in the
future. We must act like elders and protect our offspring
and we must start now.
There are those who
question the act of "standing up in
defiance of tyranny." And they say, put your trust in God.
I do. I walk in the shadow of my savior. And when Jesus
stated, "turn the other cheek", he didn’t intend
for us
to take a beating. This action meant, "I am not afraid
of you, and you will acknowledge me." And for those
who twist religious words, I say shame. Matthew stated
in the bible, "No one can serve two masters. Either
he will hate the one and love the other, or he will
be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot
serve both God and Money." In protecting children,
we serve God. In protecting the creation, we fulfill
a promise to be the stewards of creation. Only the
educated and motivated masses can tear down the idols
of greed and deceit that falsely shape our economic
and cultural status. Knowledge can be the sword and
the eyes of our children our shield.
The road to sanity
will begin with a solitary stare...
and the message that the gloves are off. Anything less
is morally inexcusable.
John F. Borowski is
an environmental and marine science
teacher of two decades who lives in Philomath, Oregon.
jenjill@proaxis.com. His pieces have appeared in the
UTNE Reader, N.Y. Times, PR Watch, Forest Voice,
CommonDreams.org, Liberal Slant, and CounterPunch.
###
