![]() “Heartland has long supported and promoted scientists skeptical of man-caused global warming on principle,” Jim Lakely, the organization’s spokesman, told InsideClimate News. The Heartland Institute rejects suggestions that it was ever part of any group fostered by corporations. The Koch brothers, whose conservative ideology dovetails with their petrochemical business interests, led giving among individual magnates, donating more than $100 million since 1997 to 84 groups. Whatever their differences today, corporations such as ExxonMobil were crucial to getting the denial network up and running.Īccording to climate watchdogs Greenpeace/ExxonSecrets, ExxonMobil led corporate donations to think tanks, giving nearly $31 million between 19 to 69 groups that spread climate misinformation. And, his brother, James Taylor, is a senior environmental fellow at Heartland. From 1991 to 2014, he was a vice president at the Cato Institute, focusing on energy and climate issues. Once a prominent climate skeptic, he worked at ALEC as staff director for energy and environment issues early in his career. Taylor knows this universe from the inside. “They are trying to keep the hard Right animated.” The new goal is making sure that denial is “part of the ideological catechism of the conservative base,” Taylor said. “There used to be some degree of interest in projecting an image of seriousness, of expertise and evenhandedness on climate, and there isn’t anymore.” “Robespierre beheading Danton is pretty apt here,” said Jerry Taylor, president of the bipartisan, pro-climate action think tank Niskanen Center, referring to French revolutionaries executing the moderates among them during the Reign of Terror. The finding, affirmed by the Supreme Court, is what empowers the agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The group is pushing the EPA to overturn its official conclusion-known as the endangerment finding-that excessive carbon dioxide is a danger to human health and welfare. While ExxonMobil today publicly accepts the reality of human-caused climate change and the need to address the problem, Heartland argues for the benefits of a warming world. “And you can definitely credit Exxon and Koch brothers’ money for giving the think tanks the megaphone to keep climate science denial in the world.”īut now, just like the Republican upstarts that threaten the party establishment, Heartland is taking climate denial farther than many fossil fuel companies can support. They maintained this denial space in public policy dialogue,” said Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center, a watchdog group. Trump was taught to say these things on climate by Heartland, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other think tanks. Climate denial, thanks to the network’s influence, has become a core message of the Republican Party, now in control of the White House and Congress. It is one of the largest, longest and most consequential misinformation efforts mounted against mainstream science by an industry. They have cast doubt on consensus science, confused public opinion and forestalled passage of laws and regulations that would address the global environmental crisis. Hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations such as ExxonMobil and wealthy individuals such as the billionaires Charles and David Koch have supported the development of a sprawling network, which includes Heartland and other think tanks, advocacy groups and political operatives. Its ascent into the Trump administration’s orbit, where it now advises the Environmental Protection Agency on climate change issues, marks the most dramatic success yet in a decades-long crusade, first funded by fossil fuel money, against the mainstream scientific conclusion that human activity is warming the planet and inviting disastrous consequences. “We are winning in the global warming war,” Bast declared later in an email to supporters. The backlash was so severe that Heartland pulled the plug within 24 hours, but it still lost major donors and political allies and faced criticism that its fight against climate science was beyond extreme.įive years later, on June 1, 2017, the group’s chief executive, Joseph Bast, was a guest of Donald Trump in the White House Rose Garden as the president announced the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris climate agreement. The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, launched a billboard campaign in 2012 to compare believers in global warming to “murderers and madmen” such as the Unabomber, Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. Sign up to receive our latest reporting on climate change, energy and environmental justice, sent directly to your inbox.
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