Americans trust their doctors, so the White House wants these medical professionals to be a mouthpiece for President Obama’s global warming agenda.
“We also need doctors, nurses and citizens, like all of you”President Obama said in a taped speech presented to medical professionals gathered at the White House, “to get to work to raise awareness and organize folks for real change.”
The Obama administration has been hard at work trying to draw a link between global warming and public health issues. The summit included the U.S. Surgeon General, top administration officials, and public health experts from around the country telling doctors, nurses and other conference goers how to talk about global warming with their patients.
The central message: doctors should warn their patients that global warming could make their health worse.
“I know we have people all around the country, in all of the regions, who are also listening to this conversation, and like all of you in the room, I hope will go out and continue to talk and educate,” echoed Nicole Lurie, assistant secretary for Preparedness and Response at the Health Department.
“We need to engage medical students themselves,” said Vice Admiral Vivek Murthy, the U.S. Surgeon General, “to demand the curriculum change” to prepare them for a warmer future.
Speakers at the White House summit didn’t just tell doctors to go out and raise awareness about global warming, but to also promote the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda aimed at cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
“We need people, proponents, to talk about it. Make sure that the public is informed,” said Texas Democratic Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. “Stand behind the EPA, because they’re attacked every day, all day by many committees.”
Rep. Johnson is referring to EPA rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants — a regulation that has come under fire from Republicans and industries for threatening to raise energy prices and cause job losses.
The conference was also met with two conveniently-timed reports by the EPA and environmentalists highlighting how global warming could exacerbate public health problems. One of these studies, put out by the EPA, claimed that “climate change is projected to worsen air quality across large regions of the U.S.” which will exacerbate things like asthma problems, especially among children.
The other study by the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change claimed man-made warming could undo half a century of progress on improving global health. The Commission claims that warming will cause “increased heat stress, floods, drought, and increased frequency of intense storms, with the indirect threatening population health through adverse changes in air pollution, the spread of disease vectors, food insecurity and undernutrition, displacement, and mental ill health.”
The Commission’s report funding included support from the ClimateWorks Foundation and the European Climate Foundation — organizations that fund environmental groups and projects aimed at tackling global warming.
Critics of the White House summit argued the event highlighted the collusion between the Obama administration and activist groups. The pro-business Center for Regulatory Solutions (CRS) called out the White house for teaming up with the American Lung Association (ALA) to promote the tenuous link between global warming and public health.
“The involvement of the ALA in promoting and organizing today’s White House summit on climate change and health is yet another sign that the Obama administration has been co-opted by outside pressure groups, and has politicized the EPA’s decision-making process,” wrote Karen Kerrigan, president of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council — the parent group for CRS.
ALA employees featured prominently in the White House’s climate summit. ALA’s CEO was even invited to the White House to sit on a panel during the event. Another ALA activist, Susan Kiser, was invited to participate in a satellite conference at Ohio State University where she sat on a panel with other high-level Obama administration officials.
“If the facts came even close to supporting the EPA’s economically destructive plans, then Obama officials and their political allies in the environmental community would not need to carefully stage manage events like today’s so-called summit, or use other deceptive tactics to manufacture the appearance of public support for their actions,” Kerrigan wrote.
The ALA did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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