Over 100 MIT nerds-turned-activists rally and march for fossil fuel divestment and climate action as MIT Board of Trustees - including David Koch - meet on campus

Credit: Ploy Achakulwisut

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 2, 2015. Contact: Geoffrey Supran (+1) 617-899-8482, gjsupran@mit.edu

Over 100 MIT nerds-turned-activists rally and march for fossil fuel divestment and climate action 

as MIT Board of Trustees - including David Koch - meets on campus

Cambridge, MA — Today, more than 100 MIT students, staff, faculty, alumni, and local community members rallied in the heart of campus in support of an MIT climate action plan, including divestment of the Institute’s $13.5 billion endowment from fossil fuel companies and climate-denying corporations. The activists then marched across campus, where, across from the building in which MIT’s Board of Trustees - among them David Koch - convened for their annual meeting, they dropped a banner reading “Stand with Science. Take Climate Action.”

The rally follows recommendations by the MIT President’s own committee to divest from coal, tar sands, and climate-denying corporations, and comes on the eve of the President’s promised decision on how the Institute will act against climate change.

Speaking at the rally, MIT PhD student and divestment advocate Geoffrey Supran highlighted MIT’s closing window of opportunity: “MIT’s moment of decision is now. Right now, a few blocks from here, our President and our Board gather. And as they meet, we gather here united behind bold multi-faceted MIT climate action. We gather here united to call on our president to divest from fossil fuels, to reinvest in sustainability, and to reinvent MIT’s approach to climate action, research and education.”

“Scientist for climate action,” “Divest for our future,” and “MIT for climate justice” were just three of the messages brandished on signs carried by marchers. In full view of the building where MIT’s Board was meeting, a banner was dropped from a student dorm just as marchers congregated, cheering at the top of their lungs in the hope that their leaders would hear their calls for action.

But with MIT more dependent on industry funding than almost any other university in the country, student organizers say “the climate question is far from a done deal.”

Wielding a sign reading “MIT Faculty for Climate Action,” MIT Professor Ian Condry said at the rally, “My concern is that when the announcement happens, it won’t be enough, and that it will be the beginning of the next stage of our fight, not the end.” Yet, he encouraged, “If we can build our social network...and build the movement from below, then eventually it becomes impossible to ignore.”

The rally is the closing action of a week-long series of events called MIT Climate Countdown, organized by student activists. These events brought together dozens of climate and sustainability focused student groups on campus, but also alumni, faculty and staff working in these areas.

Two weeks ago, climatologist James Hansen, actor Mark Ruffalo, MIT professor Noam Chomsky, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heintz were among 33 prominent signatories to an open letter urging MIT divestment. This followed 3,400 MIT petition signers, open letters from 89 MIT faculty members and 29 student groups, and a resolution of Cambridge City Council.

Credit: Patrick Brown

Credit: Patrick Brown

Credit: Patrick Brown

Credit: Patrick Brown

Credit: Emily Kellison-Linn

Greedy Lying Bastards: US filmmaker attacks oil industry. Craig Rosebraugh's new documentary highlights the 'influence, deceit and corruption' of fossil fuel industry

Greedy Lying Bastards: US filmmaker attacks oil industry

Craig Rosebraugh's new documentary highlights the 'influence, deceit and corruption' of fossil fuel industry

by Leo Hickman, The Guardian, January 20, 2012

Provocative, frank and impossible to ignore. And that's just the title.

Craig Rosebraugh, a US filmmaker and political activist, has produced a feature-length documentary that demands to be seen. Greedy Lying Bastards is still awaiting a firm release date – sometime in 2012 is the current promise – but, if the trailer and impressive roster of interviewees are anything to go by, it's likely to cause quite a stir.

Filmed over the past two years and across nine countries, Greedy Lying Bastards claims to be a "searing indictment of the influence, deceit and corruption that defines the fossil fuel industry":

Rosebraugh documents the impact of an industry that puts profits before people, wages a campaign of lies to thwart measures to combat climate change, uses its clout to minimize infringing regulations and undermined the political process in the U.S. and abroad…By interweaving the stories of the victims of the Gulf oil spill and the global climate crisis, he lays bare the industry's deliberate pattern of irresponsibility. And, while oil companies worldwide exert influence over policies that will protect their revenues, those who speak out against the industry's reckless practices risk their livelihoods, and in some instances, their lives.

Rosebraugh's position is abundantly clear: he is aiming hard and fast at the oil industry and the network of influence that does its bidding. But, despite all the polemic and editorialising, it would appear that he has gone to some lengths to include a wide range of voices in the documentary:

"Greedy Lying Bastards" details the people and organizations casting doubt on climate science and claiming that greenhouse gases are not affected by human behavior and includes interviews with scientists, industry experts, international political delegates, climate change victims as well as deniers, and people affected by the practices of the fossil fuel industry. Among them: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon; Rep. Henry Waxman; former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman; leading climate science skeptics Myron Ebell, Christopher Lord Monckton, and Jay Lehr; Ken Wiwa, the son of the slain Nigerian environmentalist; farmers in Peru and Uganda; and Mike Robichaux, one of the few doctors willing to treat Gulf residents sick with chemical poisoning from the BP spill, Republican Presidential candidates, Texas governor Rick Perry and Minnesota representative Michele Bachman, as well as other prominent politicians like Senator James Inhofe, from oil-rich Oklahoma.

It was announced this week that the composer Michael Brook – who scored Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth - has signed up to pen the music for the film. And in recent weeks, the Greedy Lying Bastards YouTube page has started to host short extracts from some of the film's interviewees. The most viewed – somewhat inevitably given the hero worship he attracts online – is Noam Chomsky.

But there are many other interesting contributions, too. For example, here are the thoughts of Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on why climate sceptics behave more like lawyers than scientists.

And here's Jacqueline McGlade, director of the European Environmental Agency, on how she responds to climate sceptics.

As yet, there are no video extracts on the YouTube page from any of the climate sceptics interviewed for the film, but the film's Twitter accountshows that Ian Plimer and Lord Monckton, as well as representatives from US thinktanks which routinely disseminate doubts about climate science, are among those who have been interviewed.

It will be interesting to see what they were asked, how they responded and how the interviews have been edited and incorporated into the film, not to mention how the oil industry responds to being labelled "greedy lying bastards."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/jan/20/greedy-lying-bastards-oil-filmmaker

Noam Chomsky nails it again.

Noam Chomsky nails it again.

Noam Chomsky: How climate change became a liberal hoax (vis a vis the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and the lapse of the MSM like the New York Times)

Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a 'Liberal Hoax'

The Nation and On The Earth Productions

February 9, 2011  

In this sixth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky talks about the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute and other business lobbies enthusiastically carrying out campaigns “to try and convince the population that global warming is a liberal hoax.” According to Chomsky, this massive public relations campaign has succeeded in leading a good portion of the population into doubting the human causes of global warming.

Known for his criticism of the media, Chomsky doesn't hold back in this clip, laying blame on mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, which will run frontpage articles on what meteorologists think about global warming. “Meteorologists are pretty faces reading scripts telling you whether it’s going to rain tomorrow," Chomsky says. "What do they have to say any more than your barber?” All this is part of the media’s pursuit of “fabled objectivity.”

Of particular concern for Chomsky is the atmosphere of anger, fear and hostility that currently reigns in America. The public’s hatred of Democrats, Republicans, big business and banks and the public’s distrust of scientists all lead to general disregard for the findings of “pointy-headed elitists.” The 2010 elections could be interpreted as a “death knell for the species” because most of the new Republicans in Congress are global warming deniers. “If this was happening in some small country," Chomsky concludes, "it wouldn’t matter much. But when it’s happening in the richest, most powerful country in the world, it’s a danger to the survival of the species.”

Go here to learn more about "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate," and to see the other videos in the series.

—Kevin Gosztola