Corrected Text for Friends of the Earth’s Goebbelite Campaign Against Houghton Mifflin

Troubled about Friends of the Earth’s goebbelite campaign in the USA against Houghton Mifflin‘s decision to dare suggest to high school pupils that there can be a thing called “debate” about global warming? 

“Goebbelite” in the sense of being yet another attempt at using all means and powers to repress dissent, so that people will eventually come to believe in anthropogenic global warming.

Well, trouble yourself no further: just go to Friends of the Earth’s US website and enter the following text in place of the existing “message”:

Subject (instead of “Teach the truth about the Environment”):

Keep up the good work about the Environment

Message under “Dear Sir, Madam” (instead of a long, incoherent tirade that first asks for censorship by appealing to authority and then claims to uphold the need for people to be provided all information):

I am writing to support Houghton Mifflin against the debate-stifling, coarse, ethically unsound attempts by Friends of the Earth to force Houghton Mifflin to immediately issue a corrective packet to all the school districts currently using the textbook: American Government, 11th edition, by Professors James Q. Wilson and John J. DiIulio, Jr. 

I also ask that Houghton Mifflin keep up in the future too, its consensus-challenging, fact-based outlook that can only enhance the capabilities for critical thinking in high school pupils.

The reason? Chapter 21 on Environmental Policy is a godsend, not a “disgrace” as claimed by Friends of the Earth.

We trust the textbook authors to be fair and speak the truth.  To address global warming as “enmeshed in scientific uncertainty” is to describe things as they are. Far from dismissing the work of the nation’s and the world’s top climate scientists, such text underlines the huge challenges facing them and us in understanding the relationship between humanity and the rest of the planet. 

We need the nation’s youth to be given all the information we have available, not just the so-called “consensus”, so that they are able to make their own well-informed decisions.  For years, Houghton Mifflin has provided that information–and I am encouraged to see that a company with such a highly respected reputation is continuing to publish along the same tradition.

I am copying my governor with this message to ensure that my state knows that there is absolutely no problem whatsoever with this textbook!

Sincerely,

(alas, I do not have a US address as yet, so I took the liberty of putting Hayden Planetarium‘s, a place I do consider like home).

Of course, my message is unlikely to reach Houghton Mifflin or Governor Paterson of New York via Friends of the Earth, but who knows? And by the way: here’s a form to send your support to Houghton Mifflin directly.

Many thanks to JunkScience for pointing in this direction. More here about Friends of the Earth’s “contempt for democracy”.

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