Sociatry

[Edward Schreiber]

Here is an article from today's Boston Globe,
in my view all about sociatry.


When ignorance isn't bliss
By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  August 18, 2007
NEWSWEEK RECENTLY detailed how ExxonMobil, the oil lobby, and other  
earth-plundering apologists spend millions of dollars to keep us  
ignorant on global warming. Time reported that in the rebuilding of  
New Orleans, "environmental ignorance is setting up the city for  
another catastrophe."
ARTICLE TOOLSAmerica's catastrophic ignorance continues.
Time said the US Army Corps of Engineers understands that protecting  
New Orleans from hurricanes like Katrina or worse will require not  
just bigger and stronger levees. It also means preserving and  
restoring marshes, swamps, and barrier islands that offer natural  
protection against winds and high water.
"But for all the talk about restoring wetlands," Time wrote, "almost  
every dime of the $7 billion the Corps has received since Katrina is  
going to traditional engineering: huge structures designed to control  
rather than preserve nature."
On global warming, which is predicted to pound our coasts with a  
higher percentage of Katrina-like storms, ExxonMobil pumped $19  
million into conservative causes dedicated to pooh-poohing the  
science. Those causes paid tens of thousands of dollars to those who  
doubt climate change. In 2003, Republican Party consultant Frank  
Luntz wrote a memo saying, "You need to continue to make the lack of  
scientific certainty a primary issue."
This worked, even though, as Newsweek wrote, "few of the experts did  
empirical research of their own."
The two-decade onslaught on science and sanity resulted in the  
Clinton White House being neutralized and enabled the outright denial  
of the Bush administration, which edited and deleted key portions of  
government reports linking human greenhouse gas emissions to climate  
change.
Even with Democrats now in control, Congress still plays games with  
fuel economy. The Senate's new energy bill would raise fuel economy  
to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The House bill has no new standards  
because of the auto lobby and key Democratic auto hacks such as  
Representative John Dingell of Michigan. Optimists hope to still get  
new standards when the two bills go to conference committee.
The most important measure of the onslaught is American ambivalence.  
Even though 600 scientists from 40 countries concluded this year that  
global warming is "unequivocal," Newsweek pollsters found that still  
less than half of Americans -- 46 percent -- say climate change is  
being felt today. Less than half of Americans support requiring much  
more fuel and energy efficient vehicles and appliances. In the best  
dreams of the pooh-pooh lobby, 42 percent of Americans say "there is  
a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of  
global warming."
In New Orleans, a bipartisan nightmare is being recreated. Bush was  
castigated around the globe for his response to Katrina. But US  
Senators Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, and David Vitter, a Republican,  
proposed pork-barrel reconstruction projects backed in part by the  
oil lobby. Some projects were already judged to be a waste of money.  
Vitter (who has other problems in the escort scandal in Washington)  
wanted timber companies to be allowed to keep slashing cypress swamps.
Levees are being so poorly thought out that they risk the further  
destruction of marshes or rendering them useless against storms.  
Louisiana State University hurricane researcher Ivor van Heerden said  
some of the levees are "absolutely screwy, the exact opposite of what  
we need."
The head of the state's science review team, LSU ecologist Robert  
Twilley, told Time, "My great fear is that we're going to cut off the  
coast with barriers, just like we did to the river. I'd hate for that  
to be my legacy."
The planned ignorance of the oil lobby and the ignorant planning in  
New Orleans make it clear that too few people care whether the nation  
cares about its legacy. In the Newsweek poll, 42 percent of Americans  
say the press "exaggerates the threat of climate change." In New  
Orleans, the devastation and displacement in that precarious aqualand  
has not made many people rethink our exaggerated entitlement to crowd  
the coasts with development.
Despite Katrina, Time reminds us that the United States still "has no  
water-resources policy." The Army Corps of Engineers remains funded  
by individual congressional earmarks, regardless of whether any  
specific project is worthwhile. Gerry Galloway, president of the  
American Water Resources Association, told the magazine, "It's a  
sinister system. Water is a national security issue, but we treat it  
like the Wild West."
The oil lobby tells us to ignore the swamping of our planet. In New  
Orleans, we are building to be swamped again. America apparently  
needs a more direct hit than even Katrina to wake up to the  
catastrophe of ignorance.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson at globe.com. 
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
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