Page - 175 - in Water, Energy, and Environment - A Primer

• ‘…we’ve seen the geographical range of ticks that cause Lyme disease shift northward, and is predicted to shift further northward in theUnitedStates andCanada…’ Opposingviewsonglobalwarmingandclimate changedoexist, and are perhaps most strongly expressed by The Heartland Institute (67).Asdescribed inWikipedia, ‘TheHeartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank based in Chicago, which advocates free-market policies. In the 1990s, the group worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question the science linking secondhand smoke to health risks, and to lobby against government public health reforms.More recently, The Institute has focused on questioning the science of human-caused climate change, andwas described by the NewYork Times as ‘the primary American organization pushingclimatechangeskepticism.…TheInstitutehassponsored meetings of climate change skeptics, and has been reported to promote public school curricula challenging the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.’ What they are saying, in theirownwords, is the following: • ‘The environmental movement needs voices devoted to sound science andmarket-based, rather than government- based, solutions to environmental problems.’ • Roosters of the Apocalypse: How the Junk Science of Global Warming Nearly Bankrupted the Western World (published inApril 2012by theHeartland Institute) ○ It‘comparessocietalbeliefinclimatechangetoaprophecy that instructed the tribe tomassacre its livestock, resulting in the death of 35,000 people and slavery for the survivors.…Asimilar ‘economic suicide’ is looming for the United States of America if Americans continue to pursue policies restricting the use of fossil fuels in order to avoid a false climate ‘apocalypse’…’ (68) ○ ‘human emissions have an impact on the environment, but it is so small that people and the economywon’t be Policy considerations 175