I’m not sure which is more disturbing – the fact that Texas officials in Gov. Rick Perry’s administration purged all mention of climate change on a 200-page environmental report commissioned by the state, or the fact that it has gone nearly unreported by the U.S. media.
In a nearly unprecedented move, the scientists who prepared the report have disowned it, demanding that their names be taken off the document. Once Perry’s political hacks got done with it, they wanted nothing to do with it.
“To me it is simply a question of maintaining scientific credibility,” said Jim Lester, a co-author of the report and vice president of the Houston Advanced Research Centre, in an article in The Guardian.
The report details the risks from rising sea levels, increased droughts, and more severe weather, much of which can be attributed to global climate change.
In the kind of ignorance reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration, Perry refuses to accept evolution, climate change, and apparently anything else science-related. And so it shouldn’t be too surprising that when this report was submitted to the Texas Commissionion on Environmental Quality, they didn’t like what they read.
The chairman of the commission, Bryan Shaw, a Perry appointee, is fond of calling climate change a hoax. They are not the least embarrassed by the episode, and justify it on political grounds.
Andrea Morrow, a spokeswoman for the agency, said the report was “inconsistent with current agency policy.”
And it wasn’t just a matter of expunging a few words, they did away with any data that didn’t support their policy – for instance the fact that sea levels at Galveston Bay are rising five times faster than the previous average as taken out completely.
But here’s another puzzle. The story has been reported in detail both by the French news service AFP and by the UK paper The Guardian, but not the major U.S. media.
Rick Perry is also running for president. Every statement, every nuance of body language is dissected by the U.S. political media. Why would they ignore something like this? Even he governor’s wife receives more coverage than this.
Shouldn’t people know what kind of governance we can expect if someone like this elected? Didn’t we learn anything from the dark ages of GW Bush?
No comments:
Post a Comment