ExxonMobil funding climate sceptics

The world's biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups that continue to question the cause and effects of global warming.

The Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics (LSE) claims ExxonMobil has reneged on a promise to end financial support to the groups.

It also claims a conference of climate change sceptics in Washington, recently attended by Australian Family First Senator Stephen Fielding, was sponsored by one of the groups that received funding from the oil giant.

A policy director at the LSE, Bob Ward, first wrote to ExxonMobil in 2006, concerned about the financial support the company provided to climate change sceptics.

Last year the world's biggest oil company told the LSE's climate change institute it would discontinue funding several public policy groups whose position on climate change could "divert attention from the important discussion on how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner".

Three years later, Mr Ward says Exxon has reneged on that promise.

"They have stopped funding for a number of the groups that have been denying climate change but they haven't stopped funding them all. Yet they have been telling people that they have stopped all that funding," Mr Ward said.

"So I think they should either own up that they are continuing funding for some of these groups or they should keep their promise."

He says some of the groups are getting several hundred thousand dollars a year.

"Two of the main organisations are the Heritage Foundation and something called the Atlas Economic Foundation," Mr Ward said.

"Now the reason I single them out is that they have been sponsors of a recent conference of so-called sceptics which took place in Washington, and that is mostly a gathering of lobbyists and other people who reject the evidence on climate change.

"Of course it was also the conference which Senator Fielding recently attended.

"So I am not sure whether people are aware that those people that he went to talk to, at least some of them are getting funding directly from the oil industry."

Speaking from Dallas Texas, ExxonMobil spokesman Rob Young says his company's position has been distorted.

"We fund a range of organisations interested in the public debate. Their views and what they want to say is entirely up to them. It is not that they speak for us or that we in fact control their views," he said.

"We are funding people on all sides of that debate. We fund the Brookings Institution."

Mr Ward says those organisations are not informing the public about climate change.

"They are trying to mislead people and frankly we have seen these sorts of tactics before, for instance in the case of the tobacco industry, who for many, many years, funded campaigns and misinformation about the adverse effects of their products," he said.

"This seems to be a similar situation in which a commercial company is funding misinformation campaigns because there is abundant evidence that their products are having an adverse effect."

Mr Ward says he is still waiting for a response to the latest letter he sent ExxonMobil back in May.

... read original article
Fri 3rd July 2009 - 07:45am