Environment
On Friday, talks ended in
A front page New York Times story on the global warming talks in Montreal chose to place all the blame for America’s refusal to move forward with the highly controversial Kyoto Protocol on the Bush administration. In doing so, the Times didn’t inform its readers about the history of this accord, and, in particular, that the Senate in July 1997 voted 95-0 against it.
For some reason, New York Times science reporter Andrew Revkin, in Montreal to cover a climate change conference, instead gives prominent coverage to an ongoing rave of young leftwing environmental activists.
Friday's "Youths Make Spirited Case at Climate Meeting" gives a shout-out to the lefties:
"The experts have spoken, this hurricane season will go down as the biggest, baddest, deadliest, and costliest of all time," Jim Acosta ominously intoned opening his report on the November 29 edition of the CBS Evening News. Yet while the loss of life and livelihood from Hurricane Katrina was horrific, the loss of life in the 2005 season was not record-breaking.
The latest edition of "The Balance Sheet," the MRC's Free Market Project (FMP) newsletter, is up and archived on freemarketproject.com. Balance Sheet, published every week on Wednesday afternoon, provides the best of FMP coverage from the previous week on the media's bias against the free market.
Stop It, Breeders
"We can't be breeding right now," says Les Knight. "It's obvious that the intentional creation of another [human being] by anyone anywhere can't be justified today.""As long as there's one breeding couple," he says cheerfully, "we're in danger of being right back here again. Wherever humans live, not much else lives. It isn't that we're evil and want to kill everything -- it's just how we live."
Knight's position might sound extreme at first blush, but there's an undeniable logic to it: Human activities -- from development to travel, from farming to just turning on the lights at night -- are damaging the biosphere. More people means more damage. So if fewer people means less destruction, wouldn't no people at all be the best solution for the planet?
The Free Market Project's Dan Gainor has critiqued the Fox News Channel special, "The Heat is On," a one-hour, one-sided special featuring environmental activists/celebrities Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Laurie David, wife of Seinfeld co-creator Larry David.
Gainor noted in his review that Fox News coverage of global warming and climate change stories had heretofore been the most balanced of all the broadcast outlets surveyed by the Free Market Project:
"The Heat is On" was a quite a departure for Fox. A Nov. 8, 2004, Free Market Project (FMP) study found Fox News the best of all five major TV networks in its news stories about global warming and the Kyoto Protocol. FMP analyzed news coverage from Jan. 20, 2001, until Sept. 30, 2004, and found "The Fox News Channel delivered better and more balanced reporting on global warming."Gainor then documented host Rick Folbaum's lengthy disclaimer which excused the channel's one-sided coverage:
For those who missed it, on MSNBC’s “The Situation” last night, host Tucker Carlson interviewed author Peter Schweizer, whose new book “Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy,” has raised a lot of eyebrows. Some of the highlights (video link to follow):
The story didn’t just wildly underestimate the cost of one family’s “tiny electric bill.”. It also forgot to mention that the tax breaks for solar power all come out the pockets of other taxpayers – in this case, more than $10 billion worth.
Fox News Channel on Sunday will air, albeit with a disclaimer, a one-sided documentary on global warming featuring liberal environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
A Fox News Channel documentary on "global warming," set to air Sunday night, provides only the liberal take on the controversial issue and was approved after environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. reportedly "dragged" Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes to a lecture by former Vice President Al Gore, "kicking and screaming."
Actor Woody Harrelson, appearing on Tuesday’s Late Show with David Letterman, denounced “this oil-garchy that calls itself our executive branch” and complained about the “petrochemical industry taking over the world." Then viewers saw a clip of him playing a lawyer in a new movie, North Country, in which his character paints Anita Hill as a maligned victim as he warns a sexual harassment victim about how she’ll be characterized in court as a “nut” or a “slut” since “right has nothing to do with the real world. Look at Anita Hill, because she's you.” That movie, opening next week, is based on a book by former Newsweek White House reporter Clara Bingham, Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case that Changed Sexual Harassment Law.
The Internet Movie Database's plot summary for the film: "A fictionalized account of the first major successful sexual harassment case in the United States -- Jenson vs. Eveleth Mines, where a woman who endured a range of abuse while working as a miner filed and won the landmark 1984 lawsuit." That would place the lawsuit filing seven years before anyone heard of Anita Hill. (More of what Harrelson told Letterman follows.)