Don’s Dossier: Daggers & Daisies

Don Corrigan serves up his weekly opinion about who deserves a dagger for being a foe to the environment and who deserves a daisy for being a friend of the environment.

This week: Daisies to Climate Change Communication Center for Calling Out Dangers Of Climate Science Denial and Daggers to Heartland Institute’s Celebration Of Trump, Climate Change Denial, Scientific Data Denial.

Daisies To The Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, which has blasted the Heartland Institute climate science deniers, the Trump take down of science reports on government websites, and the recent cancellation of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Conference on the terrible health impacts already manifest around the world due to global warming and climate change. Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, argues that the CDC summit should have gone forward, no matter who had just been sworn in as president.  Maibach said he fears the move will set a precedent of government officials silencing themselves over fears of reprisal or loss of funding, rather than standing behind the established science around climate change.

“I don’t know why the CDC canceled the meeting, but I do know the meeting was important and should have been held. Politics is politics, but protecting the health of our citizens is one of our government’s most important obligations to us,” Maibach told the Washington Post. “Climate change is bad for America, and bad for the world, in so many ways. One of these ways is that it is harming our health, already, and is likely to get much worse over the next few decades unless we take action. As the nation’s public health agency, we need the CDC to be fully engaged in protecting our health from climate change.”

Evidence has continued to mount that man-made climate change could pose major health risks to people around the world over the course of the 21st century. Among the threats: Millions more deaths caused by extreme heat. More frequent outbreaks of diseases transmitted by ticks and mosquitoes. Longer allergy seasons. Worsening air quality that could result in thousands more premature deaths each year from respiratory problems.

Daggers to Heartland Institute Climate Skeptics, who recently celebrated the election of Donald Trump and the triumph of their flat earth view of climate change science at their conference in Washington, D.C. During the conference, about 30 speakers advocated for “ending the Obama administration’s ‘war on fossil fuels.’”

Heartland Institute President and CEO Joseph Bast said: “It’s time to reset U.S. climate and energy policy away from alarmism and fake science that dominated policy-making during the Obama era, and plot a new course based on real scientific data and economic analysis. The American people deserve a huge ‘peace dividend’ that can be brought about by ending the unnecessary and futile war on fossil fuels.”

Bast and other Heartland speakers denied scientific studies that say global warming is affecting weather patterns; denied Pentagon studies that say climate change is leading to more refugee problems and global chaos; denied Centers for Disease Control (CDC) studies that say climate change is causing an increase in health problems and vulnerability to diseases across the globe.

Heartland took encouragement that for secretary of state, Trump selected Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, which for almost 10 years provided financial support to Heartland, according to publicly available IRS documents published by media watchdog Media Matters. Exxon Mobil, a leading international fossil fuel corporate mega-giant, has promoted climate change skepticism in recent years as useful for its worldwide business purposes.

Daggers & Daisies, a regular weekly opinion feature of Environmental Echo, singles out friends and foes of the Earth for attention. Readers are encouraged to submit their nominees for Daggers & Daisies at environmentalecho@gmail.com.