When General Motors CEO Dan Akerson was questioned as to why General Motors — or rather, The GM Foundation — funded $15,000 in 2009 and again in 2010 to the Heartland Institute, a controversial group that holds an extreme opposing view on climate change, he simply stated the following:
“This [donation to the Heartland Institute] is $15,000 that was committed to before I came in. I also think the Heartland Institute, I’m told, does other things and I find this interesting. I won’t go any further but I’m gonna take another look at it when I get back to Detroit and I’ll leave it at that.”
He did. And at the same time, Forecast the Facts, an advocacy group focused on spreading the accepted belief of climate change, collected more than 20,000 signatures — 10,000 of them from GM car owners — insisting that the automaker to discontinue its funding to Heartland. Lo and behold, Heartland most likely won’t receive another dime from The General.
To clear the air on some shoddy reporting, it’s not that Heartland dismisses global climate change, it’s just that the organization is not parallel with Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth.
Heartland is not stating that mankind’s use of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases doesn’t produce global warming or have not in the past, but rather they claim to say it’s a multitude of things beyond or perhaps greater than CO2 emissions. The organization points to alternative beliefs in that the earth’s rise in temperature through the past century has more to do with natural and cosmic factors over the belief that  man-made greenhouse gases are primarily throwing everything out of whack.
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And…there lands the last straw on the camel’s back. GM, we must part now; perhaps forever. I had almost brought myself to accept the bailout and your ownership by the government and unions because I really, really like the Chevy Cruze. But now that you combine those issues with your CEO’s open support for “man made climate change/global warming”, which will naturally follow with financial support to a group opposite of Heartland, you’ve lost me. Bill Ford may be a lefty environmentalist, but at least Ford remained a private company that didn’t need/take handouts. Ford Focus, here I come.
So, you’re willing to write off a multi-billion dollar corporation because of how they choose to spend $30k? Sounds like your mind was made up and now you found a new excuse – especially since you threw in a bailout jab that is completely unrelated to the topic.
Wise move GM. As the public becomes more aware of the distinct advantages offered by science, they will gravitate towards those organizations that uphold and understand it.
Keep defunding anti-science organizations; leave them to die of denial and ignorance. If the Heartland wishes to keep inflating their idealized 1960’s vision of America, and to do so at the expense of the very envrioment that America physically stands upon, then they leave themselves open to judgment from future generations.
I’m glad GM has defunded the Soviet-style science that the Heartland advocates for: that science is only worth pursuing if it serves to preserve the statue quo or meets the aims of a ‘mission statement’.
Science, real science, holds is that all knowledge is worth pursing reguardless; even if it leads to findings that are grim, unfavourable, ugly, or even seen as a threat to our world. You can’t shun or dismiss a field of science becasue you ‘personally’ don’t like its findings, or you think it will damage a nation’s GDP.
I mean, America is more than just it’s GDP, isn’t it?
GM can redeem itself, not overnight, but over time. The Heatland mistake will be behind GM eventually, and GM will continue to make cars that the public demands; the public that demanded for more fuel efficient and enviromentally sound cars….because the public listened to the scientists and not the Heartland Institute.
You know that Heartland isn’t dismissive of the fact that the earth is in fact warming up, right?
Don’t we all agree that the earth is warming up? I think the only difference is WHY it is warming up and what to do about it, which would depend on why.
I don’t really side myself with any one political party because I think they all suck, the just suck in different ways. I also have no idea WHY the earth is warming up. I try to read all the studies and science based stuff (as opposed to the 2012 The World Will End stuff or the biblical based arguments) but it is really hard to decipher it all as a non-scientist. Then all us lay people end up only reading the headlines, and I think headlines are written for shock value instead of real information.
I don’t want to get into serious debate about this but I did think it was kind of funny that I said last week I would not by a Ford because my first one sucked but then here we are talking about not buying a GM because of were they spent $15,000. I wonder who they give their biggest contributions too and where that might seem to lean their politics.
Just one of those things that makes you go: Hmmmm……… ;^)
You needn’t bother, Manoli. Grawdaddy clearly worships at the alter of “climate change”, and hasn’t bothered to really look at what Heartland does or says. Dan Akerson probably thinks the same way as Grawdaddy, which is why no matter how much I like a GM vehicle now I won’t purchase one. I’m not going to put money in that man’s pocket. “Global Warming” isn’t an environmental issue, it is a political one. That’s why Dan shouldn’t have kept his politics to himself.
To bad the CEO at GM is buying into the liberal hoax. I no longer have respect for him. He is just kissing the donkeys behind.
How so, great conspiracy theorist? 🙂