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rick santorum
CNN's Anderson Cooper Cancels Segment With Climate Report Author to Give Rick Santorum More Air Time
After being interviewed for Anderson Cooper 360°, Katharine Hayhoe’s interview about the latest national report on climate change never aired
Nov 29, 2018
Katharine Hayhoe, the director of the Texas Tech Climate Science Center, has been vocal about the Trump administration's shameful response to its own recent report on climate change. In part, that's because she helped write it.
Hayhoe co-authored the report with federal scientists from 13 different agencies, who concluded that the U.S. will warm at least three to six more degrees by the end of the century unless fossil fuel use is reduced significantly. The report also warns that sea level rise will result in mass migration and details how global warming has greatly exacerbated wildfires in the U.S.
Someone who is so well-placed to rebut the lies being put out by the White House about its report would seem like an ideal person for cable news shows to feature. But cable news is, well, cable news. That could explain why a recent segment Hayhoe taped for CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 didn't air during the show's initial broadcast, and instead got bumped online. The show did, however, find time to air more climate-denying commentary from far-right former-senator-turned-CNN-commentator Rick Santorum. Priorities, right?
Hayhoe told Common Dreams in an interview that she had flown to Palm Springs to give a TED Talk when CNN asked her to go to a studio for the interview. The idea was to have her dispute recent claims made by Santorum on CNN that climate change scientists are "driven by money." Hayhoe said CNN insisted on her coming in physically, rather than conducting a Skype interview like she had just done on New Day. The network even sent a car for her. Despite only having a two-hour window before an audio-visual check with TED, Hayhoe agreed, with the hope of fact-checking Santorum on the same network that aired his inaccuracies.
Yet instead of airing Hayhoe's interview on TV, CNN allowed Santorum to repeat on the lie that climate scientists are in it for the money, while acknowledging "a crisis". Santorum told Cooper, "There would be no chair of the head of climate studies at every university in America if we didn't have a crisis. These people make money because there's a crisis."
Santorum became a CNN senior political commentator in January 2017 and is paid to regularly espouse right-wing views, only occasionally disagreeing with the Republican line. Media Matters for America pointed out that, while Hayhoe was not paid anything for her participation in the creation of the National Climate Assessment, Santorum received $763,331 in Senate campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry between 1995 to 2007. Santorum also serves as a consultant for Consol, a gas and coal company in Pennsylvania.
"I did [the interview with Cooper] because I thought it was so important," Hayhoe told Common Dreams. "I understand breaking news and this is absolutely not the first time this has happened... The kicker is that they gave more airtime to Rick Santorum instead. That was really the issue... I understand if something doesn't fit in the program and you have to put it on later, but to say a climate scientist is on clearing the air and fact checking previous statements made on CNN--there's no time for that but there is time for that same person to get on and provide further disinformation that was the problem... Why give somebody more air to say more false statements if you really are a news program and you care about factual accuracy?"
Hayhoe went on to explain that interviews she was meant to conduct for All In with Chris Hayes in the past had also been canceled three times, "once when I was literally in a chair with that earpiece in my ear." In July of this year, Hayes actually tweeted that climate change was a "palpable ratings killer," when explaining why one of her segments had been dropped for a breaking news story.
The idea that an issue of such global and national significance--which played a role in California's deadliest wildfire on record, as well as the worst hurricanes the country has ever seen--could be dependent on ratings and replaced with outright climate denial should be of great concern to cable news audiences. But it's also nothing new.
Media Matters reported that, in 2017, news shows failed to link major weather events to climate change, but focused instead devoted its climate coverage to actions of the Trump White House. And while wildfires devastated California, the media watchdog group found that, in over 100 segments from those same networks, only 3.7 percent referenced climate change as playing a role.
In 2016, Media Matters reported that CNN gave almost five times as much airtime to ads for the American Petroleum Institute as it did to record-breaking temperatures in 2015 and early 2016. This didn't study didn't even include ads for Koch Industries that also aired during that time. When told about these last numbers, Hayhoe said, "You know what ad came on before my segment online? It was an ad for Shell."
About the idea that climate change was a "ratings killer," Hayhoe told Common Dreams that she felt Hayes' pain and appreciated his honesty, but did have suggestions as to how to make climate change interesting to the public. She took issue with the negative nature of the news in general, but highlighted the extreme nature of climate change in terms of scope and negativity in particular.
Fear and panic and despair is not going to fix this thing," she said. "Those are emotions that give us enough adrenaline to outrun the bear, but after that, it's just debilitating."
Instead, she believes the news could cover some of the positive steps being taken to address climate change, what she calls "rational hope." She pointed to a number of instances in which small projects are being implemented to help transform our global fossil fuel-based society, including: a town in Texas that relies on 100% wind and solar energy, a Chinese wind company that's hiring former coal miners in Wyoming to be technicians, a solar power firm manufacturer in San Antonio retraining unemployed oil workers, the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in congress, and a 17-year-old creating algae biofuel in her bedroom. Hayhoe also underscored the fact that the latest National Climate Assessment actually does describe some of the initiatives being undertaken to reduce emissions.
"If you start going out and looking for these stories, you realize that we could fix this thing," Hayhoe said. "That's not a ratings killer. That makes you feel like wow, I didn't know that. That's great. Tell me more."
When asked why cable news seems to neglect climate change, Max Boykoff, director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, told Common Dreams that part of the issue with climate change reporting is that it can seem like a long-term, distant threat, which can easily be overtaken by "whiplash journalism."
At the International Collective on Environment, Culture and Politics, Boykoff and others monitor 74 media sources in 38 countries about climate change coverage. Boykoff, said, "Often times people may think that this isn't something that needs to be dealt with right now by me. Part of a larger conversation is important work that needs to be done to reframe the ways we're considering how climate change is impacting us here in our daily lives and now in the present."
Common Dreams asked Hayhoe what she would say in her ideal cable news interview, to which she responded, "Climate change is right here right now affecting all of us and the more carbon we produce, the more serious the impact, but our future is in our hands. The choices that we make today will have a profound impact on the consequences that we experience over the next few decades and the rest of the century. We can avoid the most dangerous impacts if we act now and--this is really important because it's that rational hope--by doing so, we will create a better world for all of us where energy is abundant, where we have cleaner air and water, and a stable economy. It's a world that we want to live in and that's what fixing climate change is going to do for us."
We have reached out to both CNN and MSNBC about the Hayhoe's experience and will update this article if we hear back. Hayhoe's segment from Anderson Cooper 360deg can be found below:
CD Editor's note: This post has been updated from in an earlier version to include extensive new comment from Katharine Hayhoe.
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Rick Santorum Slammed for Suggesting Students Learn CPR Instead of Demanding Politicians Pass Reforms
The former Republican presidential candidate was rebuffed on CNN after he accused Parkland students of "looking to someone else to solve their problem"—by asking their elected representatives to represent their constituents' best interests
Mar 25, 2018
A day after hundeds of thousands of gun control advocates assembled across the U.S. and on every continent except Antarctica, former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum demonstrated the refusal of many in Washington to confront gun violence with common-sense legislation, by dismissing reforms proposed by students and suggesting they learn CPR in case their schools are attacked.
"How about kids, instead of looking to someone else to solve their problem, do something about maybe taking CPR classes or trying to deal with situations that when there is a violent shooter that you can actually respond to that," Santorum said during a panel discussion on CNN's "State of the Union."
"I've got a kid who's going to be in high school next year," fellow CNN commentator Van Jones responded. "If his main way to survive high school is learning CPR so when his friends get shot--that to me, we've gone too far."
Host Brianna Keilar reminded the former Pennsylvania senator that the action-minded survivors of last month's school shooting in Parkland, Fla., have begun the nationwide #NeverAgain movement, organizing protests and engaging with their elected representatives in recent weeks--and could hardly be accused of sitting back and demanding that others solve their problems.
Watch:
On social media, other critics were less diplomatic than Jones.
\u201cIf there is a more soulless scrotesniff in all Christendom, he has had the better sense to never vocalize his thoughts in public. https://t.co/dB4jKDEbAg\u201d— David Simon (@David Simon) 1521995099
\u201cA reminder that we can\u2019t blame everything on Trump. We have had some truly awful presidential candidates in the not so distant past.\n\nSantorum knocks marches: Kids should learn CPR @CNNPolitics https://t.co/o3eYC1n8Gh\u201d— Richard W. Painter (@Richard W. Painter) 1521993385
\u201cSerious question: Has @RickSantorum seen images from the slaughter at Stoneman Douglas High? What kind of CPR could have been used to save them? \n\nStop putting this man on television. https://t.co/UDR71Alae0\u201d— Ja'han Jones (@Ja'han Jones) 1521990359
With his suggestion, Santorum added his name to a growing list of gun rights advocates who have insisted in the wake of recent mass shootings that stricter regulations on gun ownership are not the solution to gun violence.
President Donald Trump and a number of Republican lawmakers urged states to arm teachers after last month's shooting in Parkland, Florida, which gave way to the student-led #NeverAgain movement. After 58 people were killed in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history in Las Vegas last fall, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) advised Americans to "get small" in the event of such an attack.
At Saturday's demonstration, students warned politicians who have accepted donations from gun lobbying groups like the NRA that if they don't take action to pass reforms--such as raising the minimum age for gun purchasers and banning high-capacity ammunition magazines and military-style semi-automatic weapons--young people will take action by voting them out of office.
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Christian Extremism Plagues World, Too
Where does this incredible smugness come from? Last week at the Values Voter Summit, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum told an ostensibly Christian, very pro-war-with-Islam crowd that, though it took a millennium or two, Christianity was officially not as bad as the forces of "radical Islam."
Proving that irony is his middle name, Mr. Santorum contrasted the tolerance for religious and ideological differences one finds in the West against the lack of such freedoms in Islamic states as proof of the superiority of our values over theirs.
Oct 04, 2014
Where does this incredible smugness come from? Last week at the Values Voter Summit, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum told an ostensibly Christian, very pro-war-with-Islam crowd that, though it took a millennium or two, Christianity was officially not as bad as the forces of "radical Islam."
Proving that irony is his middle name, Mr. Santorum contrasted the tolerance for religious and ideological differences one finds in the West against the lack of such freedoms in Islamic states as proof of the superiority of our values over theirs.
Mr. Santorum, who came in second during the 2012 Republican presidential nomination race and whom many believe is positioning himself for another run in 2016, said there is "a fundamental foundational problem in Islam of embracing issues of freedom of conscience and religious persecution."
Never mind the very inconvenient fact that Mr. Santorum has already gone on record describing the separation of church and state in this country as a liberal distortion of the founders' intentions. When you look at Mr. Santorum's positions on birth control, gay marriage and whether the Supreme Court's decision to strike down sodomy laws is correct, his newfound devotion to "freedom of conscience" sounds a teeny bit hollow.
But the comment that returned Mr. Santorum to the headlines played to the crowd's overweening sense of self-righteousness: "Christendom [once] expanded by the sword, that doesn't happen anymore," he said. "You don't have any Baptist ministers going on jihad."
What a line, right? Finally, a quip that neatly separates the forces of light (The West/Christianity) from the forces of darkness (Islam). Finally, a distillation of history that is irrefutable in the face of the barbarism of the Islamic State.
Who would argue, Mr. Santorum seemed to be saying, that compared to ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State, the most dangerous Christian fundamentalist militia member would be laughed out of the Terror Olympics for showing up with only one or two abortion doctors' scalps under his belt?
This is what this line of argument boils down to: Because our tribe is no longer currently engaged in religious wars in Europe, Inquisitions, expelling Jews from Western countries, condoning slavery, committing genocide of aboriginal people or forcing Muslims to "convert or die" (sorry, Ann Coulter), we have it all over them.
"Lord, thank you for making us righteous Westerners with a Christian conscience and a secular democracy and not like those brutish Muslims over there," we say in smug defiance of our very long and bloody history.
And while it is technically true that you won't find American Baptists going on jihads, you will find them and other denominational ministers advising, say, the Uganda government on how best to keep its homosexual population in line, up to and including the death penalty as prescribed in Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
While persecution based on sexual identity pales next to what the Islamic State would do to those who don't adhere to its ideological/religious line, it really is a difference of scale and degree of oppression. If you're the victim of either one, you're none too happy about it, though I'm sure most would rather take their chances with Christian fascism.
I knew a lot of fellow Christians in the 1980s who wanted to see Old Testament biblical law imposed eventually on all of American civil society. Fortunately, their fantasy went nowhere, though it still echoes in the fringier regions of the Republican/Tea Party coalition. I'm sure folks with those views applauded Mr. Santorum's quip the most enthusiastically.
Another reason I found Mr. Santorum's statement odd is that it completely ignored the recent history of Christian jihads. Orthodox Christians didn't exactly turn the other cheek in Bosnia. The "troubles" between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland ended only recently after decades of bloodshed. OK, no "Baptists" in either group, but plenty of Christians are walking around with blood on their hands.
This is obviously not exclusive to Christians or Muslims. Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims have had wars in Asia, too. Before there were any religions, humans had what Nietzsche called a "Will to Power." Cruelty, whether religiously inspired or not, is what humans do.
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