http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/24/AR2006112400789.html

Science a la Joe Camel

By Laurie David
Sunday, November 26, 2006; B01

At hundreds of screenings this year of "An Inconvenient Truth," the 
first thing many viewers said after the lights came up was that every 
student in every school in the United States needed to see this movie.

The producers of former vice president Al Gore's film about global 
warming, myself included, certainly agreed. So the company that made 
the documentary decided to offer 50,000 free DVDs to the National 
Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for educators to use in their 
classrooms. It seemed like a no-brainer.

The teachers had a different idea: Thanks but no thanks, they said.

In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other "special 
interests" might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they 
didn't want to offer "political" endorsement of the film; and they 
saw "little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members" in accepting the 
free DVDs.

Gore, however, is not running for office, and the film's theatrical 
run is long since over. As for classroom benefits, the movie has been 
enthusiastically endorsed by leading climate scientists worldwide, 
and is required viewing for all students in Norway and Sweden.

Still, maybe the NSTA just being extra cautious. But there was one 
more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, 
would place "unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, 
especially certain targeted supporters." One of those supporters, it 
turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

That's the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done 
everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming 
and stifle any serious effort to solve it. It has run ads in leading 
newspapers (including this one) questioning the role of manmade 
emissions in global warming, and financed the work of a small band of 
scientific skeptics who have tried to challenge the consensus that 
heat-trapping pollution is drastically altering our atmosphere. The 
company spends millions to support groups such as the Competitive 
Enterprise Institute that aggressively pressure lawmakers to oppose 
emission limits.

It's bad enough when a company tries to sell junk science to a bunch 
of grown-ups. But, like a tobacco company using cartoons to peddle 
cigarettes, Exxon Mobil is going after our kids, too.

And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it 
has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the 
association's "Building a Presence for Science" program, an 
electronic networking initiative intended to "bring standards-based 
teaching and learning" into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. 
Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group's corporate advisory 
board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment 
to science education.

So much for special interests and implicit endorsements.

In the past year alone, according to its Web site, Exxon Mobil's 
foundation gave $42 million to key organizations that influence the 
way children learn about science, from kindergarten until they 
graduate from high school.

And Exxon Mobil isn't the only one getting in on the action. Through 
textbooks, classroom posters and teacher seminars, the oil industry, 
the coal industry and other corporate interests are exploiting 
shortfalls in education funding by using a small slice of their 
record profits to buy themselves a classroom soapbox.

NSTA's list of corporate donors also includes Shell Oil and the 
American Petroleum Institute (API), which funds NSTA's Web site on 
the science of energy. There, students can find a section called 
"Running on Oil" and read a page that touts the industry's 
environmental track record -- citing improvements mostly attributable 
to laws that the companies fought tooth and nail, by the way -- but 
makes only vague references to spills or pollution. NSTA has 
distributed a video produced by API called "You Can't Be Cool Without 
Fuel," a shameless pitch for oil dependence.

The education organization also hosts an annual convention -- which 
is described on Exxon Mobil's Web site as featuring "more than 450 
companies and organizations displaying the most current textbooks, 
lab equipment, computer hardware and software, and teaching 
enhancements." The company "regularly displays" its "many . . . 
education materials" at the exhibition. John Borowski, a science 
teacher at North Salem High School in Salem, Ore., was dismayed by 
NSTA's partnerships with industrial polluters when he attended the 
association's annual convention this year and witnessed hundreds of 
teachers and school administrators walk away with armloads of free 
corporate lesson plans.

Along with propaganda challenging global warming from Exxon Mobil, 
the curricular offerings included lessons on forestry provided by 
Weyerhaeuser and International Paper, Borowski says, and the benefits 
of genetic engineering courtesy of biotech giant Monsanto.

"The materials from the American Petroleum Institute and the other 
corporate interests are the worst form of a lie: omission," Borowski 
says. "The oil and coal guys won't address global warming, and the 
timber industry papers over clear-cuts."

An API memo leaked to the media as long ago as 1998 succinctly 
explains why the association is angling to infiltrate the classroom: 
"Informing teachers/students about uncertainties in climate science 
will begin to erect barriers against further efforts to impose 
Kyoto-like measures in the future."

So, how is any of this different from showing Gore's movie in the 
classroom? The answer is that neither Gore nor Participant 
Productions, which made the movie, stands to profit a nickel from 
giving away DVDs, and we aren't facing millions of dollars in lost 
business from limits on global-warming pollution and a shift to 
cleaner, renewable energy.

It's hard to say whether NSTA is a bad guy here or just a sorry 
victim of tight education budgets. And we don't pretend that a 
two-hour movie is a substitute for a rigorous science curriculum. 
Students should expect, and parents should demand, that educators 
present an honest and unbiased look at the true state of knowledge 
about the challenges of the day.

As for Exxon Mobil -- which just began a fuzzy advertising campaign 
that trumpets clean energy and low emissions -- this story shows that 
slapping green stripes on a corporate tiger doesn't change the beast 
within. The company is still playing the same cynical game it has for 
years.

While NSTA and Exxon Mobil ponder the moral lesson they're teaching 
with all this, there are 50,000 DVDs sitting in a Los Angeles 
warehouse, waiting to be distributed. In the meantime, Mom and Dad 
may want to keep a sharp eye on their kids' science homework.

[log in to unmask]

Laurie David, a producer of "An Inconvenient Truth," is a Natural 
Resources Defense Council trustee and founder of 
StopGlobalWarming.org.