Reader Responses to Follow the Money

In 1991, the year I joined as executive director, the Tobacco Control Resource Center launched the Tobacco Divestment Project to encourage universities, nonprofits and governmental bodies to eliminate tobacco investments from their endowments and pension funds. The TDP was part of a larger shift within the tobacco control movement. Up to that point, the focus of tobacco control, led by medical providers and the national cancer, heart, and lung associations, was to encourage smokers to quit. Advocates like us shifted the focus to the tobacco industry and its predatory marketing practices to recruit young “replacement” smokers for the 400,000+ Americans who died each year from tobacco-related disease. The underlying problem was redefined from nicotine and carcinogens to greed. The BAM article misses one objective of divestment campaigns. The goal of divestment is not to damage the target companies financially. As the article notes, drops in stock valuation due to cultural/political attacks create opportunities that some investors will exploit. (As we learned, uncertainty about future litigation depressed tobacco stocks far more than bad publicity.) Rather, we sought to discredit and delegitimize tobacco companies so that elected officials would shun contributions from tobacco companies and their officers. Stripped of political cover, these companies could then be more effectively regulated. The argument for divestment is certainly moral but the objective is political.

I’m aware that Brown’s admissions selectiveness and quality of education has increased steadily over time, but I didn’t realize just how steep this upward curve was until I read the slew of letters from alumni from the 1950s through the 1980s in the June-August issue taking issue with current students studying the financial roots of climate denialism and recycling tired assertions that climate change is alarmism spurred by people who want to profit from researching or solving it. It feels great to be affiliated with an educational institution that steadily improves itself and doesn’t get held back by the lower standards for education that prevailed in the past.

The students and their professors have assumed that all readers know what climate change denial really means. It was never defined. They would be hard-pressed to find corporate “deniers” who would deny that after over 200 years and a 50% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the Earth’s average temperature anomaly has risen just a fractional amount, less than one degree C. Or that sea level has risen less than a foot. Hardly compelling evidence for a climate crisis or emergency worthy of a denial. The opposite of climate denial is climate acceptance of dire model forecasts with urgent efforts to keep the Earth’s temperature stable. Those global warming goals of zero emissions and Net-zero CO2 drawdowns from the atmosphere of more than just a few parts-per-million. Skepticism is warranted for significant carbon capture and geological storage because just one ppm of CO2 would require the permanent storage of over 7,500 million metric tons (CDIAC). Such a huge amount is beyond the capability of human technology. This huge quantitative barrier to climate mitigation should be acknowledged in any concerns about reversing climate denial movements to achieve the Paris Accord goals.

I read with interest “Follow the Money.” In my day we had Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” and the discussions revolved around the expected new ice age. We have come a long way since then, but old ideas are hard to shed and break. The CDL should devote efforts to debunking these established “scientific facts.”

Cole Triedman ’21 and Cartie Werthman ’21 are to be commended for their fine investigation into those who fund the movement to deny climate change.  It comes as no surprise that those who will suffer most from the environmental proscriptions would oppose them. Now it is time to find out who will profit from the Green New Deal.

The “Follow the Money” article begins with derisive, prejudiced labeling of a diverse group and asserts that their assumed beliefs are the result of money spent by a demonized industry. The assertion is made without talking to people to determine what the beliefs actually are and without determining if they were influenced by, or even aware of, the PR. One could just as easily assert that climate change zeal is driven by the tens of billions of dollars to be made in studies and proposed remedies. The labeling, multiple presumptions, and condescension are prejudiced, unproductive, and fuel division. It would be helpful and informative to actually talk to people to find out what they believe and why.

I would have been more impressed with the “Follow the Money” article about climate denial if the students had done a parallel study tracing the public money that has financed the climate alarmist point of view. And, ironically, in the very same issue of BAM there is this headline: “Bankrolling Justice.” What makes one financial project seem virtuous and another seem corrupt if not our point of view? It seems to me that we are all using our resources to promote what we believe to be good and/or an accurate view of reality.