E. May and Monbiot to debate Lomborg on the eve of Copenhagen summit

Climate Cover-Up is one of two new books written by local [Vancouver] authors - the other being Donald Gutstein's Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy (Key Porter Books, $22.95) - that show how the fossil-fuel industry has sunk millions of dollars into campaigns designed to derail public concerns about human-induced climate change. Both books demonstrate how the world's largest oil company, ExxonMobil, has funded numerous think tanks, including the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute, which later issued reports criticizing the IPCC's scientific consensus on global warming.

In December, a major United Nations climate conference will begin in Copenhagen to try to reach a new international treaty on global emissions that will be approved by the United States, China, and India. Climate Cover-Up and Not a Conspiracy Theory offer compelling insights for anyone interested in learning why there is so much confusion about this issue in the media. The Hoggan and Littlemore book focuses exclusively on global warming, touching on such things as the coal industry's efforts to sideswipe mitigation measures. It also focuses on how clever use of language is helping to undermine action on climate change.

In the other book, Gutstein, a retired SFU communications professor, doesn't merely look at how industrial forces have used propaganda to stall action around climate change. He includes case studies showing how business groups have also influenced the debate about medicare, continental integration, DDT, and other areas through slick public-relations techniques that often zero in on key decision makers and sympathetic national media commentators.

The two books both describe how industry-created front groups - such as the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, the Global Climate Coalition, Friends of Science, and the Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions - have tried to convince politicians, the media, and the public that there is a vigorous scientific debate about climate change. Weaver said that these campaigns can yield tremendous returns for industry if they stall emission reductions. Right now, he suggested, "ideology" seems to be driving the debate.

"You get far more bang for the buck if you can get the Vancouver Sun editorial staff to believe that this global warming is nothing more than a socialist conspiracy to transfer wealth to the developing world," he said.

However, according to Weaver, there is little scientific debate, notwithstanding what you might read in Canadian newspapers.

Trust the right-wing Munk Centre to have a debate over an issue that has been definitively settled, and giving climate change deniers an undeserved podium to spread their disinformation.

What next, a debate on the right to abortion? 

Although the debate may be over in some quarters, it is far from settled amongst the general public.

By a two-to-one margin (62-27), respondents said they believed Canada and the United States have a responsibility "to set higher and harder targets" for greenhouse-gas reductions than "fast-growing" countries such as China and India....

Fifty-six per cent of the more than 1,000 Canadians surveyed by Harris-Decima didn't believe Canada's approach to climate change is ambitious enough or aggressive enough, with 34 per cent saying it was about right and seven per cent saying it was too ambitious....

Almost three-quarters of respondents said the current focus on the environment is not going far enough....

The telephone survey, conducted Oct. 15-19 [2009], has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.

C02 levels in the atmosphere are climbing steadily higher. Some believe this is having a devastating effect on humans and nature, while others argue that the threat has been overstated. Is this the moment for a bold international treaty to curb carbon emissions? Or, are the social and economic costs of reducing C02 emissions too high in world where a billion people live on a dollar or less a day? Just days before the United Nation’s historic Copenhagen summit the Munk Debates will tackle one of the great public policy questions of our time: how should the world respond to climate change?

Lomborg campaigns for an unconventional position on climate change: he opposes the Kyoto Protocol and other measures to cut carbon emissions in the short-term, and argues that we should instead adapt to short-term temperature rises as they are inevitable, and spend money on research and development for longer-term environmental solutions, and on other important world problems such as AIDS, malaria and malnutrition.