The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update

Issues in the News

1. GLOBAL WARMING

The UK’s Channel 4 prepares to air The Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary which challenges assumptions about man-made climate change.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Iain Murray on the threat of “eco-censorship” in the global warming debate: 

“[T]oday, there appears to be a band of scientists and agitators who are willing to use the methods of Galileo’s persecutors to protect their own cherished theories. In the field of climate science, some people want to declare the scientific debate closed, allowing only those public statements that advance the approved idea that global warming is occurring, that man is responsible for it, and that it will probably be catastrophic unless greenhouse gas emissions are drastically curbed.”

2. AUTOMOBILITY

Civil rights activists, politicians and others mark the anniversary of the 1965 march on Selma, Alabama.

CEI Experts Available to Comment: General Counsel Sam Kazman on how private car ownership contributed to the struggle for civil rights: 

“The Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 began when Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. The boycott was a lengthy affair, marked by violence and the focus of national attention. But few people today realize that one major factor in the ultimate success of the boycott was the fact that its participants had access to cars. Here you had a government-regulated, segregated bus monopoly, and the way people got around that was to organize car pools and church van pools. Had it not been for the car, the bus boycott, which lasted for a whole year, would very likely have broken down.”

3. ENVIRONMENT

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service holds a hearing to discuss listing the polar bear as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act.

CEI Experts Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on the polar bear meltdown:

“[Recently] the Bush administration proposed to list the polar bear as ‘threatened’ under the Endangered Species Act. It’s a futile gesture that only signals a weakening in the Bush administration’s heretofore strong stance against global warming hysteria.”