Confronting Climate Denial

Ralph Nader Radio Hour

Ralph welcomes James Damico and Mark Baildon, authors of “How to Confront Denial: Literacy, Social Studies, and Climate Change.” They discuss all forms of denial including climate science denial and climate action denial. Then, Ralph, Steve, David, and Hannah discuss three topics in the news, mass shootings, the war in Ukraine, and the outrage of pharmaceutical companies raising the prices of taxpayer funded Covid vaccines.

James Damico is a professor of literacy, culture, and language education at Indiana University Bloomington and a former elementary and middle school teacher from New Jersey. He is co-author of How to Confront Climate Denial: Literacy, Social Studies, and Climate Change.

There tends to be a lot of emphasis on “personal responsibility” for climate change. And I think we need a lot more nuance about how we talk about personal responsibility, but we want to start with an industry lens. Because that’s the kind of inquiry we think will be most productive in social studies and university classrooms.

James Damico

Mark Baildon is an associate professor in foundations of education at the United Arab Emirates University and a former middle and high school social studies teacher in schools around the world (United States, Israel, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan). He is co-author of How to Confront Climate Denial: Literacy, Social Studies, and Climate Change.

Social Studies is a pretty crowded field. But if we use climate as a connecting point, it’s an opportunity to talk about environmental racism, to look at the most vulnerable populations in societies and how they’re being affected by climate change.

Mark Baildon

We should never forget that many of these industries would never be in existence— much less the size they are— without government research and development funds. And that means your taxpayer money. And the industries include the aerospace industry, the biotech industry, the computer industry, the nanotech industry, the containerization industry. You name it, one industry after another was given a huge birth give by the taxpayer from Washington, D.C.

Ralph Nader

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