Short post, big news.
Interesting
General Motors, the world’s largest carmaker, has confirmed that it is pulling funding from the Heartland Institute, an ultra-conservative thinktank known for its scepticism about climate change.
The decision by the GM Foundation to halt its support for Heartland after 20 years underlines the new image the carmaker is seeking to project as part of its social responsibility programme. In the past GM has itself been associated with efforts to discredit climate change science, but in recent years it has been investing heavily in green technologies and cars including the electric/petrol hybrid, the Chevy Volt.
More over the Orange Cloud of Free Radicals™
I must say, I do like the tone of the following blurb.
In a statement, GM said that it now runs its business “as if climate change is real and believe we have a role to play in developing new cars, trucks and technologies that can make a difference”.
Now, the funding cut, as mentioned in the last bit I can excise from the posting under Fair Use stuff, is that the amount of money they provided to the Heart
lessland Institute was minuscule but it is
the prinicale of the thing that is the news here:
The funding cut – just $15,000 a year – is small beer for the institute, which has a multi-million dollar turnover, largely from a single anonymous donor. But it is a blow to the standing of the thinktank and to the leading role it plays as an advocate of climate change scepticism.
A company the size of GM is essentially saying it BELIEVES what most of us know/believe about climate change/global warming.
The article goes on to report the Heartlan Insitute weasely whiny complaint about "Greenpeace" and others "attacking scientists" who 'question' scientists who question globalwarming science. Not that that is any sort of a surprise. Go read it all.
I am always aggressively dogging "Big Corporations" for being heartlessly focused on the bottom line and this would seem to be a case in which I can feel relatively good that there was something GOOD done by one of "them".