{"id":679,"date":"2009-03-26T16:29:01","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T20:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=679"},"modified":"2009-03-26T16:29:01","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T20:29:01","slug":"environment-elbowed-out-by-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2009\/03\/26\/environment-elbowed-out-by-recession\/","title":{"rendered":"Environment: Elbowed out by recession"},"content":{"rendered":"

In mid-February, George Will, resident Washington Post conservative and climate-skeptic, wrote an editorial<\/a> denouncing \u201cDark Green Doomsayers.\u201d The editorial was filled with anecdotal references of news articles from the 1970\u2019s that declare widespread climate cooling and exclaim that the world will soon find itself in the next ice age. The piece outraged the environmental community and sparked a flurry of internet activity demanding that the Post retract the column for misinformation.<\/span><\/p>\n

(Last week, the Post ran an opinion piece<\/a> by Chris Mooney, author of \u201cThe Republican War on Science,\u201d which rebuts Will\u2019s editorial and scolds him for faulty fact-checking.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Just last week they Gallup reported that for the first time in the 25-year history of the poll, Americans think that \u201ceconomic growth should be given the priority<\/a>, even if the environment suffers to some extent.\u201d Now, an early March Gallup poll showed that a record 41 percent of people polled think that the threat of global warming is exaggerated<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The change of heart about the economy is not surprising.\u00a0 We are in a recession, and the economy is the most tangible problem to most Americans.\u00a0 But what about the surge in climate change skepticism?\u00a0 Is it possible that when people put an issue on the back burner, they justify their decision by reassuring themselves that it wasn\u2019t that important, after all?<\/span><\/p>\n

As Will himself puts it, do \u201creal calamities take our minds off hypothetical ones\u201d? <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In mid-February, George Will, resident Washington Post conservative and climate-skeptic, wrote an editorial denouncing \u201cDark Green Doomsayers.\u201d The editorial was filled with anecdotal references of news articles from the 1970\u2019s that declare widespread climate cooling and exclaim that the world will soon find itself in the next ice age. The piece outraged the environmental community and sparked a flurry of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,10,49,48],"tags":[186,60,187,188,189],"class_list":["post-679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservation","category-ecology-in-policy","category-scholarship","category-ecology-and-society","tag-chris-mooney","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-skeptics","tag-economic-growth","tag-george-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}