Considering that the Washington Post editorial itself is authored by Laurie David, I will take this op-ed with a large grain of salt. Of course Exxon is to blame. When aren’t they? The whole op-ed is a slander on the NSTA and Exxon. Laurie David only provides her own self-interested, and self promotional take on this issue. By the innuendo amply supplied by David in the article, any charitable donation by any company is suspect. Let people rent An Inconvenient Truth on their own, but it is really is too political to be used in the classroom.

Laurie David had requested that the NSTA to distribute 50,000 DVDs of “An Inconvenient Truth” to all their members as part of their packet for the National Conference on Science Education. Everyone else who wants to make information available to NSTA members, even other government agencies (like the Department of Energy, NASA, NOAA, etc.) have to rent booth space at the Conference. This option was made available to Ms. David. The NSTA has a policy, implemented in 2001 that prohibits product endorsement and distribution of third party materials to its members without their consent. In order to uphold this policy, and still make the information and education opportunities in this film and others like it available to science educators, the NSTA made a counter offer to Ms. David. This offer would open up the availability of the DVD to more than 5 times the number of people originally asked for by Ms. David. The offer, which is posted on the NSTA.org website lists the other options offered: Providing a link on the NSTA website that will enable teachers to obtain their free copy of the DVD (site has 2 million page views per month) Make the NSTA mailing list available for purchase. Announce the availability of the DVD in two publications and the NSTA weekly email (email alone has 250,000 circ.) Create an online message board that focuses on global warming accessible worldwide. And even offered to have former VP Al Gore attend the conference as a featured speaker a with web cast for people who could not attend. I think someone in the David camp is trying to use political pressure and not reason to promote their message.