Oil industry PR firm and neo-con thinktank The Competitive Enterprise Instutute has got a new campaign out that’s sure to help convert all those tree-huggin’ hippies into reasonable, complacent oil consumers in no time at all - They’ve even got a video campaign, complete with a snappy catch phrase:

CO2: We Call It Life

In a move that’s sure to leave thousands of comedy sketch writers across the nation jobless and stunned, they are actually trying to spin global warming and CO2 emissions as a positive thing. Apparently, playing dumb and releasing contradictory pseudo-science just isn’t cutting the cheese anymore with the world community - Now they’ve moved directly on to outright lies:

What don’t scientists know yet?

Scientists do not agree on whether: (1) we know enough to ascribe past temperature changes to carbon dioxide levels; (2) we have enough data to confidently predict future temperature levels; and (3) at what level temperature change might be more damaging than beneficial to life on Earth.

For a little more background on this happy fun-time organization and their neo-liberal agenda, check out the CEI Sourcewatch profile.

And don’t forget:

We believe that where individual property rights exist in environmental resources, the environment is most likely to be protected, and that market institutions more effectively allow for the realization of environmental values than political agencies and bureaucracies.

Because, as history has so clearly demonstrated, corporations love nothing more than to be the voluntary steward of our environment - In fact, I think economists have even come up with a word for how strongly they feel about this: Externality.