Psst! Want 50,000 free DVDs? The US National Science Teachers Association didn’t, even though the DVDs in question were of An Inconvenient Truth, the climate change movie that is required viewing for all children in Norway and Sweden.
Why not? Because according to Laurie David, one of the film’s producers, the NSTA has accepted millions of dollars from oil firms, including Exxon Mobil and Shell. The NSTA has even promoted oil companies’ “special interests and implicit endorsements”, David said in the The Washington Post on 26 November.
Not so, Jodie Peterson of NSTA told 91av. “Our board of directors has to approve our funding before it is accepted. No one has ever given us money with any stipulations attached; it’s just never happened.”
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NSTA president-elect Jonathan Witsett said during a call-in to National Public Radio that NSTA would have accepted the donated DVDs if it hadn’t been for the distribution costs, which he estimated at $250,000.
