For somebody old enough to remember PBS before “fair and balanced” news, last night was a shock.
“Energy: the Big Gamble” on PBS Nova contained blatant lies about the pending climate legislation in California. Funding for NOVA is provided by ExxonMobil, Pacific Life, David H. Koch… This is the same Koch family, that makes its billions off oil and gas, that Greenpeace found had spent $25 million from 2005 to 2008 funding climate denial. This show was designed to scare US voters, and initially, California voters who now face the oil industry’s ballot initiative to put a stop to pending climate legislation, AB32 to move the state to a clean energy economy.
The message of the NOVA piece is that moving to a clean energy economy is just too risky. To drive the message into our subconscious, the show itself is called “Energy: The Big Gamble” and each time the narrator intones on the terrors of climate legislation, dice are shown being rolled (by uncaring hands) to show you just what a risk is being taken with your life. Tremble, Californians! Some unseen gambler is messing with your livelihood.
Two segments contained particularly self-serving lies for the oil and gas industry now battling the climate legislation in California. In one segment about all the problems they claim will come with clean energy, they actually insinuate that California has blackouts – supposedly because we have too much renewable energy!
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