greenandprofitable.com

Want to buy a scientist?

When you find a scientist who claims to show that human-caused catastrophic climate change either isn’t real or isn’t a problem or doesn’t really exist, you usually find a money trail leading to one of the worst polluters (usually, oil giant ExxonMobil, sometimes, petrochemical magnates and right-wing darlings Koch brothers).

But ultra-right-wing think-tanks play in this sandbox too. Friday, TriplePundit posted leaked secret anti-climate-change strategy documents from Heartland Institute; they actually have the chutzpah to put $100,000 toward developing a K-12 school curriculum to

…show that the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain – two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science.

Oh yes, and they’ve also set aside $18,000 a monthly to fund pundits who present the climate-change-is-not-a-problem viewpoint.

Hmm, that sounds a lot like the attempts by creationists to throttle the study of evolution and biology. When science can’t back up your position, influence young kids with the Big Lie technique that was so beloved by Nazi propagandists. And the get television news commentators to present a “fair and balanced” approach, pitting your purchased experts against objective scientists as if they were equally credible, and sow doubt in the public mind.

To climate skeptics, I say “look out the window.” In my own area of Western Massachusetts alone, we’ve experienced the following just since June 1:

• A tornado that wrecked a big swath of the largest city in my area and several small towns, June 1
• Massive damage from Hurricane Irene, in an area whose last really damaging hurricane was in the 1950s, August 28
• More huge damage from a freak snowstorm October 29 , destroying thousands of trees
• A nearly snowless winter since then

None of these events are the normal weather pattern around here.

Ever see a 76-year-old-man up on stilts—and not just ordinary stilts but giant ones that elevated him 15 or 20 feet above everyone else?

I saw Peter Schumann, the tireless founder of Bread & Puppet Theater, do just that yesterday, at a performance in Boston.

76-year-old Peter Schumann, on giant stilts

Schumann founded the well-known political theater troupe back in 1963. Known for its giant puppets and unflinching anarchist-socialist politics (not to mention Schumann’s visual art and breadbaking, the collective nature of its living and working, and incorporating audience members including kids into its performance), Bread & Puppet has been fighting the good fight for decades.

Puppet-headed actors on stage: Bread & Puppet Theater

I first encountered them in the early 1970s, when I used to attend demonstrations against the Vietnam war as a teenager. Walking the line between art and propaganda, the large troupe, based on a  beautiful farm in Glover, Vermont, is always entertaining, and always committed to the arts as tools of personal empowerment, affordable to all.

Not yet in costume, Peter Schumann huddles with the cast at the end of the dress rehearsal

I’m glad they’re still out there pushing the envelope, and was particularly glad to see a large number of kids, both in the audience and among the volunteers who got there early to rehears and join the cast for the day.