How Prosperity Saves the Planet – CFACT at YALCON 2018!

CFACT Interns pose with their activism signs and costumes as they reach out to event attendees about Paul Driessen’s speech.

What if prosperity through free market capitalism actually helped save the Earth, rather than destroy it?

That’s the question that CFACT posed to the hundreds of students attending the Young Americans for Liberty national conference in Reston Virginia. With dynamic and unique “CFACT-style” activism, CFACT’s collegians helped spread the word about a discussion hosted by CFACT Policy Adviser Paul Driessen on “How Prosperity Saves the Planet.”

Princeton physicist Dr. Will Happer poses with CFACT intern Emily Lewis while she wears a dinosaur mask and holds a sign proclaiming “My Fossils Save the Planet.”

CFACT Collegians staff and the college students interning with CFACT this summer handed out flyers about the event wearing eye-grabbing costumes to get attendees’ attention and to spark a conversation. Intern Emily Lewis even ran into Princeton physicist and prominent climate change realist Dr. Will Happer, who gladly posed with Emily for a picture while she was wearing a dinosaur mask and holding a sign proclaiming “My Fossils Save the Planet.”

“I thought Paul’s style of interacting with the students really drove debate and interaction,” remarked Grayson Murray, a CFACT intern at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

CFACT Senior Policy Adviser Paul Driessen discusses the issues with students after finishing his talk at YALcon 2018.

Driessen’s signature line of the talk, which drew strong applause from the entire audience was, “The way these eco-imperialists, as I like to call them, are preventing the developing world from obtaining reliable electricity and air conditioning and malaria fighting tools is racist. There is no way around it, it is flat out racist.”

Driessen was referring to many comments on the Left saying that the rest of the world cannot live like Americans, and preventing places like Africa from using DDT to stop the spread of malaria from mosquitoes.

CFACT Staff and interns pose with Paul Driessen after concluding his talk at YALcon 2018.

“This was a conversation that needed to be had,” said CFACT Collegians Director Adam Houser. “The Left, and frankly almost all of the news media constantly talk about how capitalism is slowly killing the Earth. But data shows the most developed nations are those that have the infrastructure in place to manage their trash and recycling and emissions appropriately.”

Approximately 60 students attended Driessen’s talk. It will be an excellent catalyst to campus activism and bringing the sound facts on the environment to schools around the country this upcoming fall semester.