I am surprised no one else has covered this…I was even the first on dKos to post it. 60 Minutes just ran a piece NAILING Bush.
My wife works at GISS, the agency that Jim Hansen heads. She is a climatologist and she describes to me the increasing dread among climate scientists as it becomes clear that global warming not only is happening, but it is ACCELERATING faster than we had previously imagined. “Danger” and “tipping points” are words that Jim Hansen claims he has been told by the Bush Administration not to use. Tonight on 60 minutes he used them.
Jim Hansen is one of the top Global Warming scientists. He spent the entire first term of Bush’s administration trying to work with Bush on global warming. My wife heard him defend Bush in the first year, expressing his hope that Bush will keep his promises.
This relationship came to an end when Hansen came out in favor of Kerry and attacked Bush’s environmental record. Since then Bush has been censoring Jim Hansen, limiting what he could say and who he could say it to.
Tonight, on 60 Minutes, Jim Hansen fought back big time. The gist of teh segment was that Bush’s administration listens only to lawyers and oil interests when it comes to warming, has those lawyers EDIT SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, and censors anyone who disagrees with the administration’s party line. Nothing was held back. Bush was given no quarter. It was made clear that we are in grave danger from global warming, the danger is accelerating, and Bush has been PREVENTING anything from being done about it.
This goes along with my recent diary covering the fact that America CAN face global warming and be the stronger for it, but it will take leadership. And leadership is exactly what the Bush administration is incapable of giving America on any front.
Another apropos diary I wrote some time ago for my own newsletter covers the need for forest protection and reforestation to deal with global warmng AND a myriad of other environmental issues.
Jim Hansen has come out fighting and 60 Minutes has found its spine again. America…we know the danger, we know what we have to do. We have been warned by scientists for more than a decade what we face. No one can say that we couldn’t do anything about it.
America: you have been warned. What are you going to do about it?
Update [2006-3-20 17:33:18 by mole333]:For those who want to help amplify the impact of this 60 Minutes spot, please see this follow up diary for several suggestions. WE can help shape public opinion and the time to strike is now.
Recommended here and in orange too!
Thank you for your post! Imho, free access to information on the part of the public is absolutely key to an understanding of our position & any meaningful responsive action. Henson is, quite obviously, heroic in this respect.
Re Bush, however: what we tend to equate with ‘leadership’ has absolutely nothing to do with our current so-called ‘governance’. At the risk of oversimplifying: the America you refer to in your closing question is nothing but Big Oil; they’re both the leaders & the citizens, literally & figuratively. There’s simply no room or function for any another entity, in terms of either energy policy or the infrastructure on which our very lives now depend.
So the question is: what is Big Oil going to do about it? Anyone care to wager?
from BP and GM lately? BP’s new PR campaign is re-branding themselves as “Beyond Petroleum” and asking the question, “How big is your carbon footprint?” GM is pushing their FlexFuel vehicles and promoting corn-derived ethanol with the slogan, “Go Yellow to Go Green.” I’m too cynical to feel particularly reassured by these campaigns but it might be seen as hopeful that they seem to be educating and preparing the public for change. On the other hand, they may simply be pandering to a growing public awareness of Peak Oil…
Out in the real world, there are plans for three ethanol plants in eastern NC. Unfortunately, they are all lacking venture capital and are at least five to ten years away from being on-line. They are also heavily dependent upon natural gas to faciliate the process and that’s problematic. So while two big corps are promising change they aren’t doing much about making it happen in the near future around here.
There is one, ONE, gas station — twenty miles away — that sells bio-fuel so it looks like my husband’s new FlexFuel option may not get used before his warranty expires.
I personally feel it’s because the execs of these fine organizations realize that the oil will run out. So, to keep afloat they need to branch out and diversify. Why not tie in a good image with that? They can now claim they were ‘enlightened’ when the crunch comes.
However, we should’nt be fooled. If they were all that ‘enlightened’ they would have started diversifying decades ago, when science first told us we were headed for trouble.
Seems like we have been fighting the censoring of the global warming issue for so long that the fact that finally got some facts was almost overlooked. I also send my admiration and gratitude your wife’s way, not sure how we will all make it through this.
I watched Hanson on 60 Minutes last night. I surre hope he has bodyguards. I kept looking in his eyes and this is a man of integrity. A man that knows that without the real truth out there we are doomed. He is one true Patriot. Here’s hoping more keep risking speaking up.
Did you catch where they said the only way he was “allowed” to talk to 60 minutes was with a gaovernment lawyer sitting in the room? That they are censuring Hanson’s reports and who he is allowed to talk to folks is Fascism.
Thanks for bringing this here for those that missed it last night.
Great diary – I happened to catch the segment by pure chance (60 Minutes was running late and Mrs. K.P. wanted to watch “Cold Case” so we caught it). It was a thing of beauty to see a spark of the old 60 Minutes righteous wrath once again. (There was a saying back in the day that the most feared words in America were “60 Minutes is in the lobby and they’d like to talk to you.”)
Here is a link to the CBS website with the story, for those who missed it.