No, unfortunately it is a patter in environmental reporting, that wildly alarming claims are made, grabbing headlines, only to be later scaled down when the story has slipped out of the headlines.
Consider some examples:
* collapsed ice shelf exaggerated to one million times its weight;
* Arpad Pusztai's 'findings' that genetically modified potatoes caused tumours in rats: though the 'evidence' that led to withdrawal of gm food from a number of supermarket chains, Pusztai's findings were found to be methodologically suspect and unreproducable;
* Professor Lacey warns that as many as a third of Britons will have contracted Creutzfeld Jakob Disease from eating beef by 1998. In fact the likelihood of contracting CJD is about the same as being struck by lightning.
* Greenpeace convinces the owners to tow the Brent Spar oil platform to land to be cut up on 'evidence' of the polluting residues left in the structure. Freely admitting that its facts were wholly wrong, and that the platform represents a greater damage to the environment on land than it would in the sea, Greenpeace nonetheless justify the exercise on the grounds that it 'raised awareness' (of what, exactly? something that was not even true?)
* Environmentalists convince us that deforestation is a major problem, despite the readily available evidence that forest cover in North America and Europe is expanding, as it has been for decades.
Having been lied to over and over again by environmental campaigners, it is proper to treat their claims with distrust. Everybody understands how it happens. Committed activists think that the cause is more important than dotting the 'i's and crossing the 't's. But what it adds up to is a cynical pollution of the public record.
That cynicism is why people tend not to take environmental warnings seriously. Oh, of course, when pollsters ask them 'do you believe in recycling' people say what they think the interviewer wants to hear. But in their everyday lives, people make the proper judgement that winning greater control over resources will improve their lives. Talk about harming the environment is unreal to them, because they have been told horror stories over and over again that just never come true.
-- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP5.01 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org