Tom Friedman and Climate Change at GW

This past Thursday, January 21 2009, George Washington University hosted New York Times columnist, author, and climate change evangel, Thomas Friedman to discuss his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded at GW’s Lisner Auditorium.

As GW Young America’s Foundation has documented earlier this academic year, our university has a scary history of attempting to indoctrinate its students with “climate change crisis.” From strongly recommending freshmen to read Friedman’s book, to hosting the environmentalist speakers, to ‘going green initiatives,” it is quite clear that there is no room for debate on this issue.

We at GW Young America’s Foundation believe that it is not the university’s role to mold students into climate change evangels, but rather to educate the student on both sides of the issues, so that the student may develop critical thinking skills and thus draw their own conclusions. Therefore, our group held a “global warming beach party in front of auditorium, to protest GW’s indoctrination attempts, and the economic impacts of cap and trade.

Man-made climate change is not a scientific fact, it may be true, it may not. Friedman admitted this during his lecture, and even said there might only be a ‘” one percent chance that man made climate change is occurring and going have catastrophic consequences.” This argument is quite frightening when considering the economic impacts of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a.k.a. the Waxman- Markey Bill, a.k.a. Cap and Trade, which passed the House this past June but still needs to reach the Senate floor. The Heritage Foundation estimates that if the bill gets signed into law, over 400,000 manufacturing jobs will be lost, in time of nearly 10% unemployment, this is would catastrophic for our economy. We must ask ourselves is worth crippling our economy for something that there is quite possibly only a “one percent” chance of reversing? I would certainly argue no, and I assume the 1.1 million Americans who will lose their jobs by 2035 due to the implications of the bill would agree.

Sam K. Theodosopoulos is the Editor-at-Large of the GW YAF Blog.