The Heartland Institute

The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking. Founded in 1984, it worked with tobacco company Philip Morris throughout the 1990s to attempt to discredit the health risks of secondhand smoke and lobby against smoking bans. Since the 2000s, the Heartland Institute has been a leading promoter of climate change denial. History The institute was founded in 1984 by Chicago investor David H. Padden, who served as the organization's chairman until 1995. Padden had been a director of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., since its founding as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974. Padden was also a former director of Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Acton Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, and the Center for Libertarian Studies. At age 26, Joseph L. Bast became Heartland's first employee. Bast's wife Diane, was Heartland's publications director. In the 1990s, Heartland worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question serious cancer risks from secondhand smoke, and to lobby against government public-health regulations. Starting in 2008, Heartland has organized conferences to question the scientific consensus on climate change.