From the Archives: Thank You For Gas Guzzling (January 23, 2007)

This story originally appeared in The Daily Tar Heel.

Thanks for Gas Guzzling, hit sequel
By David Donovan

January 23, 2007

Tonight President Bush delivers his seventh State of the Union address. He hasn't had a hit since SOTU II, which introduced "The Axis of Evil," but the rumor around Washington, D.C., is that SOTU VII will feature a surprise twist: After six years of denying that human activity is increasing global temperatures, Bush reportedly might face the reality of global warming and even make tangible proposals.

Not a moment too soon. 2006 was the hottest year on record. The 11 hottest years all occurred in the past 15 years, and meteorologists suspect 2007 might be even hotter.

Global warming is real, and its consequences bode ominously for our generation. Unchecked, carbon dixoide emission will - not could - raise sea levels 20 feet (burying low-lying coastal areas), cause agricultural shortages, raise temperatures, change climates and send shock waves through the global economy.

This is the defining issue of our time, so why haven't young people treated it as such? Why don't angry mobs storm the Capitol with pitchforks and clean-burning torches, demanding we stop endangering our future climate for short-term convenience? Why has this yet to become a central issue in the 2008 elections?

Likely because oil companies wage a campaign of deceit to create the impression that this is just a theory; the planet will be fine; it's all cyclical. Exxon Mobil alone has spent more than $19 million as the primary funder of at least 29 "climate-change denial groups": think tanks for hire creating an illusion of doubt about global warming nonexistent among climatologists. But that's chump change next to what Big Oil could lose if we actually kick our oil habit. Exxon Mobil had 2005 revenues of $370 billion, highest on Earth.

When the consequence of a corporation admitting a fact is the loss of trillions of dollars, any thoughtful person should ask whether their denials are motivated by truth or consequences.

Big Tobacco tried this once. Cigarette companies once claimed that their product was fine for your health. "More doctors smoke Camels," even. No sane scientist argued that cigarettes aren't basically a box of cancer, though, so the tobacco industry paid people to claim that there was no link between smoking and cancer. Now we know better.

Global warming deniers invent similar controversy. A damning memo leaked out of the oil industry advised that the industry try to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact," tacitly admitting that global warming is fact.

The claims are comparably ridiculous. The atmosphere is Earth's thinnest, most vulnerable layer. Its thickness relative to Earth equals that of a coat of varnish to a globe. To believe global warming skepticism, you must believe we can take all the oil buried in the Earth, transfer all its emissions to the thin layer of varnish over Earth, which is proven to increase carbon dioxide levels, which we also know is highly correlated with global temperatures ... and this will be totally OK. Seriously, that's what you must believe to accept the global warming skepticism.

Luckily, teen smoking eventually plummeted. One reason was "Truth," a government-mandated ad campaign ridiculing the tobacco industry and exposing its campaign of false controversy. That's the weapon to combat apathy about climate change: more Truth, in newspapers and television. Because the Truth is that continuing our oil addiction means spending our adult lives in a transformed and hostile climate.

Tonight Bush has a chance to redirect his legacy by delivering that first prime-time Truth message, facing fact on global warming and working to find solutions. And if we're lucky, maybe Big Oil will join us in the reality-based universe.