National Centre for Policy Analysis: don't fight climate change, build big seawalls instead

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onAug 8, 2006 @ 13:40 PDT

Rawstory.com has a piece today that hightlights how desperate someNCPA's Streling Burnett people are to continue to spin the climate change story. The piece titled, โ€œFree Market advocate says fight effects, not global warming,โ€ quotes Sterling Burnett, a Senior Fellow with the National Centre for Policy Analysis (NCPA), as saying:

โ€œPeople assume that the science is sound and leap to the conclusion they must do something, and they know what select something to do, when itโ€™s not so clear what we should be doing,โ€ he said.

Unfortunately for Burnettโ€™s argument, the scientific consensus is clear on what we should be doing: burning less fossil fuel.

As for Burnettโ€™s solution to climate change:

โ€œWhy not just stop building along the coasts, he [Burnett] asked, or build walls to prevent the flooding, which would cost Americans less than enacting the Kyoto Protocol.โ€

In other words, ignore the science and the proposed solutions, just deal with the effects, build big seawalls and wear more sunscreen, and everything will be fine. Scarily, this sounds a lot like Ronald Reaganโ€™s proposed answer to the o-zone hole being to โ€œwear sunscreen and a baseball hat.โ€

It is this is the type of shortsightedness you would expect from an oil-money backed โ€œthinkโ€ tank like the NCPA and Burnett whose most recent claim to fame was comparing Al Gore to the Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

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Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a โ€œGreen Heroโ€ by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the โ€œTop 50 Tweetersโ€ on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevinโ€™s research into the โ€œclimate denial industryโ€ and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Kochโ€™s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea partyย networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a โ€œCertified Expertโ€ on theย political and community organizing platformย NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the worldโ€™s best e-Content and innovative ICTย applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

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