Culture jamming the Esso logo at the entrance to a large station near the Germany-Luxembourg border in Wasserbillig.
This is the company which, apparently, has been "misunderstood"
onglobal warming and in February of this year claimed it had
dropped itsfunding of the deniers.
The
ExxonSecretspeople have gone through the documents, and found a
clear answer: last year Exxon spent US$2.1 million on 41 groups
who are leadingthe climate sceptic industry.
While the company has beenforced to drop the hottest potato of
them all, the CompetitiveEnterprise Institute (CEI) and another
particularly vocal denier, Steve
"Junk Science" Milloy, the rest of them are still on the
payroll.
Likewho? The Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the
George CMarshall Institute, the American Enterprise Institute...
all the groupswho've been at the heart of the climate change denial
industry for morethan a decade.
These include the groups who were listed in a
1998 American Petroleum Institute memo outlining a
communications strategy for taking down the Kyoto Protocol.
So despite its protestations, the company is still running the
sceptic industry. What else is Exxon not telling us?
ExxonSecrets has obtained the company's
Exxon Foundation 2005 report to the IRS.Exxon told the IRS that
that it funded 14 groups specifically for theirclimate change work.
But somehow the company didn't mention this inpublic.
Exxon has always been quick to point out that it justgives these
groups general funding and doesn't tell them what to do orhow to
spend the money.
But giving money to the Frontiers ofFreedom for their "climate
change efforts" seems pretty specific.Especially when those
"efforts" included an eight-page
report dedicated entirely to questioning global warming
science, policy and attacking Al Gore.
"Thetruth is, there is no conclusive or reliable scientific
proof that thesky is falling or that Earth's climate is
experiencing cataclysmicwarming caused by man's activities," says
Frontiers for Freedom. Lastyear Exxon rewarded these efforts with a
US$180,000 grant, up fromUS$80,000 the year before.
Another is the George C MarshallInstitute, whose CEO William
O'Keefe (former American PetroleumInstitute officer and registered
ExxonMobil lobbyist) recently referredto the April 2007 ruling by
the US Supreme Court (that the EPA has theauthority to regulate
carbon dioxide) as "a triumph of judicialactivism…ideology…
political science" by a court that "may have beentoo influenced by
political correctness and climate orthodoxy." The institute got
US$85,000 from Exxon in 2006.
This company hasnow funded the climate change denial industry to
the tune of US$22million since 1998. Last year the UK's
prestigious scientificbody, the Royal
Society,wrote to Exxon asking them to stop funding the groups
who were"misinforming the public about the science of climate
change". Exxonindicated to the Royal Society that they had - and
they would. InFebruary this year Exxon did a big public relations
round of the media,saying it had been "misunderstood" on climate
change and gave the clearindication that it had dropped its funding
of the climate scepticindustry.
"Exxon softens its stance on climate change"screamed the
headlines. But very little has changed, except Exxon's PRmachine.
It's been business as usual at the Dallas HQ, no matter whatthey
said in public.
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