Kivalina

A Climate Change Story

Christine Shearer

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781608461714
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Conservation & Protection
• Index: Biological Sciences

The true story of an Alaska Native village destroyed by flooding and erosion caused by climate change—and how they fought for help. Warming Arctic temperatures have been making coastal areas of Alaska increasingly uninhabitable. In 2008, the small Alaska Native village of Kivalina filed a legal claim against some of the world's largest fossil fuel companies for damaging their homeland and creating a false debate around climate change. Academic and former journalist Christine Shearer explores the history leading up to the lawsuit, its connections to disaster management and adaptation, and its relationship to past misinformation campaigns involving lead, asbestos, and tobacco. Kivalina's struggle for safe relocation, the book argues, is part of our common struggle to acknowledge and address climate change before it is too late. 2012 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award (Honorable Mention) Praise for Kivalina "Moving, infuriating, ominous.... Shearer provides an impressively concise and comprehensive history of the growth of corporate power in America; its influence on, entwinement with, and corruption of government; [and] corporate obfuscation of industrial hazards." — Publisher's Weekly "Best book of 2011: one of the most timely and important books to be published in 2011—and in the past decade." —Jeff Biggers, The Huffington Post "In novelistic detail, Shearer recounts the science, politics, legal battles, and human experience at one of the leading edges of climate change impact. In doing so, she... tells the story not just of one village in Alaska, but of us all." —The Society of Environmental Journalists

NOTES

Introduction

1 Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming.

2 Petit, et al. “Climate and Atmospheric History of the Past 420,000 Years from the Vostok Ice Core, Antarctica.”

3 Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren.

4 Kintisch, “Global Warming: Projections of Climate Change Go from Bad to Worse.”

5 Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren.

Chapter One: Blueprint for Denial

1 Associated Press, “Science Not Faked But Not Pretty.”

2 Freudenburg, Gramling, and Davidson, “Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs).”

3 Oreskes, “Science and Public Policy.”

4 Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product.

5 Phillips, American Theocracy; Phillips, American Dynasty.

6 Bowker, Fatal Deception.

7 Markowitz and Rosner, “The Limits of Thresholds.”

8 Scott, Muscle and Blood.

9 Rampton and Stauber, Trust Us, We’re Experts!

10 Markowitz and Rosner, “The Limits of Thresholds”; McCulloch and Tweedale, Defending the Indefensible.

11 Markowitz and Rosner, “The Limits of Thresholds.”

12 Ibid.

13 Interview by author, March 18, 2009.

14 Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product; Freudenburg, Gramling, and Davidson, “Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs).”

15 Castleman, Asbestos: Medical and Legal Aspects.

16 McCulloch and Tweedale, Defending the Indefensible.

17 Bowker, Fatal Deception.

18 Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product.

19 Miller, The Voice of Business.

20 Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product.

21 Interview by author, March 25, 2009.

22 Freudenburg, Gramling, and Davidson, “Scientific Certainty Argumentation Methods (SCAMs).”

23 McCulloch and Tweedale, Defending the Indefensible.

24 Markowitz and Rosner, “Cater to the Children.”

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid.

27 Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product.

28 Perillo, “Scraping beneath the Surface.”

29 Markowitz and Rosner, “Cater to the Children.”

30 Rosner and Markowitz, “A ‘Gift of God’?: The Public Health Controversy over Leaded Gasoline during the 1920s.”

31 Denworth, Toxic Truth.

32 Ibid.

33 Kraft and Scheberle, “Environmental Justice and the Allocation of Risk.”

34 Interview by author, March 19, 2009.

35 Kluger, Ashes to Ashes.

36 Glantz, The Cigarette Papers.

37 Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product; Fritschler, Tobacco and Politics.

38 Miller, The Voice of Business.

39 Kluger, Ashes to Ashes.

40 Glantz, The Cigarette Papers.

41 Ibid.

42 Diehl, Tobacco & Your Health.

43 Kluger, Ashes to Ashes.

44 Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product.

45 Glantz, The Cigarette Papers.

46 Guardino and Daynard, “Tobacco Industry Lawyers as ‘Disease Vectors.’”

47 Zimring, “Comparing Cigarette Policy and Illicit Drug and Alcohol Control.”

48 Mooney, Republican War on Science.

49 Glantz, The Cigarette Papers.

50 Mooney, Republican War on Science.

51 Monbiot, Heat.

52 Mooney, Republican War on Science.

53 MacCleery, Safeguards at Risk.

54 Phillips, American Theocracy.

dp n="168" folio="159" ?

55 Mooney, Republican War on Science.

56 Sanjour, Why EPA Is Like It Is and What Can Be Done about It.

57 Ibid.

58 Kennedy, Crimes against Nature.

59 Freudenburg and Gramling, “Bureaucratic Slippage and Failures of Agency Vigilanc...