School authorities’ cancellation of a talk that a Nobel laureate climate researcher was to have given to high school students has deeply divided this farming town at the base of the east side of the Rocky Mountains. The scholar, Steven W. Running, a professor of ecology at the University of Montana, was scheduled to speak last Thursday about his career and the global changes occurring because of the earth’s warming. Running was a lead author of a global warming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the 400-member United Nations body that shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. But when some residents complained that his presentation here would be one-sided because no opposing view would be offered, the superintendent of Choteau School District No. 1, Kevin St. John, cancelled it. Running was surprised. “It was almost comical. I had a pretty candid discussion with the superintendent and the school board, and they said there were some conservative citizens who didn’t want me to speak.” St. John said numerous residents had complained to school board members, forcing the school to cancel the lecture. Those who complained misunderstood the content of the talk, St. John said, but there was no time to explain to all of them that Running was a leading scientist rather than an agenda-driven ideologue.“It was my failure to articulate who he is and what he was here for,” the superintendent said. “He’s a Nobel scientist, highly distinguished, but people thought he was something else.”Still, as in much of the West, Choteau is home to a deep-seated mistrust of environmentalism, which many here see as a threat to their agricultural way of life. The town has also been largely on the pro-development side of a long and sometimes bitter battle over whether to exploit oil and gas reserves or to preserve it primarily for wilderness and wildlife.Finally, there is the raw politics of the matter. Running specialises in an issue associated with Al Gore, not a popular figure among many in this predominantly Republican town. But St. John said he had in no way intended to censor Running. People here were divided over the cancellation. Melody Martinsen, the editor of The Choteau Acantha, a local weekly, said that while she rarely received letters to the editor, “this week I have nine and seven are on the subject, and they are all chastising the school board.” Running, 57, said high school students were an important audience for his message about climate change. “Our generation caused the problem,” he said, “and I want to talk to high schools because they are the generation that will solve the problem. And we can’t solve the problem without a free discussion.”
