Stephen Downes

I don't cover climate issues(*) in this newsletter, but I do follow Bryan Alexander, and I do cover academia, and I admit I was startled to see the following in one Alexander's usually restrained posts: "At intellectually corrupt Princeton, and among the nation's intellectually corrupt elites, too little ever changes." The quote, and others like it, comes from this article, summarizing a ProPublica report, which details the oil and gas industry funding behind a very influential Princeton paper, published in Science, on climate policy. The core objective of the paper was to ensure that fossil fuels stayed in the mix, at more than 50% of energy production, for the next fifty year. The oil and gas industry paid the bills; the authors Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala responded, "Yeah, whatever you want." I don't blame the authors so much as I blame the system of publication and funding and prestige and bought science that results in things like this.

(*) Because I don't cover climate issues you may think I am not really concerned about them. You'd be wrong. Since my days of helping newspaper recycling as a Boy Scout in the 1970s environmental issues have been top of mind for me. I have nothing but sympathy and support for those advocating renewable energy sources and energy efficiency. I agree with pople who criticize the wastefulness of AI, while at the same time rail at those very critics who continue to water their lawn and drive their truck as though there are no other environmental issues. But I am also clear-eyed about the fact that it is the wealthy and the corporations that are creating the environmental crisis; as the article here mentions, the concept of the individual 'carbon footprint' is also an oil and gas industry myth.