Heartland Weekly – IT’S ON! Heartland’s 12th International Conference on Climate Change

Published January 30, 2017

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The Beginning of the End of EPA
Jay Lehr, Breitbart
President Donald Trump and the Republican leadership in Washington are saying, finally, what millions of people have been thinking for a long time: The Environmental Protection Agency has become the cause of, not the solution to, the nation’s major environmental problems. Heartland’s Jay Lehr, who helped convince President Nixon to create the agency in the 1970s, says it’s time to end EPA. READ MORE

Roadmap for the 21st Century: Social Security and Medicare
Peter Ferrara and Lewis Uhler
The latest addition to the Roadmap for the 21st Century series explores how personal savings and investment accounts could entirely eliminate the unfunded liabilities of Social Security – and eventually Medicare. Authors Peter Ferrara and Lewis Uhler explain why fully funding Social Security through personal savings, investment, and insurance accounts is the only real solution to the problems of the program. READ MORE

IT’S ON! Heartland’s 12th International Conference on Climate Change
The Heartland Institute will host another International Conference on Climate Change – its 12th – in Washington DC on Thursday and Friday, March 23–24, 2017. The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States already is having a profound effect on U.S. climate policy. ICCC-12 is your opportunity to meet the scientists, economists, engineers, and policy experts who persuaded Trump that man-made global warming is not a crisis, and therefore Barack Obama’s war on fossil fuels must be ended. READ MORE

Featured Podcast: Ken Girardin: New York’s Green Energy Overload
Ken Girardin of the Empire Center for Public Policy talks with Environment & Climate News Managing Editor H. Sterling Burnett about the high costs and ineffectiveness of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new green energy mandate. To pay for that plan, New York ratepayers, who already face among the highest electric power costs in the nation, are being forced to pay an additional $500 million for electricity to subsidize the construction of solar farms and the continued operation of three nuclear plants in the state. LISTEN TO MORE

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Parents, Not Government, Should Hold Schools Accountable
Teresa Mull, Virginian Pilot
What happens when DOE workers do not learn from their mistakes and are not eager to improve? Do they go on muddling through sloppy practices, reinforcing bad habits and inflicting the painful outcomes on the rest of us, like a child disinterested in an extracurricular activity for which he or she has no talent? You bet! READ MORE

Radical Environmentalists Are the Real Science-Haters
Rich Trzupek, Townhall
Real scientists would have a much easier time buying the doom and gloom that climate alarmists such as Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt are constantly selling if the environmental movement didn’t have such a miserable record of denying science. Trzupek says he speaks from experience, being a chemist who has spent more than 30 years specializing in air quality issues. READ MORE

States Should Protect Direct-Pay Health Care Models
Michael Hamilton, Consumer Power Report
Lawmakers in several states are preparing to take up legislation protecting private, direct-pay agreements between doctors and patients from market-crushing regulations. They should trust their instincts, passing such protections immediately instead of waiting for cues from Washington, DC, regarding the future of Obamacare. READ MORE

Thousands Celebrate Record-breaking National School Choice Week
Teresa Mull, School Choice Weekly
Another National School Choice Week is winding down, and it’s been a bigger success than ever. The Washington Examiner reported: “More than 6.4 million people are participating in more than 21,000 events this week as part of National School Choice Week. Organizers say it’s the ‘largest series of education-related events’ in the country’s history.” READ MORE

Trump Starts Rolling Back Obama Climate Programs
H. Sterling Burnett, Climate Change Weekly
President Donald Trump is off to a fast start, especially although not solely on energy and environmental issues. Just minutes after Trump took the oath of office, all of former President Obama’s energy and climate pages, including his Climate Action Plan page, were removed from the WhiteHouse.gov website and archived, replaced with a page dedicated to “An America First Energy Plan.” And Trump was just getting started. READ MORE

Bonus Podcast: Isaac Orr: Changes in Energy Leadership and Policy Under the Trump Administration
​Heartland Research Fellow Isaac Orr joins Environment & Climate News Managing Editor H. Sterling Burnett to explore the big changes in energy policy expected under President Trump. His agenda includes removing the barriers to oil, gas, and coal production on public lands instituted by the Obama administration and tapping pro-energy nominees to the departments of Energy and Interior, as well as climate realist Scott Pruitt to lead EPA. LISTEN TO MORE

Grizzlies, Guns, and Games of Gotcha: How the Left Whiffed on Betsy DeVos
Robert Holland, The Hill
Opponents of U.S. Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos repeatedly ripped so-called “controversial” comments out of context. But she did more than hold her own and actually bolstered her well-earned reputation as a smart and accomplished businesswoman who cares deeply about children and the future of education. READ MORE