A Sad Story

As you may have read elsewhere (go here, or here, or here, or here, for example), on Wednesday afternoon the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a D.C.-based think-tank, held a press conference to announce its release of two new commercials.

National Center Policy Analyst Ryan Balis (with NCPPR’s Peyton Knight, who took the photo above; that’s CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis speaking, with CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman seated next to him) attended and filed this report:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute launched its “Global Warming Ad Campaign” Wednesday afternoon at The National Press Club. The campaign features two 60-second television advertisements to counter global warming alarmism that will air in 14 major U.S. cities beginning May 18.

The ads’ timing comes just before the May 24th release of former Vice President Al Gore’s documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth.” The film reportedly warns of a coming climate crisis due to atmospheric build-up of man-made greenhouse gases, namely, carbon dioxide.

The advertisements say that the global warming alarmists’ regulatory campaign to forcibly restrict energy use mislabels carbon dioxide as a global warming pollutant and misses how essential it is for human life and economic prosperity. “Carbon Dioxide: They call it pollution; we call it life,” both ads end in saying.

At the press conference, CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis elaborated on the ads’ underlying point of the economic and quality of life benefits of a mechanized civilization. “Each of us, every day, is visibly or invisibly assisted by the human labor equivalent of about 300 servants due to this fossil fuel-based civilization,” said Lewis.

Energy-rich countries populated by machines, such as America and those in Western Europe, are not contrary to human welfare, argued Lewis. It is the reason why most people living in such countries have been “freed… of a life of back-breaking drudgery” and “one reason why the world has grown beyond slavery and serfdom,” he added.

Critics at RealClimate.com had this to say; CEI’s Iain Murray replied to that criticism on CEI’s blog.

Note: Post corrected to reflect the fact that Peyton Knight, not Ryan Balis, took the photograph.



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