Class Research Resources and Assignments

Week 14
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Denial, Resistance and The Hidden Promise Embedded in the Climate Crisis

  Ross Gelbspan, Author, The Heat is On: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription. [Website: www.heatisonline.org ]

Please read a selection of articles from his Recent Publications.

and his books:
 
Ross Gelbspan
  1998 The Heat Is on: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription (N.Y., Perseus Publishing Co., 1998), entire.
Ross Gelbspan
  2004 Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis--And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster (New York, Basic Books, 2004).
 
Ross Gelbspan
  1998 The Heat is Online
Interview with Ross Gelbspan by "Anne Online"
Toward a Real Kyoto Protocol
  2001 (Inaugural address at The Climate Talks Project, a series of coordinated seminars convened by Dr. William Moomaw and Dr. Timothy C. Weiskel, at Harvard, and Tufts Universities -- Oct. 2001).
Ross Gelbspan
  2003 “The Position of the Bush Administration is Truly Criminal,” Democracy Now, 22 September 2003.

If the public seems confused about climate change, perhaps there is a reason. Consider the substantial lobbying effort that has been put in place to influence public understanding on climate issues.

[Excerpts from:] Political Climate
  2004 "The Political Climate," PBS - NOW, (23 January 2004).
Gelbspan, Ross
    "Stealing Our Reality," On The Media, (3 September 2004).
Stossel, John, Ross Gelbspan, and Michael Crichton
  2005 "John the Skeptic," NPR - WNYC - On The Media, (1 April 2005).
Ross Gelbspan
  2005 "The Political Climate," PBS - NOW, (22 April 2005).
Ross Gelbspan
  2005 "Report: ExxonMobil Spends Millions Funding Global Warming Skeptics," Democracy Now, (22 April 2005).
Ross Gelbspan
  2005 "Journalist View of the Climate Crisis" - Human Health and Global Environmental Change - Course lecture, 26 April 2005.
Ross Gelbspan
  2005 "Snowed," Mother Jones Magazine, (May/June 2005).

What about the Kolbert interview + 3-Part New Yorker Series + Followup?

Amy Davidson
  2005 "A Planetary Problem," The New Yorker, (25 April 2005).
Elizabeth Kolbert
  2005 "THE CLIMATE OF MAN—I: Disappearing islands, thawing permafrost, melting polar ice. How the earth is changing," The New Yorker, (25 April 2005).
  2005 "THE CLIMATE OF MAN—II - The curse of Akkad," The New Yorker, (2 May 2005).
  2005 "THE CLIMATE OF MAN—III - What can be done?," The New Yorker, (9 May 2005).
   
"As the effects of global warming become more and more apparent, will we react by finally fashioning a global response? Or will we retreat into ever narrower and more destructive forms of self-interest? It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing."

What is the purpose of this news "story" about the Kolbert series?

Alex Chadwick and Richard Harris
  2005 "'New Yorker' Climate Change Series," NPR - Day to Day, (9 May 2005).

In light of these trends does the following story pose such a mystery to you?

Ailing Automakers: Rough Road
  2005 PBS - Newshour, (6 May 2005).
What is the "unknown" that the commentator refers to at the end of this excerpt? Are current trends really that "unknown"? Is there such a mystery as to what auto manufacturers should be doing at this point? Even if there are financial uncertainties about the immediate future of any one manufacturer, can they really any longer claim that the future is "unknown"? If you owned stock in any one of these companies, what kinds of questions might you want to ask its management team at the next stock-holder meeting?
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