Business, Media and Climate Change
By Dr. Arvind Kumar
Business-Media nexus is well known both in India and abroad because bulk of media is owned and controlled by business tycoons. Apart from safeguarding politico-economic interests of the business community, journos of the media are also made to skip over scientific truth which is regarded as detrimental to business interests irrespective of its human worth. While it is no longer surprising, it remains disheartening to see a blistering attack on climate science in the business press where thoughtful reviews of climate policy ought to be appearing. Of course, the underlying strategy is to pretend that no evidence that the climate is changing exists, so any effort to address climate change is a waste of resources. A recent article by Larry Bell in Forbes, entitled “Hot Sensations vs. Cold Facts”, has raised a barrage of obscure and marginal facts and fabrications that appear at first glance to cast doubt on the entire scientific evidence under attack, but which on closer examination do no such thing. Little or no knowledge of a holistic view of any given science is needed to construct such scattershot attacks.
Busieness-owned media is complicit in downplaying the magnitude of the problem of climate change just to safeguard economic interests of industy – the main polluter of climate. The strategic point is to divert attention from what most scientifically informed people consider the key facts: the climate is changing as a result of human intervention.
Stalemate in climate change negotiations can partly be attributed to business-media nexus.
