Noam Chomsky on linguistics and climate change. - Slate Magazine
Sticking with social and political change, what is going on with climate-change denial in the United States?
The Republican party now has its catechism of things you have to repeat in lockstep, kind of like the old Communist party. One of them is denying climate change.
Why is it happening?
It happens that there's a huge propaganda offensive carried out by the major business lobbies, the energy associations, and so on. [What, specifically, is Chomsky talking about?] It's no secret, they're trying to convince people that the science is unreliable, that it's a liberal hoax. Those who want to be funded by business and energy associations and so on might be led into repeating this catechism. Or maybe they actually believe it.
The Republican-dominated House of Representatives is now dismantling measures of control over environmental destruction that were instituted by Richard Nixon. That shows you how far to the right they have gone. Today Nixon would be a flaming radical and Dwight D. Eisenhower would be off the spectrum. Even Ronald Reagan would be on the left somewhere. These are interesting, important things happening in the richest and most powerful country in the world that we should be very much concerned about.
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