Google
is no longer simply the Internet’s search engine. The company now is
building Google+ into a diverse, curated-garden experience with the goal
of social media
domination
that keeps user traffic within Google’s walls. In recent years the
company has significantly ramped up its engagement in national
politics,
led by former Republican representative Susan Molinari.
The revamped Google is now joining the ranks of the top corporate
funders of the climate-denial movement. In 2013, Google has held a
fundraiser for Sen. Jim
Inhofe
(“Global warming is a hoax”) at its DC headquarters, been the top funder
of the annual dinner of the Competitive Enterprise
Institute
(“CO2: We Call It Life”), and joined the American Legislative Exchange
Council
(“Even substantial global warming is likely to be of benefit to the
United States”).
In response, hundreds of people have flooded the Google+ page for the
Google DC headquarters with one-star
reviews.
The page also now includes photographs from the protest organized by
Forecast the Facts during the Google DC fundraiser for Inhofe.
This digital activism is only part of a 150,000-person strong
campaign
led by Forecast the Facts with support from Credo, Greenpeace, Sum Of
Us, and other groups. The coalition has organized on-the-street protests
of Google in DC, Mountain View, and New York City.
Forecast the Facts and Greenpeace activists will be delivering the
petition signatures to Google Washington headquarters during the
lunchtime fundraiser, and holding a
protest
livestreamed at 12:45 PM by We Act
Radio.
The Forecast the Facts petition, addressed to Google
CEO Larry Page, makes a straightforward
request:
Cancel your July 11 fundraiser for Sen. Jim Inhofe and pledge to never
fund climate deniers again.
An anonymous Google spokesperson responded to media inquiries saying the
fundraiser would go forward, because although Google and Inhofe
“disagree on climate change policy,” they “share an
interest”
in Google’s 100-employee, $700 million data
center
in Pryor, Oklahoma. Last year, Google earned the top
spot
on Greenpeace’s Cool IT board for its commitment to renewable energy and
energy efficiency to power its massive computer farms.
With the admirable goal of creating a “better web that is better for
the environment,” Google has
cultivated a reputation for working to support scientific inquiry and
pursuing environmental sustainability. Google’s co-founders, Page and
Sergey Brin, continue to
profess
that Google operates by the corporate motto, “Don’t be
evil.”
This reputation will be rendered meaningless if the fundraiser goes
forward and large contributions continue to be made to anti-science
defenders of unregulated carbon pollution such as Sen. Inhofe and the
Competitive Enterprise
Institute.
E&E News We’re creating
this policy – or at least this bill contemplates creating a policy –
that has a lot of human giving away of free allowances. All kinds of
things that distort the market, and it just seems that if truly the
goal was to lower the amount of carbon there would be a proposal just
to tax it and to lower some other tax and be done with it.
James Inhofe (R-Ok.)
Roll
Call
We need to remind the American public, for example, that the
1,400-page Waxman-Markey monstrosity is a monument to big government
that will make food, gasoline and electricity more expensive, increase
mandates on small businesses, and increase the size and reach of the
federal bureaucracy — all while doing nothing to affect climate
change. The Kerry-Boxer legislation introduced Sept. 30 is, in many
ways, worse than the Waxman-Markey bill. This reflects the attitude of
one of the bill’s sponsors, who said recently that, because of the
recession, businesses should be expected to make even more expensive
emissions reductions. While it’s never a good time to pass a national
energy tax, one would have thought that imposing such a tax during a
recession is especially bad. Over the past week, many people have
speculated about the potential for a grand Senate climate deal, tying
cap-and-trade to the expansion of nuclear power and offshore drilling.
Both policies make eminent sense and are key components of the
Republican “all-of-the-above” energy policy. But tying those policies
to a massive national energy tax makes no sense, which is why there’s
little hope for a deal so long as it involves cap-and-trade.
Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
Washington
Post
Count me as one of those who will keep my mind open as we move
forward. When you see changes to the land coming about … what is
causing the loss of the sea ice that adds to the erosion issues, yes,
in Alaska we are seeing change. That’s why I have been one of those
Republicans who has stepped out front a little bit more on the issue
of climate change.
Fox News Channel’s Gregg Jarrett introduced a “very big story” that the
Environmental Protection Agency “intentionally buried a study
challenging some of Uncle Sam’s global warming research.” Sen. James
Inhofe (R-OK) claimed the report, written by economist Alan Carlin of
EPA’s National Center for Environmental
Economics, vindicates his belief that man-made global warming is the
“greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”:
The thing is phony. I feel so good about being redeemed after all of
these years, because they have been throwing this thing in my face
since 1998 when we realized that all of those scientists that Al Gore
had lined up – and I’m talking about Claude Allegre in France, David
Bellamy in UK, and Nir Shaviv in Israel – all of them used to be on
his side. They all said, “Wait a minute, this science is not right.”
That’s exactly what Allen Carlin said. We’ve already started a
investigation.
Watch it:
When asked if there should be a criminal investigation, Inhofe replied,
“There could be and there probably should be.” Continuing his attack, he
claimed that the EPA “have been suppressing
science and coming out with what they want people to say. You might
remember – I talked to you about it on this station. When I first
realized that this thing was a hoax and I made the statement that the
notion that man-made gases, anthropogenic gases,
CO2 cause global warming, it is probably the
greatest hoax
ever perpetrated.”
What Fox News, Inhofe, and right-wing
bloggers are
promoting as a suppressed EPA report is
nothing of the kind. Carlin’s paper, released by the Competitive
Enterprise Institute (“CO2: they call it
pollution, we call it
Life“), is
a hodgepodge of widely discredited pseudoscience. Carlin was given
permission by the NCEE to cobble the paper
together even though he is not a climate researcher, and “the document
he submitted was reviewed by his
peers and agency
scientists.”
The Carlin document cites the usual array of global warming
deniers,
including Joe D’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, William Gray, Christopher
Monckton, Fred Singer, and Roy Spencer – all of whom worked with Sen.
Inhofe’s former aide Marc Morano to disseminate denials of climate
science. Carlin’s references come from denier blogs such as
ICECAP.us and Watts Up With That, and
plagiarizes publications from the Heartland Institute, the Science &
Environmental Policy Project, and the Friends of Science Society, all
conservative front groups. RealClimate’s Gavin Schmidt summarizes the
paper as “a ragbag
collection
of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of
astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at.”
Similarly, although the 76-year-old botanist David
Bellamy,
72-year-old geochemist Claude
Allegre,
and 32-year-old astrophysicist Nir
Shaviv
publicly question man-made global warming, they represent a steadily
dwindling number of scientists, few of any of which actively study
climate change, that argue fossil fuel emissions are not warming the
planet.
A top aide for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will be leaving his Senate post
after a Wonk Room
investigation revealed
how he coordinates conservative climate change messaging. Marc Morano,
Inhofe’s environmental communications director, joined the Senate in
2006 to promote Sen. Inhofe’s denial of manmade global
warming via the
Drudge
Report
and other right-wing
outlets.
E&E News reports that Morano will return to the conservative media
network as a blogger for
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT):
Marc Morano, the spokesman for Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), will leave the
committee later this month to become executive director and chief
correspondent for a fledgling Web site that will serve as a
“clearinghouse and one-stop shopping” for climate and environmental
news.
Both CNS – a subsidiary of Brent Bozell’s
Media Research
Center
– and
CFACT
are part of the Scaife
network
of conservative front groups, supported by the Richard Mellon Scaife
family fortune and corporations like Exxon Mobil.
CFACT and the Media Research Center are
co-sponsors of the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on
Climate
Change, a
global warming denier conference that begins Sunday, March 8.