Featured in former Senator Tom Coburn’s 2012 Wastebook, the National Science Foundation (NSF) spent $697,177 to create a climate change and biodiversity musical.
According to the report, one reviewer said this of the play, “[Character dialogue is] heavy-handedly laced with facts that easily could’ve been cribbed from the Wikipedia entry on [climate change]…In fact, many of the songs (I’m not kidding about this) sounded like a Wikipedia entry set to music.” In addition the reviewer also said, “the audience…spent an evening visibly fighting off sleep.”
However, don’t sleep until the end of this story! Shortly after the 2012 entry in Coburn’s Wastebook, the NSF cancelled the musical.
While there is a lot of debate and disagreement with the decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate agreement, most of us can agree that $700,000 to conduct a play about biodiversity and climate change is a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Check out all of the Wastebook and oversight reports here!
