I have recently been considering the story of Noah’s Ark. Growing up, I found an acquaintance with the story through plastic thrift-store figurines, children’s books, and pop culture portrayals. Last month, I picked up the Book of Genesis and read lines 5:32 through 10:1, Noah’s story. It told how The Lord became disgusted with the evil nature of human beings and hence decided to “wipe from the face of the earth the human race [He had] created.” The Lord flooded the earth shortly after, but before He told Noah to “go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation.”[1] I hadn’t considered the meaning of this story before; recently, however, I have given more thought to Noah’s plight. I see the story’s significance rising in current times, whether taken as myth or truth, for it is not unlike the story of the contemporary world. It is a story about escaping the chaos humankind has created.

It seems that the world is drowning in articles about acid mine drainage, documentaries about rainforest destruction, and pictures of polar bears drowning. When I fly, I look out from planes and see trees that line roads, but the trees diminish twenty yards in: a beautiful illusion for passing cars. As I notice these things, I reflect on how static human negligence has been, and I think of Noah. I wonder why humans are so inclined to destroy things that are beautiful. How many beautiful things are lost in our ignorance?

The human race may soon find itself in need of another ark as carbon dioxide continually pumps into the atmosphere, red lines of thermometers rise annually, and record-breaking climate catastrophes wreak havoc in our backyards. We are passively approaching environmental collapse. Are we waiting for a Noah to save us again? But this thought seems ridiculous. Why not strive to never build an ark, to solve problems before they rise?

The slow speed at which global climate change is addressed is dragging us into extinction. We are currently in the Sixth Great Extinction, dubbed with the name, “Anthropogenic Extinction,” meaning, “Human Age Extinction.” Rob Jordan’s 2015 scientific report on Stanford University’s extinction research concludes that the Sixth Great Extinction has the largest species loss since 80% of life was lost at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, when dinosaurs went extinct. The report also found that a leading cause of the Sixth Great Extinction is “carbon emissions that drive climate change and ocean acidification.” Unless humans accept climate change, take accountability, and begin to reform the societal framework built on fossil fuels, we will only fall further into the extinction event. One of Jordan’s interviewees, professor Gerardo Ceballos, remarks, "If [the extinction] is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on."[2]

It is not a mystery why, at times, the notion of global climate change feels crushing and hopeless: too big of a problem, a lost cause. When hearing big, scary words like “extinction,” it is easy to turn a cheek and ignore the elephant in the room. When images from apocalyptic movies about climate change, like 2004’s The Day After Tomorrow, cause fear and stress, it's not a strange notion that many people seem to have completely detached themselves from the crisis. Humans are afraid of chaos and change because predictability is safe and comfortable, so many handle the emotional burden of climate change by dismissing it as a hoax. Denying climate change's existence, however, does not make it any less real. The science is clear.

“The science is clear” is a shaky phrase that has been refuted countless times since the theory of global climate change first became popularized in the 1970s.[3] However, it shouldn’t be a surprise that even since the beginning of global warming research, the science has consistently been unambiguous and unanimous.

Chelsea Congdon Brundige, a consultant with Public Counsel of the Rockies, has worked for the Environmental Defense Fund in California and Colorado and currently works as a writer and producer with the environmental film company First Light Films. Ms. Brundige is a tall woman with dirty brown hair and a big smile. She is a wordsmith, surefooted in her ideas and never pauses for an “um.” I asked her to share some of her environmental and political knowledge with me in an interview. We met in a small, claustrophobic boarding school classroom on a Thursday at 5:00pm. We could hear the muffled sound of feet and laughs as students headed out to dinner. We delved into our discussion; the room became secondary. I first asked Ms. Brundige where she saw the war on global warming headed. She paused, pensive, and responded:

Global warming is already almost impossible for anyone to refute. The planet got a good boost with the COP 21 talks and resolution in Paris with all of the countries in the world agreeing on 1) the problem and 2) the need to solve it… but corporation’s mandate is to make money for their shareholders. That means they have to get resources, exploit labor, maybe cut corners, manipulate public opinion, to gain market share… So long as corporations, and the conservative politicians they finance, see climate change and the regulation of fossil fuels as an onerous added expense, they will fight it.[4]

So if there isn’t a debate on climate change within the global scientific community, as Ms. Brundige references, and the world’s leading nations agree that our energy systems must be reformed, then why is there such an impassioned debate within the United States? Even if corporations fight the idea, how does this override the voice of science? The answer to why there is such a large “debate” surrounding the credibility of global warming is where a huge problem exists. The argument has never been an issue of science; it has been an issue of corporate interest and the language of doubt.

When scientific consensus on climate change first came to prominence in the 1970s, fossil fuel corporations began to frantically scramble, worried that the infrastructure that supports them would soon collapse. Many fossil fuel corporations have responded by funding independent scientific research on anthropogenically caused climate change, hoping to find flaws in the science and avenues that disconnect carbon-dioxide emissions from the problem. According to an article released by Inside Climate News, Exxon Mobil conducted private research and knew the implications and severity of climate change in 1977; yet, Exxon continued to lead a crusade against the notion of climate change.[5] Since scientific study clearly shows the impending threat of climate change and a strong link to carbon dioxide emissions, corporations developed a new tactic to dismantle reform: doubt.

People cling onto doubt and disbelief when they are scared and uncertain. It is through this human fear of change that corporations have effectively sewn doubt of global warming and continue to prevent further environmental legislation from passing. This is done through a subtle but powerful art form: language. Corporate personnel often use loopholes in their wording to spread doubt about global warming, using phrases such as, “it is not certain that/there is no absolute truth that... global warming is true.” Naomi Winters, a world-renowned environmental scientist and author of the book Merchants of Doubt, reflects on how “[corporate] tactics included sending dubiously credentialed experts out into the world to disguise dishonesty as reasonable doubt.”[6] References to climate change being false are often accompanied by a weak word like “uncertain” or “doubtful.” Words like “uncertain” and “doubtful” unfortunately have the same effect as the words “false” and “untrue.” People have a natural tendency to cling on to what they want to believe in terms of safety and financial interest, and so because of the language of doubt, many fossil fuel corporations have effectively manipulated the common people and a “debate of the science” has followed suit that isn’t a debate about the science at all.

The debate on climate change is over the definition of science itself. Scientific study shows that global warming is directly linked to the effects humans have had on the environment during the Anthropocene; however, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t an extremely small chance that the science is wrong. Science is study, observation, synthesis, and prediction, so based on the definition of scientific study, science is technically always uncertain. For example, you can say, “It is uncertain that the earth orbits the sun.” We believe the sun is the bright star in the sky that our planet orbits; we have studied the sun through science, and we have come to what we think is an understanding, but we have never actually touched the sun, stood on the sun, measured its heat with a thermometer, or done more than come to conclusions about the sun through careful observation, calculation, and technology. Do you still believe that the earth orbits the sun? Of course! Based on the track record of scientific study, science tends to give us a pretty good idea of what is going on in our world and even beyond. Global warming is very real; it has been studied through sure observations, precise calculations, and impressive technology. There is no debate on what science tells us about our effect on climate change; it is as sure as the sun in the scientific community. There is only a debate that plays on the technical uncertainty always present in scientific study, and so the language of doubt tricks people through the manipulation of wavering words like “uncertain.”

Our subconscious inclination to grab at chances to ignore daunting issues has already given fossil fuel corporations incredible influence over our beliefs; what’s worse is the political influence corporations continually gain. On January 1st, 2010, the Citizens United Supreme Court Decision was issued; it ruled corporations and organizations able to stand as a “person” in their collective body and contribute finances to campaigns. Because of the decision, our nation has by definition become a corporatocracy. The online Oxford Dictionary definition of corporatocracy is as follows:

corporatocracy

ˌkôrpərəˈtäkrəsē/

noun:

a society or system that is governed or controlled by corporations.

Since the Citizens United Decision, the United States has turned away from its democratic roots. On January 1st, 2010, after the Citizen’s United Decision was ruled, a Statement by President Obama was released, offering Obama’s opinions on the decision:

The Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil... and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. This ruling gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power...while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates.[7]

Mass amounts of money donated by singular corporations drown out the contributions of everyday Americans; thus, political success no longer reflects the popular views of the masses but rather minority views shared by rich corporate leaders. Corporate pockets are practically bottomless, and they have a lot of political influence. If a corporation does not want certain information or policies to limit their agenda, money is thrown at the political candidate that will protect corporate interest. Politicians are naturally reluctant to pass policies that have the potential to hurt a sponsor of their campaign. Partnerships are made between corporations and the government this way and, in effect, motives of the citizenry become secondary as politicians become puppets of the moneyed elite. This is one example of how moneyed fossil fuel corporations get their claws deep in preventing environmental policy initiatives.

One of the greatest ironies in this whole headache is that many citizens who refute global climate change and environmental policy initiatives believe that environmentalism is just a front for a communist plot. There is a popular joke, referenced in a film adaptation of Oreskes’ Merchants of Doubt, that goes, “What do you call an environmentalist?... A watermelon! Green on the outside red on the inside.”[8] This joke tells a larger story; people are afraid of losing the traditional idea of “American freedom, democracy, and opportunity” to laws that protect the natural environment. The great irony in the watermelon joke is that decisions supported by many who refute global warming and environmental policy, like the Citizens United Decision, severely limit the freedom and power the average American and have, in fact, turned our democracy into a functioning corporatocracy.

Politics is clearly no stranger to environmental scandal and cover-ups. As William L. Richter and Frances Burke note in their book Combating Corruption, Encouraging Ethics, when George Bush came into office, he promptly launched a vicious campaign against scientific data that pointed towards anthropogenic causes of global warming. President Bush expressed much disdain in May 2002 when a state department report to the United Nations examined a clear correlation between amounts of greenhouse gasses humans emit into the atmosphere and the effects on climate change. In September 2002, his administration removed a section of the EPA annual air pollution report that summed up their research on climate change. In June 2003, the Bush administration directly tampered with the EPA's draft report on the environment. The White House tried to force the EPA to change the section on climate change that stated the human contribution to climate change. They demanded deletion of 1,000 years of recorded temperature trends, in an effort to devalue scientific evidence that the EPA used to make their conclusion, and the deletion of the summary statement, which noted, "climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," among other requests."[9] As the article, White House Alters EPA Scientific Document on Climate Change, released by Union of Concerned Scientists, states, “According to the EPA memo...White House officials demanded so many qualifying words such as "potentially" and "may" that the result would have been to insert "uncertainty... where there is essentially none."[10]

Corporate giants and politicians have long manipulated and corrupted scientific studies to sew doubt into the nation’s mind to prevent environmental legislation from passing, but it seems there may be a more dangerous threat taking form. The new target of doubt seems to be alternative energy. The fossil-fuel industry has labored to sell the idea that global warming is a hoax, but as it becomes harder to instill doubt of global climate change as the effects of it are manifesting all over the world, industry is beginning to aim its guns towards the transition to renewable energies. Bill Mckibben states in his New York Times article, Exxon, Keystone, And the Turn Against Fossil Fuels: “For years, the fossil-fuel industry has labored to sell the idea that a transition to renewable energy would necessarily be painfully slow—that it would take decades before anything fundamental started to shift. Inevitability was their shield, but no longer. If we wanted to transform our energy supply, we clearly could…” In fact, just in the past six years, the price of solar panels has fallen by eighty percent. [11] I asked Ms. Brundige what she expects to see in the upcoming years as global climate change becomes irrefutable:

I suspect the “deniers” will turn efforts to undermining national and state incentives for alternatives. They can focus at that state level, where each state is setting its own goals for the percent of alternatives to have in its energy portfolio by a certain year. They will try to run and fund campaigns to get politicians who support the expansion of alternatives voted out of office. They will get sympathetic conservative politicians to support legislation that repeals clean energy standards. They will continue to challenge the legality of Obama’s executive order to make EPA regulate carbon as a pollutant.[12]

Arguments are already turning towards, “Yes, we admit that global warming is real, but the science and engineering is simply not advanced enough to create efficient alternative energy forms.” And so it is up to us, the common people, to decide where our moral sentiment aligns. In the upcoming years, especially if the Citizen’s United Supreme Court Decision is repealed, we will see the citizenry developing opinions that penetrate beyond the doubt that the fossil fuel industry has constructed. But if we truly want our society to change in a productive manner, we must switch to a topic in basic human nature.

Right now you are feeling angry, either at me or at corporate power: wanting to write a letter, possibly wanting to yell at the world and fix the world at once. You feel slighted and cheated; you want justice, whichever side you equate it with. Whichever side is opposing yours, you see as completely different from yours: pointless to understand, naive, corrupt, a lie. But the two sides are not at all different when examined closely; through the pursuit of understanding the opposing side, anger leaves the discussion and true progress can be made.

One of the biggest obstacles in the progress of contemporary society is our inability to listen to those whom we cannot connect with intellectually. This polarizes groups that hold different beliefs and makes synthesis in society almost impossible. People, myself most definitely included, have a natural tendency to latch onto one given viewpoint, and instead of thoughtful reflection, one’s aims turns toward arguing against the contrary viewpoint in a conversation. We must try to broaden our understanding of how our minds work when we respond to an idea that challenges our own. Our immediate tendency of closing off prevents society from progressing. When pursuing change, it is necessary to keep a global perspective in mind.

The first step in an educated discussion is not to devalue an idea, but to try and understand why that idea came to be and the significance it has; only after this can one refute and produce ideas with full understanding and credibility. It is important to always challenge one’s self to understand all perspectives before choosing one and to never get lost in argument, remembering to integrate pieces all sides can agree on as a unifying factor.

There is a poem called “The Cross,” written in 1896 by John Donne, an English poet and cleric. I think of the poem when I am arguing with someone about corporate influence on environmental policy, getting hotheaded and distraught. It grounds me back to the true purpose of my work: uniting people.

Faces do not carvers make,

But that away,

Which hid them there,

Do take.[13]

This poem explains the heart of human differences better than any work I have yet to read. We are all from the same wood, but we are different because we are shaped by different situations. The carver that shapes our individual self is the crowd and culture that we grow up in. Our environment and personal experiences carve us into the people we are with the views, morals, and ethics we possess. We are morphed by our surroundings. This idea is of great importance in many different writings over various religions and philosophies, from Confucianism to Existentialism: all humans have the power to understand each other to some degree because we could have been the other had we been at the mercy of different hands. With this in mind, we cannot hate because a piece of ourselves is a part of what we hate. We come from the same wood to which we must one day return. We know this when we look inward, down to our bare selves, and recognize the material that binds us all, the common threads that let us know that we are all human, that we were all once children who wanted to grow up to become princesses, adventurers, knights, firefighters, and monsters. Before we split off in the different directions society designed for us, we were not so different. We all deserve life, happiness, and forgiveness.

I cannot hate George Bush for tampering with scientific study. I cannot stay angry with corporate leaders that value money more than the environment. I’ve spent the last four years in the outdoors climbing, skiing, and hiking in the woods. I do not know what they grew up around. I do not know what it is like to be bolstered by immense wealth, to grow up in a city, to never feel the impending pull of the woods. Perhaps if I did, I would have no sentiment towards the environment. Perhaps I would not be writing this article. Perhaps I would be reading an article like this one and laughing at the naivety of environmentalism, convinced the argument part of a communist plot. Perhaps I would feel justified cheating science, cheating language, cheating the natural world if my whole life prior I had been solely supported by the line of work such things threatened.

I cannot be angry at those who do not agree with me; I can only say that there is a deep cultural flaw in our society. Our society’s disconnect from each other and from the natural world is creating disparity. I asked Ms. Brundige her views on what was at the root of the corporate avoidance of truth; she responded:

I think the “merchants of doubt” have forgotten whatever they ever knew or loved about the environment because they are making money in this game. OR as social researchers have shown, people can compartmentalize their experience – yes, they love nature, but this is not about that. Do you know what I mean?[14]

It was very clear to me what Ms. Brundige meant. Our society is built on a brilliant game; the game is “Who Can Be the Happiest and Most Successful in America!?” Success and happiness in this game are measured in little green slips of paper. It is incredibly easy to get sucked into this game and forget that money does not always equate to happiness or success, but this game we play is centered around money, and once a player everything else sinks into the background, becomes secondary and irrelevant in the goal of the game. But rising in this game has high consequences; according to Ms. Brundige, you can lose sight of the bigger picture, of what sustains us and has given us life: earth.

The battle we are fighting is not a plight against one another; it is not bad versus good and right versus wrong. It is about varying interpretations of morals and ethics. It is about trying to find synthesis in the human race so that we may progress in a unified, higher direction.

I am not sure if it is reasonable to expect someone who has grown up in a city or been bolstered by money and wealth their whole lives to respect the intrinsic value of nature or to feel responsible for protecting it. I also believe that there is immense compassion in the human spirit that is capable of overriding this divide and respecting all life forms; it is from my faith in the human spirit that I pay respect to those who agree with the "conservative argument."

I called up James Brundige, Chelsea’s husband who owns First Light Films, to ask him how he effectively communicates his ideas and beliefs respectfully in film. James is an opinionated, fiery environmentalist who is extremely invested in his work. He just filmed, directed, and produced a NOVA about habitat fragmentation that broadcasted on PBS. When I called Mr. Brundige, he was in a Boston studio finishing his film with a team of editors. I could hear music in the background and people rapidly chatting. James would pause now and then to give them suggestions. Our conversation went as follows:

Me: “Since you align with an environmentalist standpoint, how do you communicate an environmental message without sounding biased?”

James: “Facts speak for themselves, especially in conservation. Background science and policies allow people to reach their own conclusions.”

Me: “But isn’t it hard to not voice personal opinions?”

James: “It’s challenging but it’s kind of essential. I meet that challenge by trying to look for empowering stories. I spend as much time as I can on the solution, hoping that it is inspirational.”

Me: “So why is being unbiased essential?”

James: “No one is unbiased. Trying to sound unbiased is more convincing, it lets people form their own opinions.”

Me: “How does a film effectively change someone's mind? I mean, what is required emotionally, factually, realistically to have a conservative oil baron, for example, listen and respect what the film is saying?”

James: “Our mission is to do just that. It's becoming known as impact films, and it’s a huge challenge. We use beautiful images of nature and beautiful music to offer emotional content, and try to reach deeper less conscious parts of the brain. That's why film is such a powerful medium.”[15]

In film, essays, books, you name it, a message is effective when it is personal and not too aggressive. Vigor and intense determination are required for change, but we have to remember the difference between persistence and dissolution, and we must always recognize when things are coming together versus falling apart. People hear a conversation and grow sentiment when the conversation extends beyond statistics and into relatable intimacy. Me, I try to establish a connection by playing on pathos. Mr. Brundige tries to form a connection through images and sound, and Ms. Brundige tries to unite people with perhaps the most useful avenue: an infectious spirit and heart that unite people through her daily actions. The Brundige family is working to balance and unite, and this is exactly what society demands from us all if we wish to see change.

Change takes form in understanding, when hatred is taken out of the equation. Change comes in an inner city school where a Second Grader grows a Lima Bean in a plastic bag, with a wet paper towel at the bottom, and first feels the artful hand of nature come alive. Change comes in seeing natural beauty. Change comes in stories. Change comes in respect.

The earth is our ark in the cosmos, not only belonging to us but to all of earth’s creatures past, present, and future. We need to change so that the ark of our time will continue to sustain us.

We will not succumb silently to Noah’s tragedy.

“Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”[16]

–Genesis

Footnotes

[1] "Genesis 5:32-10:1." Bible Gateway. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Jan. 2016.

<https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+5:32-10:1>.

[2] Rob Jordan. "Stanford researcher declares that the sixth mass extinction is here." Stanford News. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Mar. 2016. <http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/june/ mass-extinction-ehrlich-061915.html>.

[3]Merchants of Doubt. Dir. and prod. Robert Kenner. 2014. Sony, 2014. DVD.

[4] Chelsea Brundige. "Corporate Influence on Environmental Policy." Personal interview. Mar. 2016.

[5] Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song, and David Hasemyer. "Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil

Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago." Inside Climate News. N.p., n.d. Web. 8

Feb.2016.<http://insideclimatenews.org/news/15092015/Exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming>.

[6] Oreskes, Naomi, and Erik M. Conway. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists

Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. Print ed. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010. Print.

[7] Obama, Barack. "Statement from the President on Today's Supreme Court Decision." the WHITE HOUSE. N.p., 21 Jan. 2010. Web. 11 Jan. 2016. <https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-todays-supreme-court-decision-0>.

[8]Merchants of Doubt. Dir. and prod. Robert Kenner.

[9] William L. Richter, and Frances Burke. Combating Corruption, Encouraging Ethics. N.p.:

Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. Print.

[10] "White House Alters EPA Scientific Document on Climate Change." union of concerned scientists. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Mar. 2016. .

[11] Mckibben, Bill. "Exxon, Keystone, and the Turn against Fossil Fuels." The New Yorker. New Yorker, 6 Nov. 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.

<http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/exxon-keystone-and-the-turning-tide-on-fossil-fuels>.

[12] Chelsea Brundige. "Corporate Influence”

[13] Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. N.p.: Chambers, ed. London: Lawrence & Bullen,, 1896. Print. Vol. 1 of The Cross. I. E. K vols.

[14] Chelsea Brundige. "Corporate Influence”

[15] Brundige, James. "Effective Communication." Telephone interview by author. March 2016.

[16] Genesis 5:32-10:1.