Heartland Institute: “Can You Spare Any Change? Every Little Bit Helps.”

How the mighty have fallen.  The Heartland Institute was one of the country’s leading propaganda mills.  They were probably THE top mouthpiece for the science-denying “global warming is a myth” crowd, with huge corporate donations pouring in from the usual suspects.

No more.  The Heartland Institute was last seen slumped over at the corner of Sixteenth and South Main Boulevard, holding up a “Will Work For Food” sign.

The Heartland Institute’s downward spiral is mostly the result of their infamous billboard (pictured at the linked article).  It shows a picture of the Unabomber — Ted Kaczynski — with the caption “I still believe in global warming.  Do you?”

Even their corporate allies thought the billboard was tasteless and not an effective way to influence public opinion.  What were they thinking anyway?  A billboard???  It’s much more effective to sabotage high school science textbooks with “scientific” articles “proving” that global warming doesn’t exist.  Or they could have orchestrated a bunch of “demonstrations” where Real Americans could express their fear and outrage against Big Brother Obama and his Fascist Clean Energy goons.  (See Koch Brothers, Americans For Prosperity.)

Anyway, the Heartland Institute’s donations have taken a nosedive, and their president, Joseph Bast, is pleading for help:

“If you can afford to make a contribution please do. If you know someone, if you’ve got a rich uncle or somebody in the family or somebody that you work with, please give them a call and ask them if they would consider making a tax-deductible contribution to the Heartland Institute.”

Doesn’t that just tug at the ol’ heartstrings?  Please give generously.

Polluting Industries Winning the Message War on Climate Change

In 2007, 71% of Americans believed climate change was being caused — at least in part — by the burning of fossil fuels.  In 2009, only 51% held that belief.  And as of June 2011, only 44% of Americans still believe this.

According to the director of survey research for the Pew Research Center, “this is among the largest shifts over a short period of time seen in recent public opinion history.”

And these percentages aren’t the worst of it.  In addition, there’s a new religious zealotry and emotional intensity among the reactionary anti-science tools.  They don’t just scoff at the idea of climate change and then change the subject.  They believe, they know — they’ve  seen the light! — that climate change (a more accurate term than global warming) is just a trumped-up excuse for power-grabbing socialists to take over America and steal our property rights.  Disagreeing on this issue is the equivalent of telling a born again Christian that there’s no God.

This mass viewpoint shift — and the culture war intensity — didn’t just “happen.”  It’s been meticulously orchestrated and heavily funded.  It’s a perfect storm of wealthy industrialists‘ massive funding, rightwing think tanks cranking out their “message” 24/7/65, and millions of gullible inbreds who keep falling for it hook line and sinker.

Two examples of these think tanks are the Heartland Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.  In the linked article, Naomi Klein describes the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change as “the premier gathering for those dedicated to denying the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity is warming the planet.”

At this conference, a member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute gave a speech with the obligatory references to Saul Alinsky and the terrifying agenda of international socialists disguised as environmentalists:

“You can believe this is about the climate…but it’s not a reasonable belief…No free society would do to itself what this agenda requires…. The first step to that is to remove these nagging freedoms that keep getting in the way.”

This conference was basically two days of instilling fear in the hearts of the gullible.  When Obama made a campaign promise to support locally owned biofuel refineries, he was actually carrying out a long-running Maoist plot.  The editor of ClimateDepot.com compared environmentalists to Aztec priests sacrificing people to appease their gods.  Speaker after speaker derided the whole notion of climate change as a Trojan Horse designed to destroy capitalism and replace it with a sinister eco-socialist police state.

Larry Bell, the author of Climate of Corruption, says climate change “has little to do with the state of the environment and much to do with shackling capitalism and transforming the American way of life in the interests of global wealth redistribution.”

Well, there you have it.  This is what we’re up against.  Environmentalists — meaning anybody who wants this planet to survive — need to get involved in this message war and start fighting back.

Four years ago, when most people were aware of the cause and effect between fossil fuel burning and climate change, it seemed like we could count on informed voters to unite and stave off the pending ecological nightmare.

Obviously we can’t.