RUSH COULD BE RIGHT:
TEACHING BOTH SIDES OF ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

by Dr. Jack Stauder
Professor of Sociology/Anthropology,
University of Massachusets, Dartmouth

I remember the first time I heard Rush Limbaugh. It was Christmas time in the early 1990's, and I was visiting my sister's farm in New Mexico. A Rush fan, she keeps all her radios tuned to his station, including the one in her pickup I borrowed to drive into town. Out of the dashboard came Limbaugh in my face with an "animal rights update" ridiculing some activity of that movement, preceded by Andy Williams singing "Born Free" being almost drowned out by a cacophony of gun fire and explosions among the roars and screams of various wild creatures.

Somewhat shocked, I nonetheless kept on listening to Limbaugh that day, and the following days. My sister left me little alternative because she had him tuned in all around the house at midday. I was both fascinated and scandalized by the outrageous things he had to say -- not so much by his attacks on the Democrats (they seemed fair game) but by what he asserted about environmental issues.

According to Rush Limbaugh, humans are not destroying the earth. We are not causing global warming. We are not destroying the ozone layer. The spotted owl is not an endangered species. The Alar apple scare was a hoax. Dioxin was not a danger at Times Beach, Missouri. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are good. DDT was a boon to mankind. The acid rain problem is minor and correctable. We have more trees now in this country than in the last century. Free enterprise and economic growth have given us an environment that is safer and cleaner than in the past. Environmental "wacko" movements engage in irresponsible crisis mongering to get donations. The environmental movement is a home not only for soft-minded liberals who want to "care" about things and worship Nature, but also a last refuge for socialist-minded types who want to take away freedom and private property rights through government interference in peoples' lives. And so on.

Hearing all this, I was scandalized because I felt what Limbaugh was saying was ignorantly flying in the face of what I knew about the threats to our environment. For several years I had been teaching courses on "Environmental Issues" to undergraduates. As a cultural anthropologist, one of my specialties had been cultural ecology, the study of how different societies interact with their natural environments. My knowledge was mostly about societies practicing traditional forms of agriculture, and hunting and gathering. But during the late 1980's, to meet increased demand from students for ecologically oriented studies more relevant to their lives, I developed a new course focused on the environmental problems facing our own society.

To learn about those problems and prepare that course, I had gone to the environmental movement -- to the books of its leaders like Paul Ehrlich; to the publications of the Lester Brown and the Worldwatch Institute; to the major textbooks in the field, such as Living in the Environment by G. Tyler Miller, Jr.; and to many other environmentalist sources. I recognized the movement itself as the authoritative voice on the environment.

This allegiance came naturally. Like so many of my colleagues, I had been deeply influenced by the radical political movements on college campuses in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Whenever I taught about modern America, I taught from a leftist, "movement" point of view: the black movement's view of racism, the feminist movement's view of sexism, the anti-war movement's view of "American imperialism," and so on. And I felt right at home doing this; most of my colleagues did the same. So of course I would teach about the environment from the point of view of environmentalism.

I did know there was another point of view: that of the big corporations who wanted to keep polluting in pursuit of profits -- and of the politicians who served them. But their views were obviously rendered illegitimate by their greedy motives. I made sure I pointed this out to my students.

Thus it was depressing to encounter the ideas of Rush Limbaugh. Here was a talk show host with 20 million listeners on hundreds of stations, propagating ignorance on environmental matters, tearing down what the environmental movement was trying to accomplish, canceling out the efforts of teachers like me. And it was doubly depressing for me to recognize that his strong moral certainty, coupled with a biting and absurdist sense of humor, make him a dangerous advocate for his views, however wrong. No matter how much my intellectual friends might despise Rush Limbaugh and what he has to say, I thought, many Americans will listen to him and agree.

Eventually I decided to do what a proper academic does. I decided to write an article exposing and debunking the errors of Rush Limbaugh.

This effort should be easy enough, I thought; obviously he doesn't speak from a scientific background. In fact, whenever a student appeared in my classes who mentioned Limbaugh's views on the environment, I simply told him that Limbaugh wasn't a scientist and didn't know what he was talking about.

Limbaugh does, however, give a source for most of his claims about the environment: Dixy Lee Ray, author of Trashing the Planet (1990). The first step of my project was to obtain a copy of her book. (A second book of hers, Environmental Overkill, appeared in 1993; she died early in 1994.)

Dixy Lee Ray did turn out to be a scientist -- she had been a professor of Zoology at the University of Washington, a director of the Pacific Science Center, a former chair of the US Atomic Energy Commission, and an assistant secretary of state in the US Bureau of Oceans. She had also been the governor of the state of Washington.

Trashing the Planet does provide plenty of arguments supporting many of Limbaugh's assertions. However, the book struck me as polemical in tone, by someone sharing Limbaugh's political views; it seemed a popularized and one-sided rendition of the scientific evidence, rather than a work of science itself. I was skeptical of Ray's arguments, and began to pursue them further -- by investigating her footnotes, looking up the publications she cites, reading them, and in turn following up on the references they give.

At the same time, I thought I should do parallel research into the issues themselves, by using my library's computer data base guides to scientific topics in recent periodical literature.

Soon I was awash with more references, articles and information than I could easily absorb, or find the time to deal with. I tried to focus on an important issue where the battle lines seemed clearly drawn between Limbaugh and Ray and the environmentalists. I chose global warming and concentrated on literature relating to it. But I still found myself wading through complex and contradictory material, with no simple unequivocal answers emerging from the scientific data.

Certainly there were plenty of books and articles presenting the environmentalists' case that global warming was bound to occur -- or was at least so probable that radical steps should be taken to minimize and avert its effects. But there were also numerous books and articles raising all sorts of scientific doubts about the global warming hypothesis, and arguing that environmentalists' proposals for governmental intervention were premature and would be extremely costly and damaging to our economy.

Not being an atmospheric scientist myself, whom was I to believe? Al Gore, in his book Earth in the Balance (which Limbaugh refers to as "Earth in the Lurch"), strongly supports the global warming theory and wholeheartedly proposes large-scale, vigorous action to deal with the predicted crisis. In doing so, Gore addresses the question of scientific disagreement:

"[S]ince the crisis [of global warming] must still be described in the language of science, we are also vulnerable to the false reassurances of a tiny group within the scientific community who argue that the threats don't exist. .. .

"But there is a difference between scientific uncertainty and political uncertainty. Where science thrives on the unknown, politics is often paralyzed by it. Yet the dialogue between science and politics has not yet accounted for this difference. In this case, when 98 percent of the scientists in a given field share one view and 2 percent disagree, both viewpoints are sometimes presented in a format in which each appears equally credible.

"This is not to say that the 2 percent are wrong and should not be heard. But their theories should not be given equal weight with the consensus now emerging in the scientific community about the gravity of the danger we face. If, when the remaining unknowns about the environmental challenge enter the public debate, they are presented as signs that the crisis may not be real after all, it undermines the effort to build a solid base of public support for the difficult actions we must soon take." [Italics added]

Gore here points a way out of uncertainty: we can put our trust in scientific consensus. At least, this was the message I gave my classes back in 1992, as I kept wading through the scientific research. I had begun to explain to my students the different opinions that existed on issues such as global warming, but I wanted to reassure them that science continued to be on the side of the environmentalists. However, a concern nagged at me: how did Gore arrive at his figures of 2 and 98 percent? He gave no reference to back these numbers. I wrote him a letter to ask where he got his figures. However, he never responded (probably, I thought, too busy pursuing the vice-presidency).

In 1993 a new book appeared in the arena: Eco-scam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse by Ronald Bailey. As its title indicates, Eco-scam entered the fray on the side of Ray and Limbaugh, as a scathing critique of environmental "crises" and doomsday predictions. It also singled out for attack two of the environmentalists I had been primarily relying on for information, and assigning to my classes: Paul Ehrlich and Lester Brown.

Al Gore was also a target. His 2%/98% statement came under fire, as did his assertion that a scientific consensus existed around the global warming theory. Bailey claimed no such agreement existed, and cited a Gallup Poll of climate scientists done for the Center for Science, Technology and the Media.

A telephone call to the Gallup organization located for me the Center, and another call brought me the findings of the poll, which had been released in February, 1992. A summary of the results of a national survey of climate experts showed that: "A majority of experts (60%) believe that the earth's atmosphere has warmed over the past century. However, fewer than one in five (19%F) believe that this was human-induced. 44% assert that it was not human-induced and 37% are unsure.

"Despite their rejection of past global warming, most scientists (66%) believe that human-induced greenhouse warming has now begun to occur. But only 41% believe that 'currently available scientific evidence substantiates its occurrence.' Even though most experts believe global warming is now occurring, a majority also (59%) don't think the science supports that belief. . .

"In general, the experts emphasize the uncertainty of current knowledge in this field. . . ." (Italics in original)

Obviously these results do not support Gore's claim of scientific "consensus." The only "2 percent" mentioned in the poll was the percentage of scientists disputing the global warming theory who were quoted in news stories -- suggesting a media bias which, contrary to Gore, was skewed against skepticism towards global warming. This bit of information, and Bailey's book, marked a turning-point in my quest. No longer did I imagine it would be easy to debunk Rush Limbaugh's views on the environment. On ozone depletion, on acid rain, on pesticides, on food production and population, and on a variety of other issues I was making the same discovery as on global warming: there exists contradictory scientific information calling into question whether the environmentalists are right. On some issues, such as endangered species or wetlands protection, or wildlife and wilderness in general, the controversies were not so much over science as over basic values. But in these cases I was coming to believe that the opponents of the environmental movement have at least a legitimate point of view. Often, as in the "Wise Use" movement, they are simply defending their rural way of life, whether ranching or logging or farming, from what they regard as an alien, urban, white-collar vision of how humans should relate to nature.

In short, wherever I unearthed arguments and analyses that dissented from the "ecologically correct" views of the environmental movement, I found another side that could not be dismissed easily as environmentalists often tried to do, as representing only ignorance and greed. Dixy Lee Ray and Ronald Bailey, for example, certainly back their arguments with plenty of scientific evidence, and they also raise larger political questions which seem to me legitimate. To simply denounce them, as some environmentalists do, for being "conservative" or "right-wing," is to beg the question. Such attacks by political labeling might appeal to the left-liberal political tendencies of the intellectual class, but they evade the real issues critics are raising.

Feeling ambivalent and a little disconcerted by this realization, I changed my environmental course from a lecture format to one emphasizing research and discussion. Actually, I wanted students to explore some of the many pathways of research I didn't have time for. I drew up a list of over 20 different environmental issues that were controversial, and asked each student to pick two of these topics on which to do research and write papers during the semester. I insisted that they dig out different and conflicting points of view on each topic, and I helped them from my own swollen lists of references critical of environmental orthodoxies. For course background, I asked everyone to read Dixy Lee Ray's Environmental Overkill and Ronald Bailey's Eco-scam, as well as Paul and Anne Ehrlich's Healing the Planet; and we watched in class much of the environmentalist film series Race to Save the Planet for which the Worldwatch Institute was a consultant.

The new course was a success. Students enjoyed it, especially the fact that they were hearing both sides of the issues fully and fairly presented. Some students commented on this point in their course evaluations, in responding to the question "Would you recommend this course to other students?" Some examples:

"Yes -- it gave an in-depth look into environmental controversies. Where we are usually always bombarded with the environmentalists' side, it was interesting to see what non-environmentalists thought.

"Yes. The course helps students develop arguments and support them. The use of both sides of the argument on issues enhances open-mindedness.

"Definitely. The most important aspect of making an informed and intelligent decision . . . is the knowledge of both sides of the issue. "Brainwashing" is another term for one-sided argument."

Most students, in researching the topics they had chosen, repeated my experience. They discovered there were two sides to environmental issues, and that all virtue and good science are not to be found exclusively in the environmentalists' camp. Some students, after they had compiled the evidence and arguments from both sides of an issue, found that they couldn't make up their minds about which side was right. Others did make up their minds, but were humbled in their opinions by the difficult process of confronting honestly the opposing view. There were students who clung to environmentalism, to which they admitted they were predisposed before entering the class. Other students, who had been equally predisposed, claimed that the wool had been pulled from their eyes: the environmentalist movement now lacked credibility for them.

Individuals reacted differently; but we all learned.

Subsequently, in all my environmental courses, whether lecture or research and discussion, I present both sides of the issues. Even as I become more critical of the environmentalist position on many issues, I realize it is important to present it fairly. Students in any case have been exposed to the simplistic version of environmentalism that pervades the media. But what they really need to hear are the critics. Views critical of environmental orthodoxy get little or no play, however, in the standard textbooks sold for courses like mine. If they are mentioned briefly, it is only to be denounced.

No matter. The literature of "dissent" on environmental issues has been growing mightily in the last few years. In addition to Ray's and Bailey's books, popular works now include Joseph L. Bast et al., Eco-Sanity; Martin W. Lewis, Green Delusions; Michael Fumento, Science Under Siege; Elizabeth Whelan, Toxic Terror; Charles T. Rubin, The Green Crusade; Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy; William Perry Pendley, It Takes a Hero; Michael S. Coffman, Saviors of the Earth?; Kathleen Marquardt, Animal Scam; Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Free Market Environmentalism; and various works by Julian L. Simon on population and development.

Plenty of materials are now available for any professor who wants to present a balanced picture of environmental issues. And of course there's always Rush Limbaugh. I've taped some of his TV shows where he launches into the ideas and actions of what he terms "the environmental wackos." I play the tapes back for my students. This is guaranteed to generate a good debate in class. After all, Rush could be right.

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