INTERVIEW: Ross Gelbspan

Ross Gelbspan is a retired investigative reporter who worked for the Boston Globe. At the Globe he conceived, directed and edited a series of articles that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. In 1995, he revealed that prominent global warming deniers were receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from coal interests.

In 1997, he wrote The Heat Is on: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription which looked into the science behind global warming and dissected its detractors’ scientific theoriesand ideological ties.
Visit his website.

Bob McKeown: ONCE YOU STARTED TO INVESTIGATE ROSS, WHAT WAS THE EVOLUTION OF THE DENIAL MOVEMENT THAT YOU FOUND?

Ross Gelbspan: Oh it's very interesting, it's sort of a moving target. The sceptic’s point of view, because at the beginning they say global warming is not happening.

And then when it became impossible for them to maintain that stance they said it's good for us and the argument that they made is as we get more warming we can grow more food in the far north and help feed an expanding population.

Unfortunately, those arguments omit a couple of very important points, one subsidiary point is that soils up near the Arctic Circle aren't very good for growing, but, separate and apart from that, well... increase CO2 and warming will temporarily increase crop yields in the northern hemisphere in the US and Canada, it will have a devastating effect in the tropical regions where most of the world's poor and hungry people live. I think a half degree warming will cause a big drop-off in the rice yields in southeast Asia, a 25 to 30% in India's wheat yield.

There was another consequence that they didn't mention and that is the fact that of all the systems in nature, one of the most sensitive to temperature change is insects. And as the temperature goes up we are seeing a big increase in crop-destroying and disease-spreading insects and that's something else that they didn't mention in this argument so that again propelled me further into the subject.

Bob McKeown: AND AS THAT DENIAL MOVEMENT EVOLVED AT WHAT POINT DID THE ENERGY INDUSTRY COAL AND OIL GET INVOLVED?

Ross Gelbspan: They got involved very, very early. They got involved back in the very early 90s.

And it was back then that the scientific community said we need to reduce our use of coal and oil by about 70%, our carbon emissions.

Bob McKeown: SO THE STAKES FOR THEM WERE ENORMOUS.

Ross Gelbspan: Yes, this threatens the survival of the coal and oil industry basically. I mean if we were to do what nature is telling us to do which is a global transition to non-carbon energy sources, that would essentially turn the coal or oil industry into a boutique industry.

And so they're essentially fighting for their survival and in so doing they've pulled out all the stops, and as I said at the beginning they said global warming isn't happening then they said it's good for us and now the tact they're taking is, yeah, it's happening but it's negligible, it won't really cause significant consequences and so forth.