By Kert Davies, crossposted from Climate Investigations Center
Q: What does spending tens of millions of dollars supporting climate denial organizations over a twenty year period buy you?
A: Donald Trump, abdication of U.S. leadership on climate and increased risk of damage from climate change.
The Washington Postโs Bob OโHarrow just penned the most complete treatment to date on what has happened over the past year and the past twenty years starting in 1997, resulting in the June 2017 Rose Garden party to ditch the Paris Climate Agreement. This story contains a sequence of key events and history, ending in the Trump White House.
This story boils down to the legacy of climate denial funding by ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers, coal companies and conservative foundations, which has supported and paid for the salaries, campaigns, programs and rent at dozens of non-profit organizations who have opposed sensible climate policy.
See ExxonSecrets for Exxonโs funders. See DeSmogโs Disinformation Database for more up to date funding data.
Brand new reporting in this piece:
- The 1997 ExxonMobil Foundation report showing a grant for $95,000 for โGlobal Climate Change Program and other supportโ This document was recovered by Climate Investigations Center from the University of Texas Exxon archives. It is significant because the previous grants to CEI were only $5-10,000/year. 1997 was a crux year for climate policy with the Kyoto Protocol on the horizon. In subsequent years, 1997-2005, Exxon dropped $2.1million into CEIโs bank account.
1997 Exxon Education Foundation report identifying $95,000 climate change grant to Competitive Enterprise Institute, the year the Cooler Heads Coalition was formed.
- New April 18 email from Myron Ebell reveals a White House briefing this spring that may have helped convince Trump to dismiss the advice of Secretary of State Tillerson, dozens of major corporations and his daughter Ivanka:
This spring, he leveraged those connections to arrange a White House briefing in opposition to the Paris agreement, according to an email from Ebell to participants that was obtained by The Post.
โThank you for agreeing to be part of the basket of deplorables,โ he wrote in an April 18 email. โThe purpose of the meeting is to present our views on why President Trump should keep his campaign commitment to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty.โ
- They knew exactly what they are doing:
โOne former Cooler Heads member, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of a punitive backlash, said the coalitionโs mission under Ebell was to be a โJohnny-on-the-spot for climate denialismโ and to simulate a โcacophony of voicesโ against climate-change science.โ
- Newly revealed document from tobacco documents shows Myron Ebellโs former employer and current ally, Frontiers of Freedom, in pay to play mode for Big Tobacco:
In a funding proposal to Philip Morris, Frontiers suggested a complex influence campaign in support of tobacco. The plan foreshadowed some of the tactics that Cooler Heads members would soon employ.
Frontiers could โplay a substantial roleโ in a campaign aimed at making it politically easier for lawmakers to thwart new tobacco taxes, the proposal said. It would โeducate and motivate grassroots activistsโ to change the โpolitical dynamics,โ making it โpolitically possible for key legislators to block any legislative initiative.โ
โThe campaign proposed is, essentially, an issue-driven political campaign,โ the document said.
- Murray Coal admits paying CEI for services in defense of coal. These grants to CEI are not meant to be public. An rare complete CEI IRS Form 990 provided to the Washington Post resulted in this first ever acknowledgement by Murray Coal of its support for CEI:
โSupporters included one of the Obama administrationโs prime targets: big coal. A 2009 IRS filing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute โ inadvertently made public without redactions โ disclosed funding from two coal mining companies. Ohio-based Murray Energy donated $90,000, and Richmond-based Massey Energy gave $100,000.
In a statement to The Post, a Murray Energy spokesman said the company provided annual support to CEI โin order to advance their principles of โlimited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty.โ โ
โIndeed, for eight years the Obama Administration severely undermined these principles, in its effort to completely destroy the United States coal industry,โ the statement said. โThe Competitive Enterprise Institute was effective in advocating against this destruction, and in supporting preservation of coal jobs and family livelihoods, and low-cost, reliable electricity for all Americans.โโ
- Ebell was โmystifiedโ at being selected to run Trumpโs transition team:
The call to Ebell from the Trump campaign came in late August 2016. Ron Nicol, a business consultant leading the team preparing for a possible transition, left a voice mail saying he wanted Ebell to consider serving as transition chief at the EPA.
Ebell told The Post he was mystified. He had never served in the federal bureaucracy and Trump was not his favored candidate. โWhy do you want me?โ he asked when he returned Nicolโs call.
Ebell said the answer was direct. Trump wanted to abolish the EPA, and so did Ebell. Ebellโs singular focus on the agency and global warming also was in tight alignment with the views of Scott Pruitt, the man who would soon lead the EPA.
- The signatories to a May letter to Trump demanding the President kill the Paris Agreement were the people who filled the Rose Garden event. No corporate or trade association representatives made their presence known. The crowd was largely composed of organizations currently supported by the Koch brothers, coal companies, the Mercer family (major Trump and Bannon/Brietbart supporters) and other conservative, โfree marketโ and libertarian foundations.
On the morning of June 1, Ebell got an email from the White House. He was told that he and all those who signed the May 8 letter were invited to Trumpโs Rose Garden announcement.
(Emphasis added to quotes from Washington Post)
Image credit: The Ring of Fire
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