While hundreds of thousands of concerned global citizens
march for science and climate justice, a massive corporate-financed
disinformation campaign on climate change is flooding our nation’s schools.
The right-wing Heartland Institute which is financed
by the Koch
brothers and other billionaires, is sending out 200,000
glossy books, Why
Scientists Disagree About Global Warming and an accompanying DVD to the country’s science
teachers.
TIFFANY CRAWFORD, VANCOUVER
SUN
The purpose of their book is to sow confusion and doubt, not
unlike previous campaigns the Heartland Institute has conducted, such as the
one in 1990s, financed by the tobacco company Philip Morris, to raise doubts
about the dangers of second hand smoke.
According to the Union
of Concerned Scientists, the Heartland Institute has for years, “received
funding from fossil fuel interests such as ExxonMobil and the coal magnate Koch
brothers.” Heartland even sponsored a billboard campaign in 2012 casting
climate change activists as “murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”
This campaign has come under recent criticism by Curt Stager
in a New
York Times op-ed, but his exposé
touches only the tip of a massive iceberg. School textbooks rarely do the issue
justice, teachers are not well versed in the subject, and conservative
politicians in many states frown on even discussing the issue. Moreover, the oil and coal industry
continue to pour money into various pseudo educational materials to obfuscate the
truth.
Victories can be won against such corporate-financed
curricular materials. Educator Bill Bigelow recounts how in 2012 a coalition of
education and environmental groups, spearheaded by Rethinking Schools and
the Campaign for a
Commercial-Free Childhood, exposed the cozy relationship between the coal
industry and Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher of materials for
children. After publication of an exposé of
Scholastic’s propagandistic “The United States of Energy” in Rethinking Schools magazine, a
campaign to pressure Scholastic to break its ties with the coal industry led to
a New York Times editorial,
“Scholastic’s
Big Coal Mistake,” and then quickly to Scholastic pulling the curriculum
off its website and promising not to shill for the coal industry any longer.
Last year the inadequacy of school textbooks on climate
change led students, teachers, and climate activists to convince the Portland,
Oregon, school board to adopt a climate justice resolution and to “abandon
the use of any adopted text material that is found to express doubt about the
severity of the climate crisis or its root in human activities.”
Despite attacks by the Heartland Institute and other climate
deniers, the Portland schools are moving forward engaging parents, community
members, students and parents to create a climate
justice curriculum for kindergarten through 12th grade.
People interested in learning how to organize similar
resolutions in their school district can visit the Rethinking Schools site and download a free Climate
Justice Kit.
People can also make sure their school library and child’s
teacher has a copy A
People’s Curriculum for the Earth, edited by Bill Bigelow and Tim
Swinehart. The 410-page book contains resources, lessons, and engaging role
plays. Naomi Klein called it “an educators toolkit of our times.”
It is a good antidote to the poisons that are being spread
by the Heartland Institute and other climate deniers.
As we march and organize for climate justice, the schools
are an important battle ground. Our children and grandchildren should have the
right to learn the science behind climate change, the stories of those most
affected, the impact on all living fauna and flora and what they might do to
work for climate justice.
