Killing The Climate Messenger

PRESENTED BY TSUCHINSHAN-ATLAS

The public mockery of “environmentalists” for concern about climate pollution began, by my reckoning, with a New York Times op-ed on August 28, 1971. In “No, Breathe Easier,” the Ayn Rand acolyte and mining executive Eugene Guccione called the greenhouse effect “idiocy,” telling Times readers to “relax.”¹

Jumping forward to 2005, Ayn Rand acolyte Glenn Beck calls the thousands of victims trapped in Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters in New Orleans “scumbags” and compares Al Gore’s landmark climate documentary An Inconvenient Truth to Hitler’s antisemitic propaganda.

Beck was rewarded with a primetime show on CNN Headline News, hosting evangelical climate-denier Alabama television meteorologist James Spann on January 22, 2007 to scoff at the “manmade catastrophic global warming bandwagon” and personally attack climate scientist Heidi Cullen as a McCarthyite.

For nearly two decades, Spann used his own blog and long-running podcast to coordinate with Sen. Jim Inhofe’s (R-Okla.) climate-denier aide Marc Morano to attack climate scientists like James Hansen and science communicators like Bill Nye.²

It’s now 2024, and the conspiracy-peddling science-denying weatherman Spann is reaping what he sowed.

In the wake of Hurricane Helene, Spann faced a “barrage of hostile comments” from online anti-FEMA conspiracy theorists warning him: “Stop lying about the government controlling the weather or else.”

Oops.

Spann is one of the many members of the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party now expressing regrets for helping Donald Trump’s QAnon-Nazi mobs take over the GOP. After decades-long political careers fueling anti-science, anti-government conspiracy theories on behalf of the fossil-fuel industry, Dick Cheney and Joe Scarborough have belatedly endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

Unfortunately one of the radicals deceived by the Cheney-Spann-Beck-Trump grift took matters into his own hands this weekend, wielding an assault rifle and threatening to harm FEMA workers working in the Helene-ravaged Lake Lure. After FEMA halted operations in the county, suspect William Parsons, an anti-government anti-vaxxer, was arrested with a handgun and rifle but released after posting bond.

Meanwhile, Trump’s grift knows no bounds. His campaign quickly set up a GoFundMe in response to Hurricane Helene that has raised more than $7.7 million, but as Edith Olmsted reports, there’s little evidence that anything other than a rounding error has gone to Helene charities.

A CLIMATE HAWK FOR CONGRESS: One of the top Congressional climate races in the country is California’s 47th District, where climate champion David Min is vying to fill Rep. Katie Porter’s open seat against Scott Baugh, who blames “plants and animals” for climate change. David is doing a Q&A and phone bank with climate voters tonight at 6 PM.

ANOTHER CLIMATE HAWK FOR CONGRESS: Rock Aboujaoude, Jr. is a Gen-Z climate activist running against the anti-FEMA pro-Trump fracking stooge Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R) in Florida's 12th along the Gulf coast north of Tampa. It's a solid R district but Rock is standing up for reality and fighting to save the people hit by the fossil-fueled Helene and Milton.

Dr. Samantha Montano explains the Project 2025 plans to gut FEMA.

Big Oil loses bid to dismiss California greenwashing lawsuits.

A utility promised to stop burning coal. Then Google and Meta came to town.

Fossil fuel interests are working to kill solar in one Ohio county. The hometown newspaper is helping.

Right-wing climate denier and drill-baby-drill ideologue Tom Donohue has died at the age of 86, after a long career of killing climate action at the helm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Climate Action Today:

• 5 PM: People’s Action
  Deep Canvass Election Phonebank

• 6 PM: Calls For Climate
  Dave Min for CA-47 Q&A and Phonebank

• 9 PM: Climate Voters for Harris-Walz
  Phone Bank and Networking

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.

1  The Times published a response the next week from climate scientist Stephen Schneider, who battled with climate deniers for decades. Congratulations to Dr. Leah Stokes, who won this year’s award for climate communication named for Dr. Schneider.

2  Morano is still plugging away at his deadly schtick—I met him on the Laura Ingraham show in 2018 and here he is on an Ayn Rand podcast in 2023.