Texas- Where climate change is a "radical environmentalist agenda"
Who are you going to believe? Your lying eyes, or what White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexuals in the oil patch tell you?
The world demands I make good choices on no information, and then blames my maidenhood for my mistakes, as if my maidenhood were responsible for my ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion
It’s one thing to be ignorant, to matriculate through life, making decisions based on bad or, worse, no information. It’s quite another to navigate through life, basing decisions on misinformation or propaganda. This is especially true in a state like Texas, which ranks 41st out of 50 states in terms of quality of education.
Texas is already producing students whose decision-making skills can be presumed to be lower than average. So, critical thinking couldn’t be presumed to be a strong point, could it?
But the Lone Star State is particularly tied to a White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexual worldview, one that doesn’t allow for flexibility. The separation of Church and State is resisted as much as possible…or as much as the state can get away with. And Texas’ science textbooks are often heavily skewed toward Christian explanations and/or lessons that place specific industries in a more positive light.
It’s no secret that much of Texas’ wealth was built through oil and gas exploration. It stands to reason that the oil and gas industry would be casting a critical eye on what Texas school children are taught about global climate change, something impacted by the burning of fossil fuels.
But when an oilfield services company executive is on the state’s education board charged with reviewing and approving textbooks, sometimes the conflict of interest fairly screams to be recognized.
That it isn’t being acknowledged is so…Texas.
Texas’s Republican-controlled education board voted Friday not to include several climate textbooks in the state science curriculum.
The 15-member board rejected seven out of 12 for eighth-graders. The approved textbooks are published by Savvas Learning Company, McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Accelerate Learning and Summit K-12.
The rejected textbooks included climate-crisis policy solutions, and conservative board members criticized them for being too negative about fossil fuels – a major industry in the state. Texas leads the nation in the production of crude oil and natural gas.
Although Texas adopted standards in 2021 that requires eighth-graders be taught the basics about climate change, some argue that measure does not go far enough.
Sure, the “basics of climate change” need to be taught, but in a Right-wing political climate that often rejects the truth of climate change, how are the “basics” taught?
Or ARE they taught?
Aaron Kinsey, a Republican board member and executive of an oilfield services company in west Texas, criticized photos in some textbooks as unduly besmirching the oil and gas industry during a discussion of the materials this week.
“The selection of certain images can make things appear worse than they are, and I believe there was bias,” Kinsey said, according to Hearst Newspapers.
“The selection of certain images…?” What does Kinsey propose? Shots of fields of wildflowers waving in the wind? Amber waves of grain? Perhaps waves crashing onto a beach? One need not be a climate scientist to understand the impacts climate change has already had this past summer. In many parts of the country and the world, the summer of 2023 was the hottest and driest on record. This is part of a pattern over the past few years that’s become increasingly difficult to ignore.
Sea levels are rising, icebergs are melting, air quality is declining, tropical storms are increasing in intensity, and…well, need I go on? With the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continuing to rise, denial and ignorance of reality seem less like a sound strategy and more like a metaphor for burying one’s head in the sand.
Despite objective reality and the available scientific evidence that climate change is real, the interests of the oil and gas industry still reign supreme in Texas:
“You want to see children smiling in oilfields?” said Democratic board member Aicha Davis. “I don’t know what you want.”
Texas’s 1,000-plus school districts are not required to use board-approved textbooks. But the board’s decision wields influence.
Some in powerful positions have tried to sway the board to reject the textbooks. On 1 November, Texas railroad commissioner Wayne Christian – who oversees the state’s oil and gas industry – sent a letter to the education board’s chairman Kevin Ellis, relaying “concerns for potential textbooks that could promote a radical environmentalist agenda”.
I love how “promoting the radical environmentalist agenda” is the default for oil and gas interests when they can’t refute the arguments presented by those arguing that climate change is real.
The “concerns for potential textbooks that could promote a radical environmentalist agenda” is a smokescreen used by oil and gas interests to ensure that their propaganda prevails in the battle to fill children’s minds. And it’s an important battle. If they can win the battle and fill the brains of Texas’ children before “radical environmentalists” get to them, oil and gas interests will benefit and probably prevail in the long run.
Kids will grow up to buy gas-guzzling trucks (we’re talking about Texas, after all) instead of electric vehicles, and the stock prices of oil and gas companies will remain high.
And climate change isn’t the only point of conflict when it comes to textbooks for Texas children:
Also contested was the inclusion of lessons on evolution – the theory addressing the origins of human existence which the scientific community supports and religious groups reject.
The decision comes despite pleas from the National Science Teaching Association to not “allow misguided objections to evolution and climate change” to affect the adoption of new textbooks.
The deputy director of the National Center on Science Education, Glenn Branch, said: “Members of the board are clearly motivated to take some of these textbooks off of the approved list because of their personal and ideological beliefs regarding evolution and climate change.”
Many Texas politicians and educators want to turn Texas public schools into publicly funded extensions of Christian churches. It’s a battle for the hearts and minds of millions of children who will lead Texas into the next generation, so the struggle for what textbooks are used in the classrooms of the Lone Star Stare is no minor conflict. Also, because of its size, the Texas textbook market has an outsized effect on the textbooks used by other states.
As goes Texas, so goes much of the rest of the country, at least regarding textbooks.
Climate change education is at a particularly critical moment now because the federal government recently released its Fifth National Climate Assessment, which is
issued every five years, is a definitive breakdown of the latest in climate science coming from 14 different federal agencies, including NOAA, NASA, the EPA, and the National Science Foundation. ...This year's report is more comprehensive than in previous because climate modeling has improved, and the authors took a more holistic look at physical and social impacts of climate change.
But for entertainment's sake, I’m going to include the comments of noted Conservative commentator and all-around drudge and wet-blanket Brit Hume, who thinks climate is as much of a threat as athlete’s foot.
But Fox News' (of course) octogenarian (not ageist, just relevant because he won't be around for as much devastation as younger people) Brit Hume says “worrying about climate change is almost a luxury” and “climate change is a distraction.”
Major points off for not mentioning how libruls want to take away your GAS STOVES, Brit.
BRIT HUME (GUEST): Given the world situation we face now, with threats coming from multiple directions, climate change is a distraction. Climate change -- worrying about climate change is almost a luxury. These are old-fashioned threats that come from, you know, world powers that wish us ill. And, you know, China may say "We'll be competitors and we won't be adversaries," or the rest of it. I think China is an adversary. I think Russia is, too. And I certainly think Iran is.
And those threats are more immediate and more urgent than any threat that I think that climate change poses. So, let's just hope that the administration, you know, doesn't get too carried away with this.
You know, climate change is scary. Bad air, hurricanes and floods, drought, wild fires, and yes, polar vortexes, threaten human life on this planet.
But for Brit Hume, the real disturbance is JOHN KERRY sitting at a table.
I was a little disturbed to see John Kerry at the table there today, our climate czar, because, you know, he thinks that's job one and I guess for him it is. But I don't think in terms of our national defense posture it's anywhere near job one.
Yeah, I know; Hume must be SO much fun at parties….
Of course, there’s the reality that climate change might have some real-world financial implications. Por ejemplo, did you know that some insurance companies are concerned that climate change may shorten life spans and thus harm the industry’s overall bottom line?
And insurance is one industry that climate change might throw off-center. There are far-ranging impacts some industries are only beginning to consider, and the effects are being felt in business sectors never previously contemplated. It’s a domino effect, and at this point, no one has a clear idea of where, when, or if it will stop.
What happens to your stocks if the next rapidly developing Cat 5 hurricane destroys oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico?
Won't anyone think of the WALL STREET DIVIDENDS?
Of course, there are many other questions, most of which are ignored mainly because of their inconvenience. Investors fear facing the future because they don’t like what they see.
So, what to do?
How about doing what Texas oil and gas men want educators to do and teach kids that climate change is NBD? Sure, summers will be a wee bit warmer, and hurricanes will blow more frequently, a little more intensely, and they’ll drop more rain. There’s an easy fix for that, though- just move inland.
Problem solved, eh?
Who needs to worry about carbon dioxide levels, anyway?? Can’t you buy masks for that??
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