News that's reused

• Pages: 23-23

JULY/AUGUST 2010 ❧ Page 23

Copyright © 2010, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, July/August 2010

noTice & commenT

NEWS THAT’S REUSED

integral to the scientif‌ic process. . . .

Denial is dif‌ferent. It is the automatic

gainsaying of a claim regardless of the

evidence for it — sometimes even in

the teeth of evidence. Denialism is

typically driven by ideology or reli-

gious belief, where the commitment

to the belief takes precedence over the

evidence. Belief comes f‌irst, reasons

for belief follow, and those reasons are

winnowed to ensure that the belief

survives intact.” While denial can be

found throughout society — the best

known example is Holocaust denial;

there are also evolution denial, AIDS

denial, denial that President Obama

was born in the United States — he

believes that politically oriented cli-

mate skeptics should be bearded with

the term.

Patterns of public policy denialism

are common. Take the f‌ight against to-

bacco, where deniers of the link to can-

cer created think tanks to pump their

pseudoscience into the polity. One

such think tank was e Advancement

of Sound Science Coalition, a tobacco-

industry front that morphed into a cli-

mate change lobby.

“Perhaps it is no surprise that some

industries are prepared to distort real-

ity to protect their markets,” accord-

ing to a report on denialism published

in New Scientist and written in part

by Shermer. “But the tentacles of or-

ganized denial reach beyond narrow

f‌inancial interests. For example, some

prominent backers of climate denial

also deny evolution. Prominent cre-

ationists return the favor both in the

U.S. and elsewhere. Recent legislative

ef‌forts to get creationism taught in

U.S. schools have been joined by calls

to ‘teach the controversy’ on warming

as well.”

Some creationists have explicitly

argued that the science of both cli-

mate and evolution involve a “left-

wing ideology that promotes statism,

nanny-state moralism and . . . materi-

alism.” ese aren’t the cant of skep-

tics but ideologues.

Notice & Comment is written by the editor

and represents h is views.

Your average RCRA viola-

tion: To af‌icionados, the great-

est moment for environmental

law in the movies was the EPA

enforcement action against

Ghostbusters, the troupe of

ectoplasm-control agents led

by actor Bill Murray. Now the

Onion has published the latest

chapter in this pollution saga,

headlined “EPA Shuts Down

Local Ghost-Entrapment Busi-

ness.”

Citing “unsafe practices and

potential toxic contamination,

the Environmental Protec-

tion Agency shut down a small

ghost-entrapment operation in

downtown Manhattan today,

and had four of the business’s

spectral-containment special-

ists arrested in the process,” the

waggish paper opined.

“According to EPA agent

Walter Peck, employees of the

company . . . had repeatedly

refused to grant him access to

their storage facility, which

posed a health hazard to the sur-

rounding community.

“‘The facility in question

unlawfully used public utili-

ties for the purpose of non-

sanctioned waste-handling,

and was in direct violation of

the Environmental Protection

Act,’” Peck said, citing an un-

known statute. “Additionally,

this company possessed several

unlicensed nuclear accelera-

tors.’”

e paper cited “environ-

mental policy expert” David

Napoli in defense of the troupe:

“is business f‌ills an impor-

tant niche and because of the

EPA’s complete lack of techni-

cal knowledge . . . government

intervention was totally unwar-

ranted.”

From the Oil, the Dawn:

“Although cause-related market-

ing usually entails a company

selecting a nonprof‌it in need

of money and exposure, when

it comes to Dawn dishwashing

liquid it was not the brand that

chose the charity but the other

way around,” according to the

New York Times. In an article

published months before the

Gulf of Mexico well blowout, the

paper detailed a study on which

dish detergents are best at clean-

ing up birds after an oil spill.

In 1978, a decade before the

Exxon Valdez spill, the founder

of the International Bird Rescue

Research Center secured a small

grant from Chevron to test all

major dish soaps for cleaning

birds. “e one that worked bet-

ter than anything else was Dawn,

Jay Holdcomb, executive director

of the group, told the Times. “It

cut the oil faster than anything

else.”

e organization informed

Dawn’s manufacturer, Procter &

Gamble, “which initially ignored

requests to donate cases of the

product, then f‌inally agreed to do

so. . . . In 1989, during the Exxon

Valdez spill, volunteers used

Dawn on crude-covered birds,

and the brand f‌igured promi-

nently in media accounts of the

disaster, as it has in animal-rescue

coverage since. In recent years,

Dawn also has donated as much

as $100,000 annually.”

e soap that came in second

was Palmolive, the “soft on your

hands” detergent. “Some of our

competitors have owned mild-

ness,” said a P&G spokeswoman.

“is is really a great way of high-

lighting our messaging of being

tough on grease but gentle on

hands.”