Last week, Rep. Matt Salmon (AZ-05) introduced a bill to eliminate federal funding for the NSF PoLAR Project. The bill is the fifth bill in his Shrink our Spending Initiative.
The Polar Learning and Responding (PoLAR) Climate Change Education Partnership is funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation. The PoLAR initiative “seeks to inform public understanding of and response to climate change through the creation of novel educational approaches…” These “novel educational approaches” include a “collaborative game” set in an alternative world where fictional voicemails have been transported back in time allowing people to listen in on what Earthlings from the future say about the climate. In the most recent appropriations legislation, $5,700,000 was allocated towards this program.
“If there were one thing the National Science Foundation should be great at, you’d expect it to be furthering the frontiers of science. Instead, it’s wasting your tax dollars on ‘educational programs.’ Take the ‘Polar Learning and Responding Climate Change Education Partnership’ for example, where the NSF spends its money on ‘novel educational approaches.’ As if this program’s senseless waste wasn’t bad enough, it’s an indirect copy of another frivolous NSF grant, the Antarctic Artists and Writers Program—a program I tried to defund last year,” stated Salmon.
“Although the $5,700,000 price tag is a small portion of our nation’s debt,” said Salmon, “it would be hard to justify wasting tax dollars in any fiscal climate under the guise of the NSF’s noble mission to: ‘promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; [and] to secure the national defense…’”