Janine Jackson interviewed the Lever‘s Matthew Cunningham-Cook about Republican Party climate sabotage for the August 4, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Listeners may have encountered some variant of the statement attributed to labor organizer and folk singer Utah Phillips that says, “The Earth is not dying, it is being killed, and those who are killing it have names and addresses.”
It’s cited because it’s powerful, and its power derives in part from the fact that it goes against the pervasive discourse, certainly of corporate news media, that things are bad, even scary bad, even unprecedentedly, hard-to-imagine bad. But the point is, you know, progress happens, and getting angry doesn’t help, and disrupting things, well, that’s criminal as well as misguided. And then, what’s that? Things are getting worse? Well, that’s another story for another day.
There are myriad things that account for climate disruption and for its devastating and disparate effects. But the top-down resistance to naming the obstacles to a safer world is an important one, and one in which news media play a big role.
Our guest is one of those working to fill that void. Matthew Cunningham-Cook covers a range of issues for the Lever. He’s also written for Labor Notes, Public Employee Press and Al Jazeera America, among other outlets. He joins us now by phone from Costa Rica. Welcome to CounterSpin, Matthew Cunningham-Cook.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook: Thanks so much for having me on, Janine. I appreciate it.
JJ: The latest, the last I checked, is that a crucial Atlantic Ocean circulation system, that’s a cornerstone of global climate, may collapse as quickly as two years from now. Though as Julie Hollar wrote for FAIR.org, that wasn’t enough to get it on everybody’s front page.
But truly, there is no need to cite any indicators here. Anybody who believes in science and their sensory organs knows that bad things are happening and more are on the horizon, and that there are things that we can do besides throwing up our hands and saying, it is what it is.
Lever (7/25/23)
So tell us about your recent story that tells us that there are things stepping between what people want and what is reflected in policy.
MCC: We just took a look at the latest funding bills that are winding their way through the House right now, and the different insane aspects that Republicans have added.
There’s one particular component that’s extremely egregious, that bans research on climate change’s impact on fisheries. And this is while traditionally Republican states like Alaska are dealing with the collapse of their fisheries, currently.
There’s requiring that the Biden administration issue these offshore oil/gas leases, that slows down wind power leases, and that defunds the US’s very limited responsibilities under the Paris Climate Accords.
It’s a full-on assault on basic reason, and how we respond to the climate crisis. And what we do at the Lever that is not typically replicated in the corporate media is we just line up the policy with the campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. So the members of Congress who are championing these draconian assaults on basic climate science receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.
And you really don’t see this in the New York Times or the Washington Post. If they do report on these types of developments, it’s usually separated from basic questions like campaign finance, which is clearly what drives these proposed changes more than anything else.
So that’s what we did, and it’s a depressing story, for sure. What we’re hoping to do is ultimately shame the corporate media into doing more reporting like this that directly lines up policy with campaign contributions. Because if you’re reporting these two issues separately, the public is just not getting the full picture.
JJ: Absolutely. And folks are misunderstanding the disconnect, because media will do a story about the way the public feels about climate disruption, or about just the horrors of climate disruption. But, as you say, it’s going to be on a separate page than a story about campaign finance, as though it’s not a direct line from A to B.
And I want to point out: Part of what’s key about the piece that you wrote is these are not things that Republicans are putting forward, this idea of supporting bad things and also preventing responsive things; they aren’t introducing them as legislation that people can look at and think about. They’re sneaking them in, right?
Lever (9/27/22)
MCC: Yeah. It’s just these small components of appropriations bills that nobody is paying attention to that, yeah, have very meaningful consequences.
One of the most important actions that the Biden administration has started to take is this Climate Disclosure Rule, which just seems so basic, which is that publicly traded companies have these massive climate risks. They should disclose those risks to their investors. And it hasn’t happened yet, and it’s been attacked by both Republicans and so-called Democrats like Joe Manchin alike.
But this is a critical step forward for the public to be able to get information about how the nation’s largest corporations are poisoning our environment, and how it not only hurts the public, but also their own investors, which includes the pension funds and retirement accounts of tens of millions of Americans.
It’s not like they’re trying to say, “Oh, let’s pass an independent piece of legislation that bars the SEC from issuing this climate rule,” because it would never pass. Instead, they’re inserting it into the appropriations process.
And it also underscores just how much more ideologically committed Republicans are than Democrats. You very rarely see Democrats, when they control Congress, trying to use the appropriations process to expand the federal government’s ability to respond to climate change, or expand labor rights. No, it’s something that Republicans do, the opposite, foreclosing actions on the environment or on labor rights.
JJ: And then elite media come in and say, “Can’t we all just be civil,” and introduce the idea that there should be kind of a peacemaking between an overtly ideological and rule-bending (to be generous) party, and another that says, “Oh, well no, that’s not a thing that we would do.” It’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
And I guess the least that we would ask of media is that they at least just call it that way. At least describe it that way, instead of making it seem like it’s a balance.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook: “”That we should let climate change go unaddressed until the human race goes extinct…is a cornerstone of the Republican Party’s agenda.”
MCC: And, to be clear, Democrats like Henry Cuellar receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from the oil and gas industry. He’s on the Appropriations Committee, and I’m sure he is enabling Republicans left and right.
There is bipartisan commitment to letting the planet burn, but it’s not a cornerstone of the Democratic Party’s ideology that we should let climate change go unaddressed until the human race goes extinct. That is a cornerstone of the Republican Party’s agenda, and we’re not seeing that reported.
JJ: Thank you. And let me just say, that’s where I see the Lever and Popular Information and a bunch of other outlets coming in, just to say to folks, at a baseline level, that, yes, there actually is a disconnect between what the public wants and is calling for, and what we see coming out of Congress, that there actually are obstacles there. I think we would like all journalism to play that role, but it’s good that independent journalism is stepping up.
MCC: Yeah, I agree. Yes. That’s why we started. That’s why we do the work we do, is we saw this gaping hole, and we’re working at it. Sometimes it’s not easy, but we’re just trying to get the message out there.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with reporter Matthew Cunningham-Cook. You can find his recent piece, “The GOP Is Quietly Adding Climate Denial to Government Spending Bills,” co-authored with David Sirota, online at LeverNews.com. Thank you so much, Matthew Cunningham-Cook for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
MCC: Thanks so much, Janine. I appreciate it.
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