Joseph Bast
| Joseph Lee Bast | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 22, 1958 Kimberly, Wisconsin |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Executive |
Joseph Lee Bast is an American businessman and author. He is the co-founder, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute.
Biography
Bast was born on January 22, 1958 in Kimberly, Wisconsin where he attended a Catholic elementary school.[1] He studied economics at the University of Chicago but left before receiving a degree in order to devote more time to the Heartland Institute, which had become "a 60-hour-a-week obsession."[1] Bast married Diane Bast, who grew up with him in Kimberly.[2]
In 1984 Bast co-founded the libertarian think tank, the Heartland Institute.[3] He began the role of president and CEO in 1994.[4] "Personally, I'm a fallen-away libertarian. I place a high value on individual freedom and I tend to look at most issues from that perspective. But I'm not sure it is the only way anymore," Blast told the Chicago Tribune in 1995.[5]
A 2011 article in Nature criticized his position on global warming and second-hand smoke.[3] He was one of the editors of the NIPCC 2011 interim report "Climate Change Reconsidered."[6] He was also involved in the creation of the State Policy Network, and has written several books, some of which challenge mainstream claims about cigarette smoking.[7] In 2014, he co-authored an article entitled "The Myth of the Climate Change '97%'" in the Wall Street Journal along with Roy Spencer which argued that the oft-cited claim that "97% of the world's scientists believe climate change is an urgent problem" is misleading because the figure is derived from surveys with small sample sizes, and the questionaire conflates belief in negligible global warming with belief in dangerous global warming.[8]
According to a Nature profile, "Bast's personal story offers a window on the political upheaval taking place in the United States and how it is helping global-warming skeptics to win over some sectors of the public."[9]
Bast was a member of the board of directors of Shimer College, a Great Books and liberal arts college in Chicago.[10]
Publications
Bast is the author and editor of 21 books on the topics of school reform, health care, and free-market environmentalism.[11]
These include:
- Eco-Sanity: A Common-sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994), which argues that the environmental movement has become a victim of its own success.[12]
- Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America's Schools (2003), which contends that profits and losses would provide valuable information to the education sector.[13]
- Rewards: How to use rewards to help children learn – and why teachers don't use them well (2014), which asserts that the public education system should embrace rewards to spur student achievement.[14][15]
- Why We Spend Too Much on Health Care...and What We Can Do About It (1993), which claims health care costs are rising through medical regulation, insurance mandates, price controls, and occupational licensing.[16]
- Bast, Joseph L (2006). Please Don't Poop in My Salad. Chicago: The Heartland Institute. ISBN 0978695909.
- Bast, Joseph L.; Gilder, George; Gilroy, Leonard; Glans, Matthew; Haney, Hance; Lehrer, Eli; Moore, Adrian; Stanek, Steve; Vedder, Richard; Walberg, Herbert J. (October 1, 2010). The Patriot's Toolbox: Eighty Principles for Restoring Our Freedom and Prosperity (PDF). The Heartland Institute. ISBN 1934791334.
Work at The Heartland Institute
As president of The Heartland Institute, Bast manages the Institute's finances, helps organize and introduce its annual conference on climate change, and sets its research and communications agenda.[17][18]
Bast and his wife Diane publish six monthly public policy newspapers that are distributed to elected officials on issues such as school reform, climate, and healthcare.[19]
Bast told Bloomberg News that The Heartland Institute does not deny climate change, but they are skeptical of the scientific consensus that man-made global warming is a significant danger to the planet. The Heartland Institute also believes that many of the policies to fight global warming would be damaging to the economy.[20]
Bast is also a regular speaker at The Heartland Institute's annual conference on climate change.[21]
In 2012, Bast signed off on a widely-criticized ad campaign that compared global warming believers to the Unabomber. The billboard angered environmentalists and some of the group's supporters.[22]
Bast has also been criticized for defending the tobacco industry and questioning the connection between second hand smoke and cancer.[23]
Position on climate change
According to Nature, Bast does not necessarily deny that humans are having an influence on the climate, but he does question the forecasts of catastrophic impacts and the rationale for curbing carbon emissions.[9] Bast argues that the costs of trying to prevent global warming exceed the benefits.[24]
In a Wall Street Journal interview, Bast said:
We believe that climate has warmed in the second half of the 20th Century, we believe that there is probably a measurable human impact on climate but it's probably very small, we think that natural forces probably overwhelm any impact that human activity can have, that computer models are too unreliable to forecast what the future might hold for climate and finally that a modest amount of warming is probably going to be, on net, beneficial both to human beings and the ecosystem. We think that that's pretty much actually the consensus of working scientist in this area.[25]
According to Bloomberg News, Bast's skepticism of the dangers posed by global warming have made him "a favorite bogeyman of environmentalists." [26] Bast has "raised millions of dollars to mount a systematic attack on mainstream climate science."[27] Environmentalist blogs like DeSmogBlog have been particularly critical of Bast, claiming that he runs an "echo chamber of denialist blogs" that "have been shameless – and stunningly successful – in deflecting responsibility from the institute's own sins." [28]
Awards
Bast has won numerous awards from ideologically aligned organizations for his advocacy work on a variety of issues and was named one of "The 88 to Watch in 1988" by the Chicago Tribune.[29]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 My Eight Years as an Undergraduate
- ↑ Mohr, Michele (8 January 1995). "Think Tanks Affect You More Than You Think". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 28 January 2015.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Tollefson, Jeff (27 July 2011). "Climate-change politics: The sceptic meets his match". Nature 475 (7357): 440–441. doi:10.1038/475440a.
- ↑ Joseph Bast at Polluter Watch
- ↑ Mohr, Michele (January 8, 1995). "Back-yard Think Tanks: Heartland, Rockford Institutes Put Local Spin On National Issues". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved April 7, 2015.
- ↑ "2011 Interim Report" (PDF). Heartland Institute. 2011. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
- ↑ Libit, Daniel (7 July 2014). "Climate skeptics look to prove THEIR skeptics, like Obama, wrong". CNBC. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
- ↑ Bast, Joseph; Spencer, Roy (26 May 2014). "The Myth of the Climate Change '97%'". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2 February 2015.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Tollefson, Jeff (27 July 2011). "Climate-change politics: The sceptic meets his match". Nature. Nature 475. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
- ↑ Isaacs, Deanna (February 25, 2010). "Who's Buying Shimer?". Chicago Reader.
- ↑ "Joseph L. Bast". Retrieved 19 February 2015.
- ↑ Hill, Peter. "Eco-Sanity". Property and Environment Research Center. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
- ↑ Bedrick, Jason. "Who’s Afraid of School Profits?". Cato Institute. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
- ↑ "Joseph Bast discuss his book, "Rewards: How to use rewards to help children learn..". Newsmax TV. February 18, 2015. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ↑ "Rewards". Irish American News. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ↑ Wollstein, Jarret. "Why We Spend Too Much on Health Care and Twenty Myths About National Health Insurance". Foundation for Economic Education. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
- ↑ Goldenberg, Suzanne (May 23, 2012). "Heartland Institute in financial crisis after billboard controversy". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ↑ Gibson, Connor. [VIDEO: Heartland CEO Confronted Over Barre Seid's Funding of IPCC Attacks "VIDEO: Heartland CEO Confronted Over Barre Seid's Funding of IPCC Attacks"]. DeSmogBlog. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ↑ Felsenthal, Carol (June 14, 2012). "Chicago’s Heartland Institute, the Group Behind the Unabomber Billboard". Chicago Mag. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
- ↑ Streep, Abe (July 10, 2014). "In Las Vegas, Climate Change Deniers Regroup, Vow to Keep Doubt Alive". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ↑ Harrabin, Roger (May 21, 2010). "Climate sceptics rally to expose 'myth'". BBC News. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
- ↑ Geman, Ben. "Heartland Institute yanks Unabomber climate billboard". The Hill. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
- ↑ Theel, Shauna. "What A German Climate Denial Rap Tells You About The Heartland Institute". Media Matters. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ↑ Howard, Brian (July 1, 2014). "8 Summer Miseries Made Worse by Global Warming, From Poison Ivy to Allergies". National Geographic. Retrieved 20 February 2015.
- ↑ "The Purloined Climate Papers". The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. February 22, 2012. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ↑ Streep, Abe (July 10, 2014). "In Las Vegas, Climate Change Deniers Regroup, Vow to Keep Doubt Alive". Bloomberg. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
- ↑ Tollefson, Jeff (July 27, 2011). "Climate-change politics: The sceptic meets his match". Nature. Nature 475. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
- ↑ Hoggan, Jim. "Heartland’s Echo Chamber Shifts the Target". DeSmogBlog. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ↑ "Joseph Bast C.V.". The Heartland Institute. Retrieved 23 February 2015.
External links
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