ExxonMobilsaysit believes “the risk of climate change is real” and it is “committed to being part of the solution.” The largest investor-owned oil company in the world also says itsupports a federal carbon taxand theParis climate agreement.
Then why, after all these years, is the company still financing advocacy groups, think tanks and business associations that reject the reality and seriousness of the climate crisis, as well as members of Congress who deny the science and oppose efforts to rein in carbon emissions?
According to the company’s latestgrantmaking report, it gave $772,500 to 10 such groups in 2018, which does not include its annual dues to trade groups such as the American Petroleum Institute, whichopposes a carbon tax. In addition, ExxonMobil continued to promote gridlock directly on Capitol Hill. Two-thirds of the$1.65 millionit spent on congressional election campaigns during the 2017-18 election cycle went toclimatesciencedeniers.
Nearly half of ExxonMobil’s 2018 donations to nonprofit denier groups went to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Another 30 percent went to the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute, which have been ExxonMobil grantees for 20 years. All told, the company has spent some$37 million自1998年以来否认者的网络组织a sorry record of support that ranks second only to Charles Koch and his brother, the late David Koch, owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries.
好消息是,埃克森美孚的分解2018 denier grant budget was一半of what itspent in 2017and the lowest amount since 2012. But if the company were truly serious about addressing climate change, it would cut off such funding completely. Likewise, it would support federal lawmakers who want to curb carbon emissions, not those standing in the way of government action.
So what did ExxonMobil get for its money in 2018?
Underwriting climate denial at the U.S. Chamber
In 2014, ExxonMobil pledged $5 million to theU.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Capital Campaignover a five-year period on top of its annual dues, despite the lobby group’s history of misrepresenting climate science and the economics of transitioning to clean energy. Last year, the company kicked in$350,000for the Capital Campaign and another$15,000for the Chamber’s Corporate Citizenship Center, bringing its total 2018 donation to $365,000.
Two years ago, the Chamber sponsored awidelydebunkedreportthat wildlyinflated the costof adhering to the Paris climate agreement to the U.S. economy. President Trump used that report as hisprimary rationalefor refusing to honor the U.S. commitment to the accord.
Earlier this year, however, the Chamber posteda new statementon its website that suggested that the business lobby is softening its position. “We stand with every American seeking a cleaner, stronger environment — for today and tomorrow,” the Chamber now asserts. “Our climate is changing and humans are contributing to these changes. Inaction is simply not an option.” The website also features the Chamber’s definition of aneffective climate policy, which it says should include, among other things, “large-scale renewables, energy storage and batteries,” and should “encourage international cooperation.”
Does that mean the Chamber has finally come to its senses? Not quite. Itopposedthe Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have reduced coal power plant carbon emissions, andsupportsthe Trump administration’s move to repeal it. And although a Chamber spokesmantoldPoliticoin August that it is “absolutely important for the U.S. to remain in the Paris climate agreement,” he added that the “Obama administration’s pledge was unrealistic [and] was going to have a negative impact on our economy. And so we’d like to see that revisited.” In other words, the Chamber would like the United States to remain a party to the agreement so that it can try to weaken the U.S. commitment to it.
Backing denial at the American Enterprise Institute
The American Enterprise Institute, an 80-year-old, free market think tank in Washington, D.C., has received more money from ExxonMobil than any other climate science denier organization. In 2018, ExxonMobil gave the organization$160,000, bringing its total to$4.65 millionsince 1998.
EconomistBenjamin Zycher, an Enterprise Institute staff member who writes regularly about climate issues,arguesthat a carbon tax would be “ineffective” and hascalledthe Paris agreement an “absurdity.” He also routinely cites debunked papers byJohn Christy,Judith Curryand other outlier scientists to buttress his attacks on what hecalls“climate alarmism.”
Last fall, for example, Zycher took aim at thesecond volumeof the FourthNational Climate Assessment— a periodic, congressionally mandated analysis of peer-reviewed climate science by 13 federal agencies. The report warned that by the end of this century, unchecked climate change could cause tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. The Trump administration issued it the day after Thanksgiving in the hope that it would receive limited attention.
Zycher took issue with the report’s conclusions in ablog poston the think tank’s website, citing “systematic evidence on climate phenomena” that he says the report ignored. His “evidence” included half-truths, cherry-picked facts and fabrications. Contrary to Zycher’s claims, human activity is responsible formore than halfof the increase in average global temperatures since 1950; sea level risehasaccelerateddue to climate change; and although there has been little change in thefrequency of hurricanesglobally, research suggests there has been an increase in飓风强度over the past 40 years.
Zycher also posted acolumnbelittling a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood that charges ExxonMobil with defrauding investors by publicly claiming to incorporate climate risks in its business decisions while downplaying or ignoring them for internal planning purposes. The lawsuit, which went to trial on October 22, alleges that ExxonMobil inflated its value, falsely assuring investors that its oil and gas reserves would not become “stranded assets” that would have to be left in the ground. Zycher accused Underwood of “picking an unpopular target and then trying to find a way to convict it of something,” and suggested that she filed the suit to advance her career.
Financing the Manhattan Institute’s specious case against renewables
The Manhattan Institute, a New York City-based think tank, received$75,000from ExxonMobil last year for its Center for Energy Policy. Since 1998, the company has given the libertarian policy shop more than$1.3 million.
Like the Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute opposes the Paris climate accord. Senior Fellow Oren Cass, who regularly testified before Congress against Obama administration climate efforts,allegesthe international agreement is “somewhere between a farce and a fraud.” The think tank is also an outspoken opponent of renewable energy, routinely calling for an end to federal subsidies for wind, solar andelectric vehicles. At the same time, it is mum about the significantly biggersubsidiesthe oil and gas industry has been receiving over the last 100 years.
Cass’s colleague, Senior FellowRobert Bryce, has been bashing wind power for years and, likePresident Trump, he wildlyoverstatesits threat to birds. In fact, thetop human-caused threatsto birds areclimate change,buildings, power lines, misapplied pesticides, communications towers, and oil and gas industry fluid waste pits. Bryce never mentions that. It would undermine his bogus argument.
Still another Manhattan Institute senior fellow, Mark P. Mills, wrote an opinion piece forThe Wall Street Journalin May titled “What if Green Energy Isn’t the Future?” In it, he maintained that, “using wind, solar and batteries as the primary sources of a nation’s energy supply remains far too expensive.” In fact, renewables are now the cheapest type of new electricity generation for more than two-thirds of the world, according to a JunereportbyBloomberg New Energy Finance. By 2030,Bloombergresearchers project, wind and solar will “undercut existing coal and [natural] gas almost everywhere.” Mills also failed to factor in the cost of doing nothing to curb carbon pollution. The top 10 largest climate change-related disasters in 2018 alone cost at least$85 billionin damages.
Aiding and abetting congressional gridlock
On top of the hundreds of thousands of dollars ExxonMobil gave to climate science denier groups last year, the company continued to fund deniers on Capitol Hill. As noted above, 67 percent of the$1.65 millionit spent during the 2017-18 election cycle — roughly $1.1 million — went to thecampaigns of189 climate sciencedeniers. It then spent$11.15 millionin 2018 to lobby lawmakers,more thanany other oil and gas company.
One of the mosttalked-about climate proposalsin Congress today is a carbon tax, and despite ExxonMobil’s professed decade-long support for one, it has consistently funded senators and representatives who oppose the idea. Since 2013, there have been at leastfive nonbinding resolutionsin Congress on such a tax. Each time, a majority of ExxonMobil-funded legislators, ranging from 75 percent to 93 percent, voted against it. The most recent example of the company’s upside-down funding priorities is the outcome of a July 2018 nonbindingresolutionin the House stating such a tax would be “detrimental” to the U.S. economy. Once again, a majority of ExxonMobil-funded lawmakers favored the resolution, whichpassedby a 229-to-180 vote. This time, 78 percent of the 174 House members who had received ExxonMobil campaign contributions since 2013 voted for it.
ExxonMobil firstannouncedits support for a carbon tax in 2009 in a cynical attempt to derail a cap-and-trade bill in Congress, and last year, the company announced it would give $1 million over two years toAmericans for Carbon Dividends, a political action group created to promote a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The proposal — developed by theClimate Leadership Council, a coalition of corporations, environmental groups and former government officials — would levy a carbon fee starting at $40 a ton in exchange for dropping all “stationary source” (non-transportation) carbon pollution regulations and granting the fossil fuel industry immunity from climate lawsuits.
In a surprise move, however, the Climate Leadership Council and Americans for Carbon Dividends recentlydeletedthe provision shielding the fossil fuel industry from liability, apparently abandoning coalition co-founders BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, which are facingmore than a dozen lawsuitsfor billions of dollars in climate change-related damages. It remains to be seen what ExxonMobil will do now, but based on past experience, the company likely will continue to finance lawmakers who cite fraudulent reports by the groups it funds to make their bogus case that climate change is not a threat. In other words, ExxonMobil will keep bankrolling climate science denial to make sure nothing happens on Capitol Hill.
Author’s note: Besides the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($365,000), American Enterprise Institute ($160,000) and Manhattan Institute ($75,000), ExxonMobilgave grants in 2018to the following seven climate science denier groups: American Council on Science and Health ($60,000), Center for American and International Law ($12,500), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($15,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000), National Black Chamber of Commerce ($30,000) and the Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000).
This article, which was produced byEarth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute, originally appeared inTruthout.