CBS’s Leslie Stahl’s Viewpoint on CleanTech and Climate Disruption? That Depends–Who’ll Write the Biggest Check?
Less than a year ago, CBS aired a “60 Minutes” segment hosted by Leslie Stahl, whose mission was to convince tens of millions of credulous, uninformed viewers that cleantech was a failure, and they, as taxpayers, had been fleeced. Now she’s telling a different story, but why?
Going back to the original show, we should note that it was created with the typical lack of fairness and honesty for which 60 Minutes hatchet jobs have come to be known over the past 50 years; it featured the usual misleading reporting, trick camera-work, and quotes taken out of context. Highlights included:
• Dredging up the story of Solyndra but not reporting on any of the tons of government-supported cleantech successes
• Not mentioning a single word on the imperative to develop cleantech in the first place: things like climate disruption, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, lung disease, etc.
• Ignoring the importance of American competitiveness in a global economy in which clean energy is clearly becoming a dominant factor
• Paying no attention to the private sector, where the biggest banks in the known universe: Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, etc. are currently investing seven trillion dollars in renewable energy alone.
• Ignoring the fact solar PV industry stocks were, on average, up 129.6% in 2013, and that the wind and solar industries are twice the size they were four years ago
As I wrote at the time: Lesley Stahl’s net worth is estimated at $20 million. She’s extremely intelligent and talented, but if she had a conscience, wouldn’t she have told the producer of the show to take a hike when he came to her with this disgusting dishonest concept? She wouldn’t exactly be working at Walmart if she did. I find it extraordinary that people, especially wealthy people, toe the line to the demands of their higher-ups, at the expense of compromising what little’s left of their integrity.
I bring all this up because, astonishingly, the same Leslie Stahl has been chosen to moderate a panel discussion at Stanford on how and why to address climate disruption, called “The Climate Discussion You Haven’t Heard.”
Now it’s apparent that Stahl would tell you that 2 + 2 is 5 if she were paid enough. It seems that her integrity is for sale, anytime, anywhere.
There are words describing people who sell themselves like that, and they’re not very flattering.
