[Vision2020] Glenn Beck v. Climate Change

Thu Dec 13 13:53:32 PST 2012

 What Does A Climate Scientist Think Of Glenn Beck's
Environmental-Conspiracy Novel?
<http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2012-12/what-does-climate-scientist-think-glenn-becks-environmental-conspiracy-novel>
  Michael E. Mann, director of Penn State's Earth System Science Center and
author of *The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars*, reviews Beck's latest
work of fiction *Agenda 21*.
 By Michael E. Mann Posted 12.12.2012 at 11:00 am  32
Comments<http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2012-12/what-does-climate-scientist-think-glenn-becks-environmental-conspiracy-novel#comments>

 [image: Glenn Beck]
 Glenn Beck

When I was first asked to review Glenn Beck’s new tome *Agenda
21*<http://books.simonandschuster.biz/Agenda-21/Glenn-Beck/9781476716695>,
I feared I could not accomplish the task objectively. After all, Beck--as
recounted in my own book *The Hockey Stick and the Climate
Wars*<http://www.amazon.com/The-Hockey-Stick-Climate-Wars/dp/023115254X/>--once
suggested that I, and indeed all of my fellow climate scientists, commit
hara-kiri out of shame for promoting the purportedly bogus science of
climate change. Hard not to harbor a bit of a grudge after that.

*So I was relieved to learn that Beck did not actually write the book. In
her recent article “I got duped by Glenn
Beck!”<http://www.salon.com/2012/11/19/i_got_duped_by_glenn_beck/>(
Salon.com, November 19), Sarah Cypher--the editor for an early draft of the
book--revealed that Agenda 21 was in fact ghost-written by one Harriet
Parke. Beck, it turns out, simply purchased the right to claim he’d written
the book.* Possessing an even lower opinion now of Mr. Beck, but satisfied
there was no longer any conflict of interest, I proceeded to read the book
with as open a mind as I could muster.

It resembles a collision between The Matrix, Soylent Green, and Atlas
Shrugged.The premise of *Agenda 21* lies in a set of principles, outlined
in an actual early 1990s United Nations document of the same title,
emphasizing the importance of environmental sustainability in plans for
global economic development. In the book’s paranoid imagination, however,
such precepts become an Orwellian prescription for a future gone terribly
awry. *Agenda 21*’s dystopian vision resembles the remains of a fatal
three-way collision between *The Matrix*, *Soylent Green*, and *Atlas
Shrugged*.

While the story told by *Agenda 21* is purely fictional, a very real agenda
emerges. The author, and her facilitator Glenn Beck (as well as
ultraconservative entities like the Scaife Foundations and the Koch
Brothers who fund the larger anti-environmental disinformation campaign
within which this latest propaganda effort is embedded) would have you
believe that policies aimed at preserving our environment are the true
threat to our future. The author imagines a society where human beings are
trapped in concrete cells separated from the planet’s natural fauna, flora,
and water, and even their children (who are taken away from them at birth).
They consume “nourishment cubes” in place of more recognizable food items.
Adopting measures to preserve the health of the planet has somehow led to a
world in which human beings have become more isolated from their natural
environment. No satisfactory explanation for this paradox is ever provided.

The implausible premises don’t end there. The author (and Beck) suggest
that support for environmental policies was a diabolical plot to create a
socialist world government that now rules the planet (chillingly referred
to as “The Republic”). Yet the very same week the book was released, the
World Bank—an organization founded on free market principles—issued a
report confirming that business-as-usual carbon emissions represent a near
and present danger to civilization. The report explains how our global
infrastructure—agriculture, transportation, and energy systems—would be
fundamentally compromised by warming of just a few more degrees. “We don't
have time to lose” [in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions] the World
Bank’s Rachel Kyte was
quoted<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/19/world-bank-warns-climate-change/1715165/>as
saying. This is one of the sternest warnings yet issued on the threat
of
climate change inaction. And in total contradiction to the book’s’ thesis,
that warning comes from an organization whose very reason for creation was
to guard against the potential rise of socialist governments (in the wake
of the mass upheaval resulting from World War II).

The book problematically neglects the laws of thermodynamics.The book would
also have you buy into the canard that principles of environmental
sustainability are somehow in conflict with religious faith. The future
envisioned in *Agenda 21* is one where individuals are disallowed from open
practice of religion. But in reality, some of the most passionate advocates
for action to avert dangerous climate change are faith-based organizations
such as Interfaith Power and Light who see protecting the environment as
part of humankind’s covenant to serve as stewards of the Earth and
preservers of creation.
Agenda 21:  Threshold Editions

And what about the book’s treatment of matters of science? I’m usually
willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good fictional narrative.
But the conceit that human beings might in some dystopian future be
imprisoned as beasts of burden and raised and kept alive purely for the
energy that can be harvested from them goes too far. Such a scenario
problematically neglects the laws of thermodynamics. It makes little if any
sense, after all, to employ a primary energy source (be it the incoming
radiation from the Sun, the heat escaping from Earth’s core, or the energy
released from the burning of fossil fuels) to manufacture proteins or raise
crops, only to feed an army of macrofauna (i.e. human beings), only in turn
to harness the energy they produce. If it is only energy that is being
sought, such a chain of energy conversion processes is inefficient to the
point of absurdity. The only sensible option would be to exploit the
primary energy source itself.

I did my best to ignore the implausibility of this plot device when it
first reared its head in *The Matrix*. But it is far less tolerable when
used as a foundation for a misguided anti-environmental narrative. We are
forced to accept, without explanation, how decades into the future no
effort has been made to take advantage of far more plentiful and efficient
renewable energy sources like wind and solar energy (which, by some
estimates, could provide 70% of our energy needs in the U.S. in less than
two decades). Not only have renewable energy technologies apparently not
benefited from the increased efficiencies expected after decades of further
research and development, they appear to have vanished altogether!

It has a transparent agenda to sow distrust and cynicism in good faith
efforts to protect our environment.Bad science is hardly the greatest sin
in *Agenda 21*. The real problem is its transparent agenda to sow distrust
and cynicism in good faith efforts to protect our environment. The great
works of dystopian fiction yield lucid, cautionary tales of the potential
dangers that may lurk in our future—be they nuclear holocaust,
environmental catastrophe, or the subjugation by machine overlords—if we
make imprudent choices in the present. The very worst of the genre,
however, do the opposite; they obscure an actual looming threat (e.g.
human-caused climate change) by instead drawing our attention away to a
false, manufactured one. Nothing could be more dangerous or misguided than
a screed like *Agenda 21* that attempts to do just that.

*Michael E. Mann is a climate scientist, the director of Penn State's Earth
System Science Center, and the author of two books: Dire Predictions and The
Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars. Follow him on Twitter
here<http://www.twitter.com/MichaelEMann>
.*

<http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2012-12/strangest-thing-you%E2%80%99ll-see-today-air-pollution-represented-nostril-hair-length>

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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