Last winter, ExxonMobil told reporters that it was cutting back on its its funding to groups that challenge the science of global warmings. Jeffrey Ball of The Wall Street Journal and Steven Mufson of The Washington Post, among others, reported that Exxon had since 2005 stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Business Week said: “The oil giant has now closed its cash spigot to some groups challenging global warming.†I wrote a column for CNNMoney suggesting that ExxonMobil had acknowledged the reality of global warming and opened discussions with well-regarded environmental groups, including Resources For the Future.
Well, there’s more to the story. Greenpeace, in a new report, has taken a look at the company’s grants for 2006 and found that ExxonMobil continues to fund a number of groups that it calls “climate deniers.” The Greenpeace analysis says:
We have found that, despite the rhetoric, ExxonMobil continues to fund the majority of the organizations which have been central to the global warming denial campaign the company has run for the past decade or more.
The issue’s complicated, but my first read through the Greenpeace study–it should be posted soon at a website called Expose Exxon–indicates that they have a point. Some of the groups that Greenpeace identifies as climate deniers, like the Cato Institute and the Congress of Racial Equality, have much broader agendas (although I was surprised to learn that, in fact, CORE has been aggressively critical of mainstream climate science) but others seem narrowly focused on confusing the debate over climate change.
One prominent example: The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank with longtime ties to the tobacco industry (a portion of its website defending smoking is called the smoker’s lounge) that now devotes considerable effort to fighting the idea that there’s a scientific consensus around global warming. It publishes a monthly newsletter called Environment and Climate News. Sample headlines: “Fears of Melting Polar Ice Are Discredited,” “Record April Freeze Hits U.S.” (!), “Scientists Urge Gore to Cool His Global Warming Rhetoric,” “When Will We Tire of the Fear Mongers?” You get the idea. XOM gave $115,000 to the Heartland Institute in 2006.
Another group still on Exxon’s support list is the George C. Marshall Institute. When you visit the climate change page of its website, you find such headlines as “Storm Guru: Oceans, Not CO2, Cause Global Warming,” and “Earth’s Climate is Seesawing, According to Climate Reseachers.” The George C. Marshall Institute got $85,000 last year from ExxonMobil.
I’ve not had the time to check out all the groups that XOM has funded–it’s a long list–but the company’s support for these two organizations leads me to conclude that Greenpeace has a valid point when it says ExxonMobil is trying to “spread misinformation about the science and policies of global warming.” It’s akin to the tobacco company efforts in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s to confuse the public about whether cigarettes were addictive or harmful.
So what’s the significance of the Greenpeace study?
First, let me be clear and say that ExxonMobil has the right to finance climate skeptics or climate deniers if it wants to. I don’t belief in stifling debate on this issue, or any issue. When Senators Jay Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe wrote to XON last year, asking the company to end its funding of the climate denial campaign, I thought they were overreaching.
Second, I have to say that I feel a little misled by Ken Cohen, Exxon’s head of public affairs. He did not lie to me, to be sure, but he left me with the strong impression that ExxonMobil was moderating its position on climate change. Now I’m not at all sure about that. I wish the company had been more transparent. Certainly I wish I’d asked a few more followup questions.
Third, more important question than the question who Exxon funds–because they fund dozens of groups, ranging from the Asia Society and the Brookings Institution to Seeds of Peace and Transparency International–is the question of where they stand on carbon regulation. Two big oil companies, BP and ConocoPhillips, have now signed on with the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a corporate-environmental alliance calling for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. (Other members include GE, Caterpillar and Duke Energy. This isn’t a bunch of tree huggers.) Exxon has not.
If ExxonMobil believes that global warming is a serious problem, as Cohen told me early this year and as its op-ed-ads suggest, I’d like to know what the company proposes that we do about it. As we used to say: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Mr. Gunther,
If you wanted to learn about capitalism, would you ask Stalin for source material? If you were a reporter who wanted to write an at-least-nearly-objective article about Judaism, would you go to Joseph Goebbels for your lessons? If you wanted to write about gay rights or contraception, would you look to the Christian Coalition for unbiased information?
I presume the answer to these questions is no, which leads me to wonder why you would to go Greenpeace for information about the global warming debate. Greenpeace is a group that uses “climate deniers†in the way that others talk about “holocaust deniersâ€, implying both the scientific and historical accuracy of their opinion as well as a similar significance of the issue, all of which are false.
Greenpeace is a group which has become so radical that Patrick Moore, a founder of the organization, has abandoned it, noting that Greenpeace and other extremist organizations are anti-science, anti-trade, anti-capitalism, and generally naïve.
As for the Heartland Institute (which I served on the Board of Directors of some years ago), they get less than 5% of their income from the energy industry, unlike Greenpeace which receives millions of dollars from far left wing organizations and recently reported over $18,000,000 in gross income in their most recently published annual report. While I am no long privy to Heartland’s exact financials, I would guess that Greenpeace takes in somewhere between 5 and 10 times the money that Heartland does.
Additionally, one must remember that for global warming alarmists, their mission is some combination of a business and a religion. Anyone who disagrees, or even questions their dogma, is a heretic. It reminds me greatly of the Catholic Church of centuries past refusing to admit that they might be wrong about the sun revolving around the earth, or of others steadfastly believing that the earth is flat. I suppose the first metaphor is more appropriate since the penalty for disagreeing with their dogma was anything from censure to imprisonment to death. There is no doubt in my mind, after hearing these alarmists foam at the mouth, equating “climate change deniers†to holocaust deniers, etc., that they would muzzle and punish us skeptics if they could.
One reason that Heartland and a few other courageous groups go out of their way to deny the existence of a consensus on “global warming†is because there isn’t one. Not only are Al Gore, John McCain, Tony Blair, and the great intellectual Leonardo DiCaprio factually wrong to say that “the debate is overâ€, but their position is very dangerous given that their policy prescriptions amount to aiming a gun at the economic heart of the industrialized world in a quixotic chase for a fraction of a degree over a century.
Heartland, CEI, and those other groups are doing us a great favor by standing up to the enviro-extremists because if they had their way, the entire world (but especially the industrialized world) would suffer tremendously.
As for the US Climate Action Partnership, as a financial reporter you can’t possibly believe that those companies are doing what they’re doing because they believe in global warming as a real threat. No, they are doing it because they see which way the political winds are blowing. It is all about helping design the rules of the next game so they can extract as much extra profit from it as possible. Of course, any former Board member of Heartland such as myself must be a full-blooded capitalist, and I am. But capitalism is based on providing value to customers and creating a mutually beneficial voluntary exchange whereas what these companies are doing is posturing to use government to extract money from taxpayers and redirect it to them. Why do you think Lehman Brothers has jumped in so aggressively? They want to create and rig the market to their benefit, and when you have a government willing to go along with it, it’s hard to blame these companies…but I still do. No, they are not tree-huggers. They are worse than tree huggers, because tree-huggers while often wrong in their policy preferences are at least not hypocrites.
[For an interesting article about a CEO who hasn’t caved in to the political winds, see this article:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010098
And for just one example of many about others speaking out against the widely-spreading cult of global warming alarmism, here’s a good short article from New Zealand:
http://www.stuff.co.nz//timaruherald/4064691a6571.html
If Exxon funds skeptics in this debate, it would be because the risks to their customers and shareholders make it worth that funding. Don’t forget, Al Gore is the guy who wanted to add dollars to gasoline taxes. Greenpeace and friends hate, and I do mean hate, technology and the modern industrialized world. If making fuel so expensive that the economy grinds to a halt is what it takes to achieve their anti-capitalist goals, they are perfectly fine with that. Meanwhile, those of us who would want to buy fuel from Exxon will be paying $5 or $10 per gallon, while the guys at BP who have bought political favor by joining the cult of global warming early on will be siphoning off our tax dollars.
As for “part of the solution or part of the problemâ€, in this case there is a policy in search of a problem. Humans are not likely to be a substantial cause of global warming. CO2 concentrations lag temperature changes rather than leading them. The policy suggestions of Al Gore, Kyoto, the Stern Report, etc., amount to economic suicide. A business reporter should know better than to let a big business like Greenpeace manipulate you into uncritically accepting their marketing.
Mr. Gunther, you should be ashamed of letting Greenpeace use you as a propaganda tool for them. You should be ashamed of your weak attempt to tarnish Heartland’s position on climate change by talking about ties to “the tobacco industryâ€, as if they were somehow related. The only relevant way in which they are related is that Heartland has demonstrated an ability and willingness to stand for liberty and free markets even when they are unpopular.
Heartland and Exxon deserve our thanks, and your readers deserve better than this Greenpeace editorial from someone representing himself as a reporter.
Thanks for your comment. As you expect, I disagree with much of what you say. I especially disagree that I am letting Greenpeace use me as a “propaganda tool.” I looked at the charges that they leveled against ExxonMobil, looked at the groups they identified including the Heartland Institute and independently reached the conclusion that Greenpeace’s allegations had at least some merit and were worth reporting.
Beyond that, I’d argue that one can believe in liberty and free markets and still be concerned about the impact of global warming, which has the potential to destroy both.
I also find it hard to believe, as you suggest. that GE, Wal-Mart, Texas-based oil company Conoco Phillips, Goldman Sachs, Caterpillar and too many other companies to list here are bending with the “political winds” on the climate change issue. Yes, some like GE will benefit by selling eco-friendly products. But I am not nearly as cynical about big business as you are–the idea that they see this only as a profit-making opportunity and that they don’t believe the science is, quite frankly, ridiculous. You call them all hypocrites. Do you really believe that all the CEOs of those companies lack integrity? It’s a curious position to take for a defender of capitalism.
Even ExxonMobil says climate change is an issue worth taking seriously. Are they “alarmists” and “enviro-extremists”, too?
[...] In fact, the company has been slower than its peers—BP, Shell, Conoco-Phillips and Chevron—to acknowledge the reality of climate change or endorse public policies to do something about it. Conoco-Phillips and BP joined USCAP, a corporate/NGO group calling for strong regulation of carbon emissions. By contrast, Greenpeace says that ExxonMobil still supports groups that say climate change is a hoax or worse. (I blogged last week about that.) [...]
Marc I am going to have to agree with Ross. This entire movement scares the you know what out of me. A responsible journalist would of looked at multiple sources in an effort to find balance and as little bias in your reporting as possible. Global Warming is the hot issue of the day. A recent report suggested that nearly 18 percent of all CO2 emmitted in the atmosphere each year comes from livestock. Now we know that most environmentalists are against the human consumption of meat. I tend to agree that the most efficient way to feed the planet is through crops and not steak, however I fear that they are trying to set the cattle ranchers up for failure.
I have often wondered how a “computer climate model” can tell us how “bad” its going to be in 100 years when weatherman and climate scientists can’t predict whether its going to rain tomorrow or not. The entire “consensus” is based off of the UN’s IPCC. That organization is relying on the computer climate models for their predications. Thats right I said predictions. That is what they are.
I believe we should all be concerned with the environment, but I am not willing to risk America’s way of life on a climate model in which results vary by up to 20 feet in sea levels.
Should we take climate change seriously, yes!
Finally, I have often wondered why everything today is being attributed to global warming. If its to cold its because of global warming, or a tornado, or a flood, etc… I also wonder why individuals think that the temperature today on the earth is optimal. Looking back on the earth’s history the temperature has gone up and done many times. Why do we assume that it will stay this way and that this temperature is the optimal or perfect temperature for the earth? I am just not buying into it.
I like debate and I want to see more people stand up and provide reason and sound science to refute people with wild emotional exagerations in an effort to turn back the hands of time to a pre-industrial age.
Marc in the future could you please provide som balance to your pieces. I know its hard for most journalists to try to move to the center on things but if you haven’t noticed most of America is right of center!
[...] Marc Gunther in his latest blog: Exxon Mobil: The Rest of the Story is a irresponsible piece of journalism. Gunther bases his piece of the Greenpeace study in which Greenpeace bashes Exxon for giving money to groups that do not believe there is a scientific consensus on global warming or offer up alternatives to the causes of global temperature rise. Gunther mentions The Heartland Institute as one such receipient. He also throws a jab in saying that Heartland is a group funded by tobacco interests. How the two are linked are beyond me. Many think tanks cover a variety of issues. If Mr. Gunther had taken the time to read more about The Heartland’s position on tobacco he might not have been so quick to rush to judgement. All in all this is a blog worth reading and the responses are even more intriguing. I congratulate Ross for his accurate and brave retort! [...]
Marc, you say that “Greenpeace has a valid point when it says ExxonMobil is trying to ’spread misinformation about the science and policies of global warming.’” Yet you fail to specify what qualifies as misinformation.
You highlight articles titled
“Fears of Melting Polar Ice Are Discredited,†“Record April Freeze Hits U.S.†(!), “Scientists Urge Gore to Cool His Global Warming Rhetoric,†and “When Will We Tire of the Fear Mongers?†What specific facts in these articles are “misinformation?” If you cannot identify any factual errors, then you need to replace your term “misinformation” with the term “scientific debate” or, at worst, “opinion.” For an educated man to denigrate scientific studies and scientific facts as “misinformation” simply because it casts doubt on a faith-based belief in alarmist global warming is quite troubling.
Indeed, did not a record April freeze hit the U.S. this year? Are denying this?
Did not the New York Times publish an article with the theme that mainstream climate scientists feel Al Gore has exaggerated the science? Are you denying that the New York Times published such an article?
Did not scientists at the University of Edinburgh and University College London recently report that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are affecting sea level “by 0.35 millimeters per year,” which equates to just an inch per century? Do you deny that such scientific findings were made?
Since when do scientific facts become labeled “misinformation?” Are you a denier, Marc?
OK, I’m not suggesting that EVERYTHING on the Heartland or Marshall sites, re climate change, is “misinformation.” Just that these sites don’t seem to me to be designed to advance scientific debate but to present one side of the story which, for the most part, has been discredited not just by most scientists but (just as important to me) most big companies and virtually all of Wall Street.
In particular, the cold April weather in the U.S. does not tell us anything about climate.
Let’s move the debate on to the question of what we should be doing to mitigate against climate change, or adapt to it. I think even XOM would endorse that.
[...] There’s an interesting article about it in Ethical Corporation. As Fortune writer Marc Gunther puts it, in his article on the issue: “I have to say that I feel a little misled by Ken Cohen, Exxon’s head of public affairs. He did not lie to me, to be sure, but he left me with the strong impression that ExxonMobil was moderating its position on climate change.” [...]