This comes via Think Progress:
In tomorrow’s Washington Post, global warming activist Laurie David writes about her effort to donate 50,000 free DVD copies of “An Inconvenient Truth” (which she co-produced) to the National Science Teachers Association. The Association refused to accept the DVDs:
In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film; and they saw “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs…
[T]here was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.”
As it turns out, those supporters already include “special interests,” including Exxon-Mobil, Shell Oil, and the American Petroleum Institute, which have given millions in funding to the NSTA. And while the NSTA showed no interest in helping educators get copies of Al Gore’s movie (which scientists gave “five stars for accuracy“), it has distributed oil industry-funded “educational” content, like this video produced by the American Petroleum Institute…
The first line of (the “educational” video) “Fuel-less”: “You’re absolutely not going to believe this, but almost everything I have that’s really cool comes from oil!” (Watch a video clip.) As Laurie David notes, an API memo leaked to the media in 1998 explains the motivation behind such videos: “Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future.”
[You can contact the National Science Teachers Association here… I plan to write to them, contact my local paper, and my local school board… and then I’m going to take Clementine to see the “insidious far left political propaganda” film “Happy Feet.”]
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By way of balance … the BBC web site today said that Brit science teachers rejected proposals from advocates of intelligent design, who submitted teaching matwerials for use in their schools. However, rather than give good scientific reasons, they only said that they had no time to teach ANOTHER theory, other than evolution … given the overwhelming evidence of the fossil record.
On the same BBC site, the Science posts were rife with warning of Greenland’s ice sheet melting, the world’s carbon footprint expanding at 2.5% since 1990, etc., thanks to the burning of charcoal in Asia and Africa … because oil is too expensive to use.
A2 has touted its first truly “green” building recently. In the meantime, Ypsi water has been loaded for the last several days with chlorine to the point that we called YCUA to complain. “Oh, we don’t have anything to do with that,” said the nice YCUA
guy on the phone. What the hell are they trying to kill in Detroit’s water … our water? Why not use Polonium and be done with it? It smells and tastes AWFUL! What’s Kwame trying to hide now … hmmm?
So, how did you like Happy Feet? I saw it last Saturday, and found myself wondering if we really are overfishing. I researched it a little bit, and it seems to be the case. I assumed that the movie was sponsored by a surreal coalition of the Beef industry and Vegans.
I heard about this today… it angers me.
I completely understand the fear behind this kind of action — I have precisely this type of fear everytime I project school funding and our state’s budget out for the next few years. I freak out first and then wonder if I have the strength to get through this, then I question my sanity for having actually asked people to vote for me to get on the board, and sometime thereafter I recognize the fear for the irrational emotional response it is, my strength returns and rationality prevails. I move on and try to do what’s right.
The difference, in my view, between me and the subject group, is that I feel obtaining the money of others isn’t justified if I can’t hold true to my principles. I purport to represent people because I feel those people believe that I will stay true to my principles, and that my principles reflect theirs (at least generally speaking).
Respectfully, I’m not for sale. It’s a true shame that this national organization is.
That video of “Fuel-less” is priceless and I’m pretty sure that Miss Watkins is a man.