By Anne-Sophie Simpèreon Desmog
In March 1999, Alejandro Chafuen, then president of a global free-market coalition referred to as Atlas Community, wrote to an govt at ExxonMobil (XOM) to supply the American oil main a pleasant word of appreciation.
“On behalf of Atlas and the institutes it helps, we want to thanks once more for the Exxon Company’s beneficiant contributions,” Chafuen acknowledged, “and for the boldness you and Exxon have positioned in us.”
Included within the letter to William E. Hale of ExxonMobil’s public affairs division was a five-page abstract of the worldwide attain and variety of the actions the company funded in 1998, “in complete or partially,” via donations to Atlas Community’s “Power and Surroundings: Market-based Options”.
These actions encompassed conferences to handle the “world warming scare,” worldwide briefings from distinguished local weather deniers, and widespread distribution of a e-book aimed toward stopping schoolchildren from changing into “smug crusaders” for local weather motion. With out Exxon’s monetary help, the letter acknowledged, “few of those accomplishments would have been potential.”
It’s lengthy been public data that from the Nineteen Nineties into the 2000s, ExxonMobil donated to Atlas Community, a U.S.-based coordinating group for a community of free-market assume tanks stretching far past North America and Europe.
Now a joint investigation by l’Observatoire des multinationales and DeSmog has revealed correspondence that gives new insights into the connection between one of many world’s largest fossil gasoline firms and a community that for many years has labored to advance help for excessive libertarian insurance policies in governments, the media, and public opinion by shaping the “local weather of concepts.”
That lengthy sport has paid off not solely by delaying world motion to handle the local weather emergency, however by catalyzing the expansion of a sprawling coalition of free-market assume tanks worldwide. A few of them, together with the Manhattan Institute, are actually reportedly set to wield main affect over the insurance policies of the second Trump administration.
In an emailed assertion to l’Observatoire des multinationales, Atlas Community CEO Brad Lips defended the group’s relationship with ExxonMobil, saying, “these donations from the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s replicate the angle of our management on the time that overzealous environmental regulation, premised on local weather change, can be dangerous for financial progress basically, and particularly for the chance to extend residing requirements within the World South.”
Nevertheless, he added, the group’s focus has now shifted. “By the point I turned CEO of Atlas Community fifteen years in the past, it was clear that there was little consensus on these matters amongst our companions. I made up my mind this shouldn’t be an space of focus for Atlas Community, as we need to work constructively with all our companions on our key priorities with no concern for the place they land on questions of local weather science,” he wrote.
Essential Years for Local weather Motion
Chafuen wasn’t the one Atlas Community signatory on the 1999 abstract letter to ExxonMobil. It was additionally signed by Paul Driessen, then the group’s vp for operations and company improvement (presently a contributor to the Heartland Institute, a U.S. local weather denier assume tank).
The objective of this program? To help “market-based options” worldwide for hotly debated “points like world local weather change, mental property rights, economics, sound science, worldwide treaties and environmental schooling.”
This proposal and greater than a dozen different paperwork, obtained by the Company Genome Challenge, add to a rising physique of proof that a long time of delay in tackling local weather change may be traced largely to trade disinformation efforts quietly negotiated between oil firms and assume tanks within the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s.
These have been essential years when governments have been making early makes an attempt to manage greenhouse gasoline emissions – and long gone the purpose within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties when Exxon’s personal scientists have been telling firm executives that “main reductions” in fossil gasoline utilization can be essential to keep away from “probably catastrophic occasions” sooner or later.
The paperwork additionally open a window into how Atlas Community funnelled cash from ExxonMobil to libertarian assume tanks around the globe, in search of to propagate corporate-friendly insurance policies from behind a veil of goal evaluation.
A key objective of those assume tanks was to incubate right-wing political operatives, a few of whom finally discovered their method into workplace. Amongst them, Argentine official Ana Lamas, recognized within the paperwork as an early beneficiary of Atlas Community help, who’s now serving as under-secretary for the surroundings within the far-right authorities of Argentinian President Javier Milei.
As an Atlas fellow in 1998, Lamas — then the director of Fundación MEL, a free-market assume tank — spent a number of weeks within the Washington D.C. space, assembly and “engaged on world warming and different environmental points” with the Cato Institute, the Aggressive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Heritage Basis, and different assume tanks distinguished within the local weather denial motion.
Lamas additionally featured in one other Atlas Community doc displaying recipients of journey bills and honoraria paid to numerous people in 1998 as a part of “World Warming Occasions in Argentina” throughout local weather talks held in Buenos Aires. The doc confirmed that Fundación MEL obtained $5,000 from the American Petroleum Institute, the nation’s largest oil and gasoline foyer group. Lamas personally obtained $850, in accordance with the doc, although the sources of these funds weren’t recognized.
1 / 4-century later, within the run-up to the November 2024 local weather convention in Azerbaijan, Lamas echoed Milei’s place that local weather change was an issue finest left to market forces to unravel. Argentina withdrew its local weather negotiators a number of days after the talks began, with out providing a proof.
Lamas didn’t reply to a request for remark.
‘Terribly Grateful’
Atlas Community spokesperson Adam Weinberg has instructed l’Observatoire des multinationales that the group has not obtained funding from oil or gasoline firms, or their foundations, for 15 years.
“Atlas Community itself doesn’t advocate for power, environmental, or local weather change insurance policies,” Weinberg mentioned in response to a request for touch upon this story.
“Company fundraising has by no means been a considerable portion of Atlas Community’s price range,” mentioned Weinberg.
“The annual price range we increase pales compared to many different nonprofit organizations with world missions, and positively to the taxpayer funds wasted by nearly any authorities around the globe.”
Atlas Community is “terribly grateful” to “many beneficiant people and foundations” that fund its work to advertise ”particular person rights and free enterprise and supply us with the assets to strengthen the worldwide freedom motion,” he mentioned.
ExxonMobil (so named since Exxon’s November 1999 merger with the oil firm Mobil) didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Chafuen, who’s now the worldwide managing director of a assume tank referred to as the Acton Institute for the Research of Faith and Liberty, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Funding a World Motion
Atlas Community’s success in acquiring ExxonMobil’s funding for its applications grew out of a shared objective between the 2 to nurture free-market assume tanks around the globe.
Beneficiaries of that effort famous in the 1999 program abstract included round two dozen free-market assume tanks in a number of international locations, together with China (Unirule Institute of Economics, Institute of World Economics and Politics), India (Heart for Civil Society, Liberty Institute), Chile (Libertad y Desarollo), Argentina (Fundación Libertad), and Canada (Fraser Institute).
The numerous conferences, seminars, and workshops funded by this system on varied continents included a sequence of briefings held in 5 Argentine cities that gathered tons of of individuals to debate “scientific, financial and technological points” of the “world warming scare.” Press protection of the occasions “included 8 tv and radio appearances, over 12 articles in newspapers and magazines, and 19 interviews.”
In Europe, beneficiaries included organizations such because the Swedish libertarian assume tank Timbro, in addition to the Civic Institute within the Czech Republic. Throughout this time, the Civic Institute was led by Michal Semin, a Czech journalist, commentator, and conservative Christian determine who attributed the 9/11 assaults to “American elites,” opposed abortion and same-sex marriage, and advocated towards “social liberalism.”
One other exercise outlined within the doc was an initiative referred to as the “Atlas Fellows Program,” which supported candidates from Argentina, France, Mexico, and Turkey in gaining assume tank expertise, organizing and attending conferences, and pursuing levels at George Mason College in Virginia. (The varsity is a magnet for conservative cash that — together with affiliated facilities — has obtained tens of tens of millions of {dollars} since 2005 from foundations linked to grease and gasoline billionaires Charles and the late David Koch, in accordance with tax filings.)
Atlas additionally channeled ExxonMobil cash to the Science and Environmental Coverage Challenge (SEPP), a U.S. local weather science denial assume tank then headed by the late Fred Singer.
Chafuen and Driessen reported to ExxonMobil that “Atlas despatched packages of books, articles and movies on world local weather change science and economics to 9 institutes in Asia and Latin America.”
The books — which have been distributed from Turkey to Chile through Spain — included Info, Not Concern: Instructing Kids About The Surroundings, a handbook to assist lecturers oppose “irresponsible claims by environmental extremists” and forestall pupils from changing into “smug crusaders whose basis of data is shaky at finest” on points together with fossil gasoline air pollution.
A separate doc, titled “Advantages of Supporting the Atlas Financial Analysis Basis,” underscored the group’s potential to advertise pro-business coverage experiences, whereas permitting the firms funding the analysis to remain within the background.
“Public coverage concepts are sometimes most precious when they’re championed by organizations that aren’t perceived to replicate slim, parochial pursuits,” the doc mentioned. “Donations made to Atlas, after which given to assume tanks at Atlas’s discretion, inject an added measure of independence and credibility into the research.”
‘Far From Settled’
A Could 2000 proposal that Chafuen despatched to ExxonMobil confirmed in particular element the assets that Atlas Community might convey to bear in defending a funder’s pursuits. Addressed to ExxonMobil govt Arthur G. “Randy” Randol, the duvet letter contained a pleasant phrase of warning to the oil main.
Quickly, Chafuen instructed Randol, “world warming alarmists” would use a forthcoming local weather report back to “persuade the US and different international locations to ratify the Kyoto Protocol,” the 1997 treaty committing wealthy polluters like the US to legally binding and substantial reductions in greenhouse gasoline emissions.
“In doing so,” the proposal famous, “they may even clarify that local weather change temperature information under no circumstances justify fast, drastic fossil gasoline reductions.”
Chafuen was notably involved concerning the IPCC’s upcoming Third Evaluation Report, a complete abstract of the most effective accessible local weather science and evaluation of future dangers so far that was as a consequence of be printed the next 12 months.
“Proponents of catastrophic world warming theories will quickly start utilizing the IPCC’s Third Evaluation Report (TAR) and the revised U.S. Nationwide Evaluation Report in help of their campaigns to persuade the US and different international locations to ratify the Kyoto Protocol,” the proposal acknowledged, together with research by the the Nationwide Council of Church buildings and the Nationwide Academy of Sciences.
“It’s important that congressmen, journalists, ambassadors and different officers in the US and abroad be made conscious that world warming science is way from settled,” Chafuen wrote.
A consensus that greenhouse gasoline emissions from burning fossil fuels posed catastrophic dangers to the local weather had begun to emerge at the very least as early as 1979, when an advert hoc group of local weather scientists gathered that July on the Woods Gap Oceanographic Establishment in Massachusetts. Their deliberations have been compiled into Carbon Dioxide and Local weather: A Scientific Evaluation. Recognized colloquially because the Charney Report, the research remains to be considered a milestone in local weather science for its accuracy in projecting the speed at which human-induced will increase within the focus of atmospheric CO2 would trigger world temperatures to rise.
By 2000, twenty years of subsequent analysis had solely bolstered the Charney Report’s findings. Chafuen however appeared wanting to reveal to ExxonMobil that Atlas Community-backed “impartial” scientists might marshall sufficient proof to sow doubt.
“Certainly, there’s a rising recognition inside the scientific group that satellite tv for pc and different knowledge reveal solely a slight warming of the earth’s environment — far lower than predicted by local weather fashions and world warming alarmists,” Chafuen wrote. “A big and rising variety of revered scientists additionally acknowledge that pure phenomena could also be primarily answerable for noticed local weather modifications, and that human actions might play solely a minor function.”
‘A Useful and Beneficiant Ally’
The venture’s objective was to make “congressmen, journalists, ambassadors and different officers in the US and abroad [aware] that world warming science is way from settled.”
Among the many probably candidates for pushing again on the established local weather science within the IPCC’s report have been well-known local weather deniers reminiscent of Singer, the late Patrick Michaels of the College of Virginia, and Robert Balling of the College of Arizona.
Atlas Community deliberate to spend $17,500 on printing prices alone, in addition to 1000’s extra internet hosting briefings for teams of policymakers, politicians, and “chosen church leaders,” together with climate-denier assume tanks such because the Heartland Institute. The price range additionally included $6,000 to cowl 4 days of “briefings to journalists” and $1,500 for press conferences.
Although these have been nonetheless early days for digital media, Chafuen laid out an in depth on-line technique to ExxonMobil, together with paying for “banner adverts on chosen web sites,” and $1,500 for creating and posting “web hyperlinks” that will draw folks to pages with info contesting the scientific consensus on local weather change.
Atlas promised to maintain cautious metrics of its affect: “The success of this venture might be measured by the variety of: ‘hits’ obtained by web sites, articles and op-eds distributed and truly positioned, folks in attendance at briefings and press conferences, appearances on speak exhibits and different applications, media interviews, invites to editorial board conferences and congressional hearings, radio and tv stations utilizing supplies supplied to them — in addition to ranges of curiosity usually expressed by goal audiences,” Chafuen wrote within the proposal. “Total funding ranges will decide how most of the venture parts outlined right here may be accomplished inside the timeframe specified, and to the requirements you’ve got come to anticipate from Atlas applications.”
The next month, June 2000, ExxonMobil govt Gary Ehlig despatched Atlas a $65,000 test “from the ExxonMobil Basis as help on your continued work on local weather change.”
Ehlig wrote that the funds have been “supposed to help actions associated to scientific analysis of a number of experiences, together with the present draft of the IPCC’s Third Evaluation Report and the U.S. Nationwide Evaluation Report when it turns into accessible,” and that he appeared ahead to “listening to about your actions within the local weather change area because the 12 months progresses.”
However lower than two weeks later, Brad Lips,then Atlas Community’s newly-appointed chief working officer — and right now its CEO — wrote again to Exxon with some unlucky information. Resulting from “unanticipated circumstances,” the group “should return ExxonMobile’s [sic] test.”
Lips was conciliatory: “The very last thing Atlas needs to do is disappoint a useful and beneficiant ally.” However, he defined, the group was not assured “that this necessary venture could possibly be achieved within the matter we had outlined.”
It was not instantly potential to confirm how a lot of Atlas Community’s proposal — if any — was ever applied.
Captured by Companies?
Regardless of touting Atlas Community’s shut alignment with company pursuits in its fund-raising pitches, senior figures within the group had begun to query whether or not it had develop into too captive to its donors.
In a June 2000 memo, Lips steered that the community must be cautious about designing initiatives to oblige specific funders.
“Applications have tended to be deliberate round specific donors,” he argued. “It could appear extra respectable if Atlas decided the broad outlines and objectives of its Surroundings Program earlier than soliciting the help of ExxonMobile [sic] for it, as an alternative of our outdated course of, which was to put in writing a proposal for ExxonMobile [sic] after which label it our Surroundings Program.”
Lips advisable that groups outline their initiatives earlier than approaching funders, arguing that in the end this could profit the community and its company backers: “Atlas would preserve flexibility to cater to a brand new donor’s pursuits.”
The memo recognized potential funders for environmental initiatives on the themes of science and worldwide regulation: ExxonMobil, chemical firm Procter & Gamble, and the American Petroleum Institute.
No matter his issues over who would set Atlas Community’s agenda – workers or donors – Lips continued to emphasize the group’s potential to serve company pursuits in his outreach.
In Could 2002, Lips wrote a pleasant letter to Nick Welch, an govt at Shell, then an Anglo-Dutch oil main, providing Atlas Community’s help to advance “coverage objectives.” Welch and Lips had apparently met at a dinner of the Cato Institute, a distinguished U.S. libertarian assume tank.
“Please maintain my title in your information,” Lips wrote, “in case you desire to some references in regard to the native allies Atlas has in varied international locations. (Am I remembering appropriately that Russia, Nigeria, and Turkey are among the many ones you talked about final week?)”
Given Atlas’s attain, wrote Lips, “we may also help coordinate efforts that tackle coverage objectives that signify each of our group’s finest pursuits.”
Atlas Community’s world ties actually appealed to ExxonMobil, which used the group all through the early 2000s to funnel grants to thank tanks in Africa and Asia, the brand new paperwork present.
In January 2004, Lips instructed ExxonMobil govt Walt F. Buchholtz in an e-mail that Atlas Community had directed funds donated by ExxonMobil for its “Eco-Imperialism and associated institutes” program to assume tanks in Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh and India, through grants value between $2,500 and $6,000.
“As we mentioned, we’ll be certain that sooner or later to let grantees from this line know concerning the origin of funds and the partnership Atlas/ExxonMobil have to help and promote their good work,” Lips wrote.
A ‘Battle Room’ for Exxon
Atlas Community noticed one other alternative to pitch its providers to its company backers within the run-up to the COP10 local weather negotiations in Buenos Aires in November 2004.
“We’re very well-positioned to have a constructive affect on the course of the controversy and media protection in Argentina,” Atlas head Chafuen wrote in a letter to Buchholtz in July 2004. “[W]e have already reserved a really perfect facility subsequent to the convention heart, which may function as a home-base or ‘struggle room’ for our efforts.”
The proposal described plans to win favorable media protection associated to COP10 by mobilizing as many world allies as potential, notably in “strategic” areas, in addition to quite a few assume tanks the place Atlas Community administrators have been board members or chairs.
Accessible paperwork don’t clarify whether or not ExxonMobil accepted this proposal. Nevertheless, correspondence between Atlas and the company in the course of the first a part of 2004 present that ExxonMobil had lately given Atlas Community donations of $30,000 and $55,000.
In February 2005, Chafuen wrote to Buchholtz to specific his appreciation for an extra donation of $45,000.
“I need to personally thanks on your devotion to the Atlas mission,” Chafuen wrote.
Anne-Sophie Simpère is an investigative journalist at l’Observatoire des multinationales.
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The publish ‘A Useful and Beneficiant Ally’: How Exxon and Atlas Community Labored to Block World Local weather Motion appeared first on The Good Males Challenge.