Dear Friends—
The Heartland Institute—a main climate-denial front group—chose an interesting day to put up billboards around Chicago in advance of their next meeting.
This morning—even as the first actions of Connect the Dots day were taking place in the Pacific—they unveiled the signs, which have big pictures of Ted Kacynzki and Charles Manson, two convicted mass murderers, with the question: “I Still Believe in Global Warming, Do You?”
The message couldn’t be clearer—anyone who’s worried about climate change is abnormal, weird, sick, twisted.
So our message back need to be just as clear and firm: in fact, its normal people around the world who are engaged in the fight against climate change. Some are famous—the pope, the Dalai Lama, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church—but most of us are just ordinary citizens. And we’re worried about climate change because we can see what’s going on around us with our own eyes.
The industry is terrified to talk about extreme weather that has led a big majority of Americans to back action on climate change, and they are terrified of the beautiful movement that is growing all across this country. That’s why groups like the Heartland Institute are so desperate—that’s why they’re insisting that it’s serial killers and not scientists and citizens who care about climate change.
We have no idea why companies like Microsoft continue to support the Heartland Institute, and you can sign a petition here letting them know it’s a bad idea to encourage this kind of hatred. But the most important thing you can do is turn out everyone you know for tomorrow’s day of action.
Citizens like us taking action in our communities may be the only way that we can fight back against an industry with so much money and ill-will at their disposal. This weekend we can show the real face of climate change – both the impacts that are already roiling our world, but also the people who are taking action to stop it.
They’re getting desperate, which is a good sign.
–Bill McKibben
More Info and Links
- Heartland Institute compares belief in global warming to mass murder | Leo Hickman | Environment | guardian.co.uk go.350.org/IJLNlA