Are Marketplaces "Magic"? Activist and Scholar Naomi Oreskes Thinks Not

On today's episode of Speaking Out of Place, we speak with Naomi Oreskes, who is Henry Charles Lea professor of the History of Science and affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is a world-renown earth scientist, historian, and public speaker. Oreskes is a leading voice in the role of science in society, the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and the role of disinformation in blocking climate action.

In 2010, she and her co-author Eric Conway, published Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, where they identified something called the “tobacco strategy” that became paradigmatic in terms of corporate efforts to debunk science.

This discovery led them to explore more deeply and more broadly the attack on science. They found that as science was demoted, the idea of market fundamentalism or the "magic of the market" became a mantra that covered up corporate malfeasance and killed progressive governmental policies that constrained capitalism and benefitted people and the environment.

In today's program we discuss Oreskes’ and Conway's new book, the Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe the Government and Love the Free Market.