[GreenYes] NSTA takes a "pass" on science

[Stephan Pollard <stephan.pollard@no.address>]

*Science a la Joe Camel*

By Laurie David

Washington Post
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.

/laurie@no.address <mailto:laurie@no.address>/

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



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