Part 2: Bill Moyers Interviews Environmentalist David Suzuki

David Suzuki, interviewed

by Bill Moyers.

Part 2 of Bill Moyers' interview with David Suzuki explores further the influence of economics on environmental perceptions. As in part one, anyone paying attention to Drakes Bay Oyster Company's well paid public relations press will find insight into how to frame an environmental issue for the benefit of business at the expense of the environment. While focused on climate change, the means used to attack those who believe the climate has in fact changed as a result of human activities, are behind the reasoning used to justify a commercial operation in Drakes Estero, preventing the completion of the Philip Burton Wilderness Area.

In the case of DBOC, labels of "enviro Nazis" and "environmental zealots" are used to describe those who believe the Wilderness Act is clear in saying commercial operations are not compatible with wilderness. A permit's expiration date, well known when the current owners purchased the operation, is now described as "big government's overreaching" action. As noted in Bill Moyers' accompanying article:

In the second part of his conversation with Bill, Canadian scientist and environmental activist David Suzuki says killing the messenger is a 50-year-0ld strategy ripped straight from big tobacco’s playbook.
“This is a very effective thing that we know has been done by the tobacco industry [and] it’s being done by the fossil fuel industry… You attack a person on the basis of their trustworthiness, their ulterior motives, anything to get away from dealing with the issues”

As the Supreme Court's decision on whether to hear the case or not approaches, the arm waving increases. The conservative Pacific Legal Foundation puts out well buffered videos. Professors  complain that science isn't perfect when, in fact, this is an issue of a permit coming to an end not whether a class room experiment was designed correctly. "Friends" with nothing more than their own economic gain from book sales on the history of Drakes Estero feign deep concern. And cocktail party conspiracies of running agriculture out of Marin County, with Sonoma County next, are discussed on talk shows whose primary focus is on listening to speeches played backwards to hear the hidden meanings. It is arm waving which will not lift the idea out of the bridge club.