How the BBC let climate deniers walk all over it
George Monbiot (The Guardian)
The fossil-fuel multinationals fund ‘thinktanks’ and ‘research institutes’. But it’s gullible public service broadcasters that give them credibility. (...)
In 1979, an internal study by Exxon concluded that burning carbon fuels “will cause dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050”. In 1982, as the Guardian’s Climate Crimes series recalls, an Exxon memo concluded that the science of climate change was “unanimous”. Then it poured millions of dollars into lobby groups casting doubt on it.
They didn’t call themselves lobby groups, but “thinktanks” or “research institutes”. Across the world, the media took them at their word. (...)
When we criticised the media for its determined naivety, we were frozen out. Before long, the thinktanks and trade associations had a clear run. They were the serious, sensible people, to whom the media turned to explain the world. And still turns.
If the oil companies are to be held to account, so should the media that amplified their voices. (...)
The BBC’s role was more insidious. Its collaboration arose from a disastrous combination of gullibility, appeasement and scientific ignorance. It let the fossil fuel industry walk all over it. (...)
Only in 2018, a mere 36 years after Exxon came to the same conclusion, did the BBC decide that climate science is solid, and there is no justification for both-sidesing it. But the nonsense continues. (...)
The frontier of denial has now shifted to the biggest of all environmental issues: farming. Here, the BBC still gives lobby groups and trade associations sowing doubt about environmental damage (especially by livestock farming) more airtime than the scientists and campaigners seeking to explain the problems. (...)
The lesson, to my mind, is obvious: if we fail to hold organisations to account for their mistakes and obfuscations, they’ll keep repeating them. Climate crimes have perpetrators. They also have facilitators.
Belchatow coal-fired power station, Poland. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters.
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