Vincent J. Curtis
2 Dec 22
RE: What type of environmentalist are you? Op-ed by Emily Kennedy, an associate professor and associate head of the department of sociology at UBC. The Hamilton Specator 2 Dec 22.
Dr. Emily Kennedy doesn’t hesitate before slanging the enemy. She writes, “We know the fossil fuel companies have invested heavily into misinforming the public about climate change – targeting conservative voters in particular and exacerbated on social media.”
Actually, Dr. Kennedy doesn’t know any of this, because it didn’t happen and isn’t happening.
Global warming didn’t become a thing until after the Kyoto Treaty. After that came the fraudulent hockey stick graph that galvanized the imagination. It was followed by a movie so packed with falsehood that it could only be called “An Inconvenient Truth.” Then climate change came to be substituted for global warming because, inconveniently, the globe paused its warming. You can’t have rising CO2 and not have warming, that’s too embarrassing!
Coal companies, oil companies had nothing to say about any of this. There was no misinformation campaign - the word misinformation didn’t become common until 2020. And where is ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and Aramco on Twitter and Facebook? Where’s the campaign aimed at people like me?
It’s all paranoid fantasy. I’ve probably spent more summers camping in Algonquin than young Dr. Emily’s been alive. Her specialty is sociology, not environmental studies. She understands how to drive fanaticism, but knows precisely squat about climate science.
I appreciate, and have appreciated
nature. I guess that makes me a
skeptical environmentalist, skeptical of misinformed fanaticism.
-30-
Dr. Emily just published a patronizing book on how to categorize people by their environmental beliefs, and through categorization how to convince the doubtful to become truer believers.
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