Waste of the Day: Climate Change Musical

Topline: The National Science Foundation does not usually advance its mission through musical theater, but officials once thought it necessary to spend $697,000 on a play about climate change and biodiversity.

A climate change musical?

The Great Immensity ran for a month in Kansas City in 2012, and then for just one week in New York City in 2014. The NSF funding would be worth $1 million in today’s money.

That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses. 

Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.   

Coburn’s Wastebook 2012 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $18 billion, including the short-lived global warming play.

Key facts: The musical was about a woman searching for her sister who disappeared in the jungle in Panama. Her journey takes her to the Arctic and other ecosystems where she uncovers a “mysterious plot” about an international climate conference in Paris.

Phantom of the Opera it was not. Jeff Tamblyn, a critic at the Kansas City InfoZine, wrote in his review, “I cannot honestly say that I learned anything new about global warming.” He said the educational songs “sounded like a Wikipedia entry set to music” and the audience “spent an evening visibly fighting off sleep.”

Crazy stuff

Rep. Lamar Smith told Fox News in 2014,

I support basic research, which can lead to discoveries that change our world, expand our horizons and save lives. But NSF has funded too many questionable research grants. Spending taxpayer dollars to fund a climate change musical called The Great Immensity sounds more like a waste of taxpayer dollars — money that could have funded higher-priority research.

The musical came up again in 2017 when Mick Mulvaney, then the director of the Office of Management and Budget, cited it as an example of “crazy stuff” funded by the government.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Summary: The government can help fight climate change by supporting scientific inquiry, not singing about it.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.