Noam Chomsky - How Climate Change Became a Liberal Hoax

The Chamber of Commerce and business lobby,

the American petroleum industry
and other business lobbies,

have publicly proclaimed, in fact with enthusiasm,

that they're carrying out a campaign to try to convince the population

that Global warming is a liberal hoax,

and... it has succeeded unfortunately,

the latest polls I've seen show...

maybe a third of the population believes in anthropogenic global warming.

The media contributed in their own way,

and so for example, when the New York Times
runs a front page article

on what meteorologists think about
Global warming, namely they don't believe it,

meteorologists are pretty faces who read scripts telling if it's going to rain tomorrow;

what do they have to say
any more than your barber?

But that's presented as if it's a significant contribution to the discussion.

The same when they...

in pursuit of the fabled objectivity,
present two sides,

one side is 98% of scientists who know anything,

the other side is a senator in oath
and a couple of stragglers,

and that's the two sides and people are supposed to make a choice between them.

They leave out a third side, which is the substantial number of climate scientists

who believe that the consensus predictions are much too optimistic,

including some of the leading scientists right here,

who recently run what they call the most extensive modelling ever done

that concludes that
it's far worst than the anticipated,

and their own results are an understatement because they don't take into account

such things as effects of methane after the permafrost disappears and so on.

So, that's the debate that people are presented with and it's not surprising that

the effort to manufacture consent to the belief that it doesn't mean anything is pretty successful.

What's rather interesting about this, and tells you something about the nature of our society,

is that those same CEOs and managers

who are trying to convince
the public that it's a liberal hoax

know perfectly well that it's extremely dangerous, and they have the same beliefs than you and I have.

They are caught in a kind of
institutional contradiction;

as leaders of major corporations,
they have an institutional role,

and that is to maximize short-term profit,

and if they don't do that they're out
and someone else is in, who does do it.

So it's.. they don't..., it's basically...

Institutionally speaking, it's not a choice that is going to happen in the major institutions.

So, they may know that they're mortgaging the future of their grandchildren ,

and in fact, maybe everything they own
will be destroyed, but...

they are caught in a trap of institutional structure, that's what happens in market systems.

Financial crisis is a small example
of the same thing.

You may know that what you are doing
carries systemic risk but,

you can't calculate that in your transactions or you're not fulfilling your role

and somebody else replaces you.

In fact, in the United States it's actually a legal obligation to do that, for corporate executives,

and that's a very serious problem.

It means that we're marching over the cliff

and doing it for institutional reasons
that are pre already desmantled;

there's other factors like the anger and fear

and hostility in the country about everything,
which carries over this.

So if you look at polls, everyone hates congress,

they hate the democrats,
they hate the republicans even more,

they hate big business, they hate banks
and they distrust scientists.

So why should we believe what these
pointy headed elitists are telling us?

If we don't trust anything else
we don't trust them.

All of this combined, the latest election a couple of days ago is a...

you can almost interpret it as a kind of a
death nail for the species.

There was an article in Bloomberg's business week,

you know, not a radical rag exactly,

running through the new republican...

republicans coming to congress,
and they are worried about them.

One of the reasons is because they are Global warming deniers, almost all.

That means, the powerful house comities, like science and technology and so on,

are going into the hands of people
who thinks there is nothing to it,

or at least claim that they think that; what they actually think is another story.

In fact, one of them was quoted to saying "Can't be a problem because God will take care of it."

If this was happening in some
small country, maybe aaahm...

I don't know what... Monaco or something, it wouldn't matter much,

but when it's happening in the richest
most powerful country in the world,

it's a danger to the survival of the species.

Nobody else is going to do very much
if the United States doesn't do a lot!

Not just some but take the lead.

So we're essentially saying:
lets kiss each others goodbye.