Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

by John Vaillant

By turning the precautionary principle on its head, the GCC and its allies subverted scientists’ absence of 100 percent certainty, pretzeling it into an argument for maintaining the status quo. It’s hard work, undermining a century of solid science, but the strategy paid off: by the early 1990s, Republican attitudes toward environmental action of virtually any kind had turned decidedly negative. Meanwhile, energy producers and manufacturers used this extraordinary turnabout as an opportunity to promote even more carbon-intensive products, including plastics (recall the sudden explosion of bottled water in the early 1990s, simultaneous with the first Gulf War). Despite knowing full well the implications for climate, vehicle manufacturers developed and encouraged a market for SUVs, which, in addition to being larger, heavier, and more resource intensive than ordinary cars, were able (thanks to the GCC) to circumvent mileage requirements because of their designation as “light trucks.”[*12] Meanwhile, actual light trucks—like pickups—were also marketed aggressively. Ford’s F-Series pickup trucks are the best-selling vehicles in automotive history.