Today’s Boston Globe op-ed page carries a blast of propaganda so undiluted it makes you look around blinking and wonder how you strayed into a teach-in. "Katrina’s Real Name," by Ross Gelbspan, author of "The Heat Is On" and "Boiling Point," builds on a rhetorical trope: The "real name" of various disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, "is global warming."
"When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles," Gelbspan begins, "the cause was global warming." My mother lives in L.A. I think she would have mentioned it.
"When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia…" "When the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain and Portugal…" "When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees and killed more than 20 people in one week…" "Culprit…villain…blistering…heartbreaking…terrifying…" Like Ol’ Man River, Gelbspan just keeps rolling.
Why don’t people know about about global warming, he asks? (People don’t? They talk about it all the time.) He blames Big Oil and Big Coal for spending money on a p.r. program and on political campaigns – and he blames the media, for…what? Apparently, for not making everybody demand that "humanity…" (humanity!) "cut its use of coal and oil by 70 percent."
It’s awe-inspiring, really, this op-ed of Gelbspan’s. Kind of like Angel Falls. Read it all here:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/30/katrinas_real_name/
