Miller Calls on ExxonMobil to Reveal Its Continued Funding of Phony Science
(Washington, DC) The Chairman of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology today urged a full accounting of ExxonMobil’s financial support of global climate skeptics.
After repeated assurances from ExxonMobil, a new report from Greenpeace USA’s Research Department indicates the oil company continues to fund 41 think tanks and front groups by funneling $2.1 million in grants in 2006 to help them orchestrate denial of global warming science.
“I encourage you to make all of your information about philanthropic giving, either by the Corporation or its Foundation, public at your earliest opportunity,” wrote Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC) in a letter to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson. “The support of climate skeptics, many of whom have no real grounding in climate science, appears to be an effort to distort public discussion about global warming.”
Miller chaired a Subcommittee hearing on March 28, 2007 in which several experts testified about the media strategies used to influence policy through distortions of science. Witnesses provided clear examples of interested industries using their profits to sow popular confusion and doubt and postpone the formation of consensus on actions that might cut into those profits.
“It is indefensible for ExxonMobil, a company that leads the world’s corporations in profits, to tarnish its economic success by trying to promote phony science about climate change,” said Miller.
According to the database ExxonSecrets.org, total ExxonMobil funding to all “denial” organizations from 1998 to 2006 now totals nearly $23 million.
Click here to read the full text of the letter from Chairman Miller to Mr. Tillerson.
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