The Heartland Institute

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The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian think tank based in Chicago . The organization founded by Joseph Bast in 1984 belongs to the Atlas Network and has dedicated itself above all to the dismantling of environmental , health and climate protection regulations . While the defense of tobacco products and DDT were initially among the main topics, the denial of man-made global warming later became the central topic. Since 2020, the organization has also tried to undermine scientific knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic .

The Heartland Institute is described as a pseudoscientific think tank and is one of the key players in the organized climate change denial scene . Heartland is financed by the tobacco , coal and oil industries, among others . Important donors are or were u. a. Philip Morris , the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company , the Koch Family Foundation , the Mercer Family Foundation, and ExxonMobil .

history

The organization was founded in 1984 and claims to have set itself the goal of promoting and developing market-based solutions to social and economic problems. Initially, topics from the American Midwest were dealt with and, from 1993, the program was expanded significantly.

It was a small regionally operating think tank until the 1990s, but in the following decade it developed into one of the leading forces in the organized climate change denial scene.

staff

Heartland employed 40 people in January 2020. The long-time leader was Joseph Bast, who led the organization as president from its foundation until 2017, and was succeeded by the former congressman Tim Huelskamp , who was closely related to the tea party movement . At the end of 2017, Huelskamp accused the oil company ExxonMobil - historically one of the most important financiers of the climate denial movement - of being a long-time member of the “discredited” and anti-energy “global warming movement”. Huelskamp left Heartland in June 2019. He was succeeded by Frank Lasée, a former member of the Wisconsin State Senate. Under his leadership, Heartland laid off about half of its employees. According to the Huffington Post , it was in dire financial straits.

subjects

Propagation of tobacco and DDT and use against air pollution control

In the 1990s, the Heartland Institute first helped Philip Morris disseminate material designed to challenge the link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. According to James Lawrence Powell in The Inquisition of Climate Science (2012), the Heartland Institute and the tobacco company Philip Morris had a "symbiotic relationship" for years. After the EPA classified passive smoking as carcinogenic, Heartland financed Philip Morris et al. a. a conference to look at the implications of this legislation and was part of the group's backlash to this decision. In addition, a group manager sat on the Heartland board until 2003. In 2006, Heartland teamed up with the National Association of Tobacco Outlets and launched a public relations campaign to encourage public opinion to once again turn against tobacco in order to prevent smoking bans .

At the same time, Heartland fought against air pollution control measures to reduce air pollution . Among other things, an article appeared in the 1990s in which the organization positioned itself against the supposed " acid rain nonsense ". It also stood up for the defense of the insecticide DDT and participated in defamation campaigns against Rachel Carson . Among other things, it claimed that the DDT ban cost over a million lives.

Heartland is involved with "Policybot" on the Internet and tries to reduce thematic overlaps with other conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation , the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Cato Institute .

Climate change denial

Together with other conservative think tanks such as For example, the Cato Institute , the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the George C. Marshall Institute , the Heartland Institute has played an important role in attempts to deny the existence of man-made global warming through attacks on climate science. After the Competitive Enterprise Institute lost funding from ExxonMobil, the Heartland Institute took a leadership role in denying global warming. The New York Times called the Heartland Institute "the leading American organization promoting climate skepticism," while the business magazine The Economist called it the "world's most prominent think tank that sows doubts about man-made climate change." According to The Guardian , the Heartland Institute is a fossil-fuel industry-funded think tank known for promoting "radically anti-scientific" positions on the climate crisis.

United States

The Heartland Institute is one of the organizations that produce the most climate-skeptical writings and one of the organizations that has the greatest public reach. It produces both lengthy papers and short statements in which scientific knowledge is denied. The recurring motives include the complete rejection of human influence on the earth's atmosphere , especially greenhouse gases , which is referred to as a "loss of reality", the defamation of scientific findings as "inventions" and "child panic" as well as attacks on prominent climate researchers such as B. Michael E. Mann , whom the Heartland Institute called an "alarmist" whose business and agenda is "spreading misinformation and myths".

In order to purposefully spread confusion about the scientific consensus on global warming, the Heartland Institute helped found the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change . This is a climate denial organization that is supposed to act as a direct counterpart to the IPCC and aims to both arouse uncertainty about the state of research in the public and to create the impression that there is a supposedly great scientific controversy about fundamental statements about man-made Climate change. In a budget plan for 2012 that has become known, the Heartland Institute notes:

“ We are currently sponsoring the NIPCC to undermine the official report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . We paid a team of authors $ 388,000 to work on a number of publications. [...] Our current budget includes the support of people with a high profile who regularly contradict the statements of the alarmists about global warming. Right now this support goes to Craig Idso ($ 11,600 per month), Fred Singer ($ 5,000 per month), and Robert Carter ($ 1,667 per month) . "()

Also in 2012, the Heartland Institute hit the headlines with a failed advertising campaign. The organization had unabomber Ted Kaczynski on electronic billboards with the question “I still believe in global warming. You too? ”Shown. It was allegedly planned to quote Charles Manson , Fidel Castro, and Osama bin Laden as well. The campaign was stopped immediately and still resulted in considerable financial and personnel losses.

As a result of the financial difficulties, the long-term conferences of the climate denial movement in Chicago were temporarily suspended. Heartland's core project on US insurance issues was also lost and was continued by a newly established employee. The spin-off was spun off as the R Street Institute and is expressly committed to not spreading any climate skepticism. It is estimated that Heartland missed about a third of the planned $ 2.3 million donation due to the poster campaign. General Motors ended its support of the Heartland Institute in 2012 after 20 years, as the company assumed that climate change was real.

However, the Heartland Institute continues to practice climate change denial. Among other things, the head of the communications department spoke in 2015 about an international climate symposium in advance of the publication of the encyclical Laudato si ' . He warned Pope Francis not to "make a big mistake" and to listen to the "alarmists". At the same time, the Heartland Institute is one of the loudest supporters of Donald Trump's anti-climate protection policy and the rollback of climate protection measures carried out by the Trump cabinet . According to its own information, it advises a large number of actors in the Trump administration. Shortly after Trump took office, the Heartland Institute issued a catalog of 13 environmental policy demands, including withdrawing from the Paris climate protection agreement , approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline , abolishing air and water protection laws, and excluding environmental scientists from scientific advisory bodies. One year after taking office, the Trump administration had fully or at least partially implemented eight of these 13 demands.

Activities in Europe

The Heartland Institute is networked with the German climate denial organization European Institute for Climate & Energy (EIKE). Wolfgang Müller from EIKE named the Heartland Institute a role model in his fight against “climate madness”, while Spiegel Online presented the organization as a kind of “big brother” of EIKE. Among other things, the Heartland Institute supports EIKE in organizing conferences. Together, the two organizations also regularly organize conferences that take place parallel to UN summits, Heartland is also one of the sponsors of the annual EIKE conferences. Among other things, Heartland and EIKE jointly organized a conference called “Climate Reality Forum” in 2019 parallel to the climate conference in Madrid , the subject of which was how the world could defend itself against the supposedly “rampant climate alarmism” and “climate madness”. There, among others, Naomi Seibt , a German blogger and Youtuber , who u. a. became known for her sharply articulated positioning against the "state media", abortion and sea ​​rescue, among other things . Seibt, who presents herself as a former environmentalist who has now seen through the “climate lie”, is now to be built up as a German “anti- Greta Thunberg ”. According to Spiegel Online, the aim of expanding activities to Europe is to support right-wing forces there in order to break the global climate protection treaty concluded in Paris in 2015 . Heartland had already started a cooperation with the Polish trade union Solidarność in 2018 to fight the coal phase-out in Europe.

Undercover research by Correctiv

In 2020, investigative journalists from Correctiv managed to gain an insight into Heartland's activities and procedures through undercover research. At an EIKE conference, they pretended to be PR agents who were supposed to invest 500,000 euros in the German climate change denial scene for a German automobile company without the origin of the money being known. They were then invited to a Heartland Conference by James Taylor , Head of Climate Policy at the Heartland Institute, where Taylor detailed the disinformation strategies used by the Heartland Institute to the alleged clients .

"For the next half hour, Taylor will be telling the disinformation from the toolbox because he believes Mathias, the PR agent sitting across from him, is trying to inject money into the network. Taylor will explain how to bet issues for money. How donors can donate anonymously through a US foundation. How the institute imitates the news tone of the New York Times in its publications in order to be heard with its absurd theses. How he wants to turn a young Youtuber from Germany into a star of the scene. And how closely he works with his German partners, whose theses the AfD prominently quotes in the Bundestag. A few weeks later, Taylor will send a written offer. It is a kind of strategy paper for a PR campaign in Germany. A campaign that the public should not recognize as such. And that makes it all the more effective. "

When asked about the possibility of remaining anonymous as a donor, Taylor explained right at the beginning of the conversation that there are several organizations in the USA such as B. Donors Trust existed that could be instructed to pass donations to the actual recipients in order to disguise the flow of funds. Taylor further explained that the plan is to use the Youtuber Naomi Seibt , who is active in the right-wing scene, as a mouthpiece to target young people. In addition, he encouraged reporters, who indicated that they actually want to donate the money to EIKE, to send the money to Heartland, emphasizing that Heartland could specifically "set and disseminate specific topics" that the respective customer would like to see Wishes. During a telephone conversation a few weeks later, when asked whether you could buy specific statements and whether you, as a customer, could determine the content of Seibt's videos, she had to feel comfortable with the statements. But it is "[a] bsolut" possible to specify "bullet points, keywords, the way to present something".

Taylor then worked out a written concept for the campaign planned in Germany, which he sent to the undercover journalists by email. Among other things, Seibt, as the central figure in the campaign, should receive a budget that is dimensioned so that she can shoot a series of effective videos. In addition to Youtube, various Heartland employees are to be used, who should appear as supposedly credible experts with their titles and degrees. According to Taylor, these could e.g. B. "Research and present important information about the sensitive economic costs of German environmental regulations" and - if sufficiently paid for - "draw attention to the minimal health effects of diesel engines, coal-fired power stations and other conventional energy sources".

COVID-19 pandemic

In 2020, the Heartland Institute, like many other climate denial organizations, began to belittle scientific findings on the COVID-19 pandemic and used the crisis to spread misinformation . Among other things, Heartland employees compared the virus pandemic in March 2020 with a difficult ordinary flu season , questioned the validity of epidemiological data on the spread of the disease, and published a post arguing that alternatives to physical distancing, such as the safe custody of vulnerable populations, were less economical and caused social consequences.

financing

In 2017, revenues were $ 5.9 million, in 2016 it was $ 5.5 million, and in 2015 it was $ 4.6 million. No figures were available for 2018 as of February 2020, but Donors Trust , a foundation that enables companies to conceal their donations, transferred around $ 3 million to Heartland alone. Between 2011 and 2015, the Heartland Institute's income averaged around $ 5.2 million annually. Robert Mercer's Mercer Family Foundation is one of the organization's largest donors . Mercer is one of the largest financiers of the organized climate denial movement, donating approximately $ 5.9 million to the Heartland Institute between 2008 and 2016 alone, including $ 800,000 in 2016. Mercer began donating when the Heartland Institute moved from defending the tobacco industry to deny man-made climate change. Other proven funds come from Murray Energy , a coal company that filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and by then had funded a slew of climate denial organizations. As of the end of 2019, revenue from fighting climate change made up around two-thirds to three-quarters of the entire Heartland budget.

According to the official self-promotion, the Heartland Institute does not disseminate political ideas for a fee. Since think tanks officially present themselves as independent, such an approach would also obscure the links to industrial companies. Internal correspondence with companies, however, allows other conclusions to be drawn. For example, the then Heartland President Joe Bast wrote in a 1999 letter to the tobacco company Philip Morris that he was hoping for an increase in support from the group. He justified this demand by saying that "Heartland does many things that would benefit Philip Morris' profits, things that no other organization does." At the same time, Bast listed a number of services for the tobacco company, including the broad area, the "tobacco affairs." "In Heartland's publications, as well as plans to present all anti-health tobacco documents from various think tanks from the Atlas Network under the heading" The Smoker's Lounge "centrally on the Heartland website. This section of the website still exists to date (as of 2016).

In 2012, an insider published suspected internal documents of the think tank that allow conclusions to be drawn about financing and strategies. Accordingly, the think tank counts the discrediting of climate research among its core tasks. Important financiers were u. a. Billionaires Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch of Koch Industries , Microsoft, and the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, who are primarily active in the fossil energy industry . One of the largest donations to Heartland came from an anonymous donor who made an explicit $ 8.6 million donation to attack climate research . Even ExxonMobil was one of the sources of funds of the Heartland Institute. Heartland received more than $ 670,000 from Exxon between 1998 and 2006, after which no data was released to indicate further payments.

Events and funding of other actors

The Heartland Institute holds annual climate denial conferences specifically directed against the IPCC and attended by leaders of the climate denial movement. Many of the speakers presenting there do not have any recognizable scientific qualifications; the majority have financial connections to companies in the fossil energy industry or groups supported by them. The 12th conference took place in 2017, at which Lamar Smith , among others, appeared and announced that he wanted to step up action against state-funded climate research, which in his eyes was not real scientific research. At the same time, he promised his support for changes in the law, which should punish scientific journals that do not meet a standard that he personally specified.

The Heartland Institute also funds other groups and individuals. Among the recipients of funds from the Heartland Institute was Anthony Watts, who runs Watts Up With That, one of the most important blogs on the climate change denial scene. In addition, $ 300,000 was spent on a team designed to deliberately undermine the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change . The German climate change denial organization EIKE, with which Heartland works and u. a. holds joint conferences receives payments from the Heartland Institute.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ K. Wiesner et al .: Stability of democracies: a complex systems perspective . In: European Journal of Physics . tape 40 , 2019, doi : 10.1088 / 1361-6404 / aaeb4d .
  2. ^ Riley E. Dunlap and Peter J. Jacques: Climate Change Denial Books and Conservative Think Tanks: Exploring the Connection . In: American Behavioral Scientist . tape 57 , no. 6 , 2013, p. 699-731 , doi : 10.1177 / 0002764213477096 .
  3. ↑ a b Constantine Boussalis, Travis G. Coan: text-mining the signal of climate change doubt . In: Global Environmental Change . tape 36 , 2016, p. 89–100 , doi : 10.1016 / j.gloenvcha.2015.12.001 .
  4. ^ A b Riley E. Dunlap and Peter J. Jacques: Climate Change Denial Books and Conservative Think Tanks: Exploring the Connection . In: American Behavioral Scientist . tape 57 , no. 6 , 2013, p. 699-731; here p. 700. , doi : 10.1177 / 0002764213477096 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h Katarina Huth, Jean Peters, Jonas Seufert: The Heartland Lobby . In: Correctiv , February 4, 2020. Retrieved February 16, 2020.
  6. ^ Scott Wong: Tea Party favorite to lead conservative think tank. In: The Hill. June 29, 2017. Retrieved July 7, 2017 .
  7. ↑ a b The Mercers, Trump's Billionaire Megadonors, Ramp Up Climate Change Denial Funding . In: Huffington Post , January 25, 2018. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
  8. ↑ Scott Waldman: Prominent US climate denial group fires president amid financial crisis. In: Science E&E News. March 17, 2020, accessed March 19, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway : Merchants of Doubt . Bloomsbury Press , 2010, ISBN 978-1-59691-610-4 , pp. 233-234 .
  10. ^ Steve Connor: Tobacco and oil pay for climate conference. In: The Independent . March 3, 2008, accessed September 2, 2010 .
  11. ↑ a b c James Lawrence Powell: The Inquisition of Climate Science. New York 2012, p. 98.
  12. ↑ Susanne Götze , Annika Joeres : The climate pollution lobby . How politicians and business leaders sell the future of our planet . Munich 2020, p. 68.
  13. ↑ Naomi Oreskes , Erik M. Conway : Die Machiavellis der Wissenschaft (Original: Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming). Weinheim 2014, pp. 280 and 299.
  14. ↑ PolicyBot
  15. ↑ James Hoggan, Richard Littlemore: Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming . Greystone Books 2009, p. 85.
  16. ↑ Quoted from: Constantine Boussalis, Travis G. Coan: Text-mining the signals of climate change doubt . In: Global Environmental Change . tape 36 , 2016, p. 89–100 , doi : 10.1016 / j.gloenvcha.2015.12.001 .
  17. ↑ Naomi Seibt: 'anti-Greta' activist called white nationalist an inspiration . In: The Guardian , February 28, 2020. Retrieved February 28, 2020.
  18. ^ Riley Dunlap, Aaron M. McCright: Challenging Climate Change. The Denial Countermovement. In: Riley Dunlap, Robert J. Brulle (Eds.): Climate Change and Society. Sociological Perspectives. Report of the American Sociological Association's Task Force on Sociology and Global Climate Change. Oxford University Press 2015, 300-332, p. 308.
  19. ↑ Anita Blasberg and Kerstin Kohlenberg : The climate warriors . In: Die Zeit , November 22, 2012. Accessed February 2, 2018.
  20. ↑ Climate wars heat up with pulled Unabomber billboards , May 4, 2012 (English).
  21. ^ Suzanne Goldenberg: Big donors ditch rightwing Heartland Institute over Unabomber billboard. In: The Guardian . Retrieved July 17, 2020 .
  22. ^ Suzanne Goldenberg: Heartland Institute in financial crisis after billboard controversy. In: The Guardian. May 23, 2012, accessed on July 17, 2020 .
  23. ↑ Slate on the spin-off under the title R Street Institute
  24. ^ David Weigel: Climate Change Believers Split from Heartland Institute. Slate, 05/14/2012
  25. ↑ Forecast the Facts, Heartland's 2012 Funding: Fading Quickly ( Memento of the original dated June 9, 2013) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / forecastthefacts.org
  26. ^ Sharon Silke Carty: General Motors Decides Climate Change Is Real, Pulls Support From Heartland Institute . In: The Huffington Post , March 30, 2012. Retrieved May 5, 2014.
  27. ^ Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller: The Propaganda Machine Behind the Controversy Over Climate Science: Can You Spot the Lie in This Title? In: American Behavioral Scientist . tape 60 , no. 3 , 2016, doi : 10.1177 / 0002764215613405 .
  28. ↑ Here's The List Of Climate Change Deniers Considered For The EPA's 'Red Team' Debate . In: Huffington Post , October 25, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
  29. ↑ We might know where Trump has been getting some of his wacky ideas . In: Grist , February 1, 2018. Accessed February 2, 2018.
  30. ↑ The ennobling of the climate deniers . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , June 21, 2015. Accessed December 19, 2019.
  31. ↑ a b Right-wing US think tanks torpedo climate protection. The destroyers from overseas . In: Spiegel Online , December 18, 2019. Retrieved December 19, 2019.
  32. ↑ Vera Deleja-Hotko, Ann-Katrin Müller, Gerald Traufetter: AfD Hopes to Win Votes by Opposing Climate Protection. In: Spiegel Online . May 6, 2019. Retrieved December 19, 2019.
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  34. ↑ The Anti-Greta. A conservative think tank takes on the global phenomenon . In: Washington Post , February 24, 2020. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
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  36. ↑ How climate change deniers want to influence politics . In: Jetzt (online magazine) , February 9, 2020. Retrieved February 17, 2020.
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  42. ^ Museum of Natural History urged to cut ties with 'anti-science propagandist' Rebekah Mercer . In: The Guardian , January 26, 2018. Retrieved January 26, 2018.
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  49. ↑ Jeffrey Mervis: Lamar Smith, unbound, lays out political strategy at climate doubters' conference . In: Science . March 25, 2017, doi : 10.1126 / science.aal0957 .