On Sunday, November 26, the Washington Post ran a hysterical opinion column by environmental activist Laurie David, the same woman who produced Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth," founded StopGlobalWarming.org and serves as a Natural Resources Defense Counsel trustee. 

The opinion, entitled "Science a la Joe Camel," attacks the National Science Teachers Association ("NSTA"), alleging that it is somehow in the pocket of "Big Oil." 

And what sparked Ms. David's conspiracy tirade?  Simply that the NSTA had the audacity to decline to distribute 50,000 DVDs of "An Inconvenient Truth."  That movie, you'll recall, asserts innumerable falsehoods in advancing Al Gore's underlying big-government environmentalist agenda. 

The NSTA, whose mission is to "promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all," responded with an explanatory statement on its website.  The statement points out that NSTA policy dictates that it distributes only those programs that the NSTA is "solely responsible for developing, directing, and implementing."  Because it did not develop, direct, or implement Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," it simply couldn't mass-distribute it. 

The NSTA even went so far as to offer alternative avenues for making the DVDs available, such as providing mailing lists of NSTA members, announcing the movie's availability, and other options. 

Undeterred, however, Laurie David obviously aimed to distort the facts to fit her own version of conspiratorial reality, just as Al Gore did in "An Inconvenient Truth."  Clearly, Ms. David's opinion column is part of a larger coordinated campaign to smear NSTA and any organization that exercises individual free speech rights or refuses to fall into lockstep. 

If anything, the NSTA and companies that support it should be applauded for promoting quality science education.  Moreover, the NSTA should be commended for steadfastly adhering to its principles, and not cowering under Hollywood elitists who would strong-arm it into spreading their agenda.

Special interests such as Laurie David and StopGlobalWarming.org clearly seek to control the education agenda and curricula for America's youth. It is therefore even more important that respectable groups devoted to quality education stand up to such special interests and not be railroaded by their ulterior motives. 

In fact, as Al Gore and Laurie David continue their public potshots at the NSTA, we urge all CFIF activists and readers to contact the NSTA's Board of Directors and commend them for standing firm against Laurie David and Al Gore's attempt to indoctrinate our nation's youth with their radical environmental agendas.

To e-mail the NSTA's Directors, click here.