The largely industry-funded CPAC panel, “What’s Up With Global Warming?” was moderated by Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute, a leading climate-change denial group, and included Steve Milloy, who works for the coal company Murray Energy; Marc Morano of anti-regulation Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and publisher of Climate Depot; Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute; George Landrith of Frontiers of Freedom, an oil-industry funded organization; and Shannon Smith, who runs an energy efficiency financing group. (Freespeech.org)
The annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is a time for galvanizing the American right, and featuring some of its most extreme thinkers.
This year’s meeting did not disappoint. On Thursday, March 6, at 3:30, before a crowded room, the CPAC panel above, of mostly industry-funded climate deniers, tackled the topic, “What’s With Global Warming?” Replete with required references to Stalinism and witchcraft, it was led by Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute (at the podium), a well-known climate denial campaigner who enjoys publicity stunts, and feeding outlandish statements to media outlets. According to Freespeech.org:
One of the biggest laugh lines came from [Marc Morano of the oil-industry funded Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, third from left], who mocked Rep. Barbara Lee’s warning that the effects of climate change in the developing world could force women into poverty and prostitution. “So now, everyone in the audience worried that your mom’s sister or daughter is going to become a hooker, had better start to get behind a carbon tax or cap and trade,” he said.
The International Business Times described the panel:
Perhaps unfortunately, this one isn’t hosted by either Jerry Seinfeld or a Jerry Seinfeld impersonator . . . Spoiler alert: The deal with global warming is that these guys don’t believe in it.
The same day, CPAC also held a panel on voter outreach into minority communities. John Hudak of the Brookings Institution tweeted this image of the mostly empty audience:
Wrote Hudak:
[T]he diversity panel ran over its time. People began filling in—in droves. Why the change of heart? The diversity panel ran late and into the time slot for NRA executive Wayne LaPierre to address CPAC in the same room. LaPierre went on to give a rousing speech that generated some of the loudest enthusiasm of the day from the crowd.
Among the sponsors of the CPAC annual meeting were Facebook, George Washington University, and Amazing America with Sarah Palin presented by Sportsman Channel.
Read more on the CPAC climate panel at Freespeech.org.
View panel video here.
