Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Guardian, Google is financing climate skeptic organizations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in direct contradiction to their stated public position on climate change.
Revealed: Google made large contributions to climate change deniers
Stephanie Kirchgaessnerin Washington
Fri 11 Oct 2019 17.00 AEDTFirm’s public calls for climate action contrast with backing for conservative thinktanks
The obscure law that explains why Google backs climate deniersGoogle has made “substantial” contributions to some of the most notorious climate deniers in Washington despite its insistence that it supports political action on the climate crisis.
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The list includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative policy group that was instrumental in convincing the Trump administration to abandon the Paris agreement and has criticised the White House for not dismantling more environmental rules.
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Google has defended its contributions, saying that its “collaboration” with organisations such as CEI “does not mean we endorse the organisations’ entire agenda”.
It donates to such groups, people close to the company say, to try to influence conservative lawmakers, and – most importantly – to help finance the deregulatory agenda the groups espouse.A spokesperson for Google said it sponsored organisations from across the political spectrum that advocate for “strong technology policies”.
“We’re hardly alone among companies that contribute to organisations while strongly disagreeing with them on climate policy,” the spokesperson said. Amazon has, like Google, also sponsored a CEI gala, according to a programme for the event reported in the New York Times.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/11/google-contributions-climate-change-deniers
The Guardian published another story on the same day which suggests Google is worried about maintaining their Section 230 legal immunity, the law which protects Google and other large internet providers from being sued if a user publishes something defamatory on a Google website.
Why are Google and friends so worried about their legal position, that they would fund right wing libertarian climate skeptics?
In my opinion tech giants have good reasons to worry. Leading Democrats like Elizabeth Warren have been talking up plans to hammer big tech companies with anti-trust laws.
Elizabeth Warren is not the only left wing figure attacking tech companies. The recent New York Times article which compared allowing free speech to allowing carbon pollution also blamed big tech companies for allowing the rise of populists. The NYT suggested “remedy” was the creation of a government funded rival to Facebook, and implementation of legal changes to increase private tech giant’s exposure to legal liability for content published using their services, to give the new government social media organization an overwhelming competitive advantage.
At first glance this overt Democrat hostility towards tech giants whose CEOs went above and beyond to support Hillary Clinton might seem inexplicable.
But there seems to be a widespread belief that tech giants did not do enough to stop Russia allegedly meddling in the 2016 election. The revelation that Google is supporting groups which are broadly opposed to the Democrat agenda will do nothing to heal this rift.
It is not just the left who have been turning up the heat on Google. Conservatives and climate skeptics have criticised Google for their alleged efforts to play favourites, promoting the very people who have now turned on them.
Google have very few friends right now, a mess of their own making. One of the few organizations which is standing up for Google’s right to exist is the right wing libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Since when are libertarians “right wing” ? Keep your gov’t out of my bedroom and out of my wallet. Could be best used to describe libertarians.
Here is the important thing about this story, and why it represents another step down for the Guardian.
You notice that who Google is said to be financing do not do climate as their main or only business. Or even an important element of their business. They are not like WATTS for instance.
They are singled out because, among the many and various other things they do, they take a position on climate which is skeptical.
You see what has happened? You can do whatever else you want that is progressive and wonderful and public spirited. But express skepticism about CAGW, in however small an area of your activity, and you will find yourself classified as a ‘climate denier’.
The Guardian has moved to the position that the only thing that matters about an organization is its stand on climate, and the only choice is, either its a ‘climate denier’ or it isn’t. And to tell whether its a ‘climate denier’ all you have to do is check whether it has expressed, in however small a proportion of its output, any skepticism about CAGW in its most alarmist version.
So, Google may have contributed to organizations whose main purpose is nothing to do with climate, and for reasons that have nothing to do with their position on climate. But if in any of their output, however small a proportion, they have expressed any doubt about CAGW, they will immediately and as a whole be classed as ‘climate deniers’, and Google will be reproached for funding climate deniers.
It is the end of what was once a well respected news organization. There was a time when as C P Scott put it ‘comment is free but facts are sacred’. Those days have long gone, and what we have now is all the news that fits in with our policy agenda of the moment. And this is accompanied by the phrasebook and style guide, in which we may speak of a difference of a few degrees or fractions of degrees C in all other contexts than climate as ‘warming’.
But in climate, rules the Guardian, the same temperature shift must be called ‘heating’.
It is following the newspeak/Pravda template to the letter. When you think what the Guardian once was, its tragic. And what they will never see is that to call this has nothing to do with who is right or wrong about climate. What has happened would be the death of any paper which went this way, with whatever position on whatever issue.
Its no longer a newspaper.
Canada based American Naomi Klein has flown into the UK to lecture us on Climate
and is all over the metrolib media circuit
She just tweeted