An Environmental Protection Agency memo sent to top officials in 2009 proposes that the agency should focus on issues that personally worry Americans in order to increase support for its fight against climate change, the Daily Caller reported.
"Polar ice caps and the polar bears have become the climate change 'mascots,' if you will, and personify the challenges we have in making this issue real for many Americans," the memo, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, reads.
"Most Americans will never see a polar ice cap, nor will most have the chance to see a polar bear in its natural habitat. Therefore, it is easy to detach from the seriousness of this issue. Unfortunately, climate change in the abstract is an increasingly - and consistently - unpersuasive argument to make."
"However, if we shift from making this about the polar caps and about our neighbor with respiratory illness we can potentially bring this issue home to many Americans. There will be many opportunities to discuss climate-related efforts this year. As we do so, we must allow the human health argument to take center stage."
A Pew Research poll from September 2014 found that while most Americans, 48 percent, believe climate change is a major threat, concerns about the Islamic State group, Iran's nuclear program and North Korea's nuclear program still far surpassed environmental concerns. A 2013 international survey conducted by Pew in 39 countries found that Americans were some of the least concerned about climate change threatening their country.
The EPA memo was obtained by Chris Horner, attorney and senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and goes on to suggest that children could also be used to "hook" Americans into caring about the agency's mission to fight climate change and other environmental risks.
"There will be several opportunities to show leadership and initiative in this area. This is critical not just because this subject was given short-shrift by the previous administration, but also because it is good policy," the memo said. "This justifies our work at the most base level. By revitalizing our own Children's Health Office, leading the global charge on this issue, and highlighting the children's health dimension to all of our major initiatives - we will also make this issue real for many Americans who otherwise would oppose many of our regulatory actions."
Horner told the Daily Caller that the memo shows "the recognition that EPA needed to move its global warming campaign away from the failed global model of discredited Big Green pressure groups and their icons."
"In it, we see the birth of the breathtakingly disingenuous 'shift from making this about the polar caps [to] about our neighbor with respiratory illness,'" Horner said. "It also shows the conviction that if they yell 'clean air' and 'children' enough, they, the media and the green groups will get their way."
