A Message from James M. Taylor, Vice President of External Relations
One of the most important battles in the history of the global warming debate will be fought this December at a United Nations climate conference in Paris. The UN is attempting to impose binding carbon dioxide restrictions on the United States and transfer billions of dollars of climate "reparations" from the United States to nations like Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela.
It’s called COP-21 – the twenty-first meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Heartland Institute is working with other leading think tanks and advocacy groups to make sure our voice – the voice of sound science and economics, of energy consumers and taxpayers in America – is heard.
We need your help us stop the UN and the Obama administration from raising your taxes, increasing your energy costs, and destroying jobs – perhaps your job or those of your children. This short proposal describes our project and asks for your financial support.
What’s at Stake in Paris
If the United States agrees to binding restrictions on our carbon dioxide emissions and payment of reparations to corrupt third-world regimes, the economic consequences will be devastating. Your taxes and energy costs will go up dramatically – by thousands of dollars every year. Job losses will be measured in the millions, and many of those are good-paying jobs in manufacturing that the country, still struggling to emerge from the Great Recession, can ill-afford to lose.
President Barack Obama is leading the charge in this assault on the American economy. Obama told the press last month that the key to any Paris agreement is to ensure the United States is "locked in" to binding restrictions. Obama has made it clear that he sees binding, UN-enforced restrictions on U.S. carbon dioxide emissions as a legacy achievement for the conclusion of his presidency.
Obama is tacitly admitting that if he fails to commit the United States to legally binding restrictions in Paris, the global warming movement will have failed once again to achieve its top objective: a globally binding global warming treaty to replace the now-expired Kyoto Protocol. Whoever succeeds Obama is likely to undo much of the policy and regulations he implemented via executive authority. That is why COP-21 is so important, and why we need to be there.
COP-21 will be raucous, even pandemonious. Developing countries are refusing to embrace caps on their exploding greenhouse gas emissions and insisting developed countries give them $100 billion a year with few or no strings attached. International aid groups are fighting to prevent the diversion of aid from more urgent needs to emission reduction schemes that would have little impact on climate. Real science and economics are being kicked to the curb.
What We Plan to Do in Paris
We plan to send a delegation of scientists and policy experts to Paris to hold a "counter-conference" during COP-21 to demonstrate there is strong and informed opposition to Obama’s plans and to expose the agendas and true costs of the agreement being negotiated there.
We have reserved meeting space and rooms at a hotel in Paris where we will hold a series of media events with scientific experts explaining the compelling evidence that humans are not causing a global warming crisis. We will make our space available to allies being sent by other organizations, such as the Cato Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and Competitive Enterprise Institute. We will live-stream presentations from our meeting space so the whole world will know we are there, even if the mainstream media boycott us.
We expect it will cost approximately $60,000 to send a delegation to Paris and extensively promote our presence there. Our expected costs are:
$24,000 Promotion announcing our presence in Paris
$10,000 Hotel rooms
$10,000 Meeting space
$ 9,000 Airfare
$ 4,500 Ground expenses (meals, transportation)
$ 2,000 Printing and shipping media handouts and publications
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$ 59,500 Total
We Need Your Support!
Going to Paris and making sure our message is heard by world leaders and the global press is not inexpensive, as the budget on the previous page shows. We need your financial support to make this project possible.
Multiple donors are being asked to fund this project. Your gift for part of the total we need to raise would be greatly appreciated, and we will give you frequent updates and a final "wrap-up memo" on the success (or failure... we admit to failure sometimes) of the project.
Contributions are tax-deductible under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The Heartland Institute has more than 6,000 current donors supporting an annual budget of approximately $6 million. Less than 10% of our budget comes from corporations. For more information, please contact James Taylor, vice president for external relations, at 312/377-4000 or by email at jtaylor@heartland.org.