By
Peter Dykstra for Environmental Health News
As
the curtain comes down on Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House, most
Americans seemed convinced of one of two things: We’re either about to Make
America Great Again®, or we’re about to hurtle into an uncertain epoch that I
like to call the Idiocene.
But
before we turn the page on this administration let’s take a look back at the
tall tales, regrettable pronouncements, farces and scams on climate and the
environment during the Obama years.
Anti-regulatory zealots led the pack, but
President Obama contributed a few of his own – starting on his first full day
in office:
A
day after his inauguration, President Obama signed a memorandum promising: “the most
transparent administration in history.”
By
May 2016, a different verdict came in. Washington Post media columnist Margaret
Sullivan called it “one of the most secretive.” In August 2015, 52 journalism
organizations, including the Society of Environmental Journalists, sent an appeal
to the White House, asking for an end to restrictions on government
employees’ contact with reporters.
2)
October 2009: Global warming stops (except it totally doesn’t)
Scientists
begin asking questions about why the pace of rising temperatures seems to be defying
projections and slowing. Despite the emergence of serious, credible
reasons for this – notably that the oceans are working overtime to absorb
excess heat – climate deniers have a field day with cherry-picked data.
Even
as daily, monthly, and annual warmth records continue to be broken, there’s
been “no global
warming at all” for nearly two decades in Deniertown.
3)
November 2009: War is declared, a slogan is born
In
a press release, the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce declares the “War On Coal” is
underway.
4)
November 2009: Russian hack (no, the other one)
Hackers,
believed to be Russian-based, steal thousands of
emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research
Unit. Climate deniers spin a few poorly worded correspondences between
scientists into a vast conspiracy to fake climate research.
The
faux scandal upends coverage of the Copenhagen climate summit, the scientists
are cleared of any wrongdoing by multiple investigations, and the hackers are
never caught. But their work foreshadows the 2016 election hack.
5)
January 2010: Moderate Republicans join Endangered Species List
The Citizens United
decision breaches the dam on corporate cash. The high court
votes 5-4 to fundamentally reshape the already-cockeyed way election campaigns
are financed, offering cover to corporations and super-PACs to target
undesirable candidates for defeat.
“Moderate”
Republicans are virtually driven into extinction, and the few who acknowledge
climate change have a change of heart.
6)
March 2010: Fake fishing news sends real readers reeling
An
ESPN.com outdoors columnist launches a viral hoax,
suggesting that Obama is planning to outlaw all recreational fishing.
Within
days, chronic Obama critics—from Fox News and the Daily Caller to columnist
Michelle Malkin, RedState.com and GatewayPundit.com—dutifully spread the word
about “Obama’s latest assault on freedom.”
Except not a word of it is remotely
true.
7)
April 2010: Obama’s oil comment gaffe
18
days before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Obama says "Oil rigs today
don't generally cause spills."
8)
May 2010: Limbaugh gets to the bottom of Deepwater Horizon
Rush
Limbaugh says “environmental
wackos” staged Deepwater Horizon as a fundraising scheme.
9)
May 2010: Anti-vax doctor defrocked
The
UK’s General Medical Council strips Dr. Andrew
Wakefield of his license to practice. He authored the 1998
paper linking vaccines to autism. The paper was later retracted by The Lancet
and declared “utterly false.”
10)
February 2011: The Maine governor doesn’t understand BPA
Maine
Gov. Paul LePage, possibly the only politician too dumb for the Trump
Administration, declares that BPA’s worst-case scenario would be women with beards.
11)
September 2011: Solyndra slips, solar scandal soars
Solyndra fails. The
solar company stranded investors and bailed on a half-billion dollar Energy
Department loan amid evidence that Obama Administration cronies stood to
benefit.
But solar energy critics vault a relatively minor scandal into a
renewables Benghazi – overlooking the generally successful record of DOE’s
startup loans as well as the much larger handouts given to fossil fuel
companies.
12)
September 2011: The Donald picks a wind fight. Fore!
Donald
Trump sends the first of 16 angry, obsessive
letters or emails to Scotland’s First Minister about the
proposed windfarm near his golf resort. Sad!!
13)
May 2012: Heartless Heartland campaign
An electronic
billboard on a Chicago freeway heralds the start of a campaign
by the Heartland Institute to brand climate-change advocates as cold-blooded
serial killers.
The first features the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. It draws such
a backlash that the billboards featuring climate advocates Adolf Hitler and
Osama bin Laden (really) never get a full airing.
Heartland is further
tarnished by revelations that it solicited fossil fuel money to pursue its
climate denial agenda.
14)
January 2013: Torquemada-in-Chief
Lamar
Smith becomes Chair of House Science Committee, and eventually the
Torquemada-in-Chief of government climate scientists. Rep. Smith’s committee
room becomes an inquisition
chamber for government climate scientists and their agency bosses.
15)
July 2013: Denial turns to defamation
A
blogger for the Competitive Enterprise Institute likens Penn State climate
scientist Michael Mann to
Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach convicted of serial child
molestation. Mann continues to pursue defamation litigation.
16)
December 2013: Dirty energy or no energy
Master
distractionist Bjorn Lomborg helps launch pro-coal “energy poverty” meme.
Coal giant Peabody Energy launches a full-fledged PR sales pitch under the
banner “Advanced Energy
for Life,” and others scramble to re-brand black coal as the
White Hat in a Green World.
17)
January 2014: Rush nails it. Again.
As
record cold grips much of the U.S., Rush Limbaugh and others accuse
meteorologists of inventing the term “polar vortex” in
an attempt to hide Mother Nature’s harsh rebuke of climate science. Cooler
heads like Al Roker point out that “polar vortex” has been discussed in
meteorology texts since at least the 1950’s.
18)
February 2014: Energy giant CEO gets all NIMBY
ExxonMobil
boss Rex Tillerson joins a lawsuit against
a fracking project near his home. He quits the case a few
months later after harsh accusations that he’s a NIMBYllionaire.
19)
April 2014: Meet the Bundys
Nevada
Rancher Cliven Bundy leads
an armed standoff against BLM agents. Bundy has refused to pay BLM grazing fees
since 1993. In 2016, his sons lead an armed takeover at a National Wildlife
Refuge in Oregon. They’ve vowed to do it again.
20)
April 2014: A disaster in Flint
The
struggling city of Flint switches its water source. Reports of discolored
water, foul smell and taste, and high bacteria and lead levels go ignored for
more than a year. The local, state and federal governments declare a state of
emergency nineteen months later.
21)
February 2015: An exposed Willie
Documents
obtained by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center show climate
researcher Willie Soon took more than a million dollars in funding from fossil
fuel interests.
He promised
"deliverables" to his benefactors, and generated
studies that cast doubt on human-caused climate change.
22)
February 2015: Inhofe’s (cold) curveball
Senator
and alpha-male among deniers Jim Inhofe throws a snowball at the Senate
President’s podium, forever proving climate change is a hoax.
23)
April 2015: Pilgrimage gets no press
Climate
deniers stage a pilgrimage to Rome to “educate” Pope Francis on his “unholy alliance
with the UN’s climate agenda” and to suggest that Jesus would
have served the poor by burning more coal. They are not granted an audience.
Their press conference didn’t really get one, either.
24)
September 2015: Exxon ignores itself
Investigations
by InsideClimate News and The Los Angeles Times reveal that Exxon’s scientists had confirmed the dangers of climate
change decades ago, while the company took virtually no action to
curb it and continued to fund climate-denying scientists and groups.
25)
December 2015: Giants join forces
Chemical
giants Dow and DuPont announce a $130
billion merger. The deal, along with the proposed merger of two
other chemical giants, Bayer and Monsanto, is still pending.
For
questions or feedback about this piece, contact Brian Bienkowski at bbienkowski@ehn.org.