Senators ask ExxonMobil to stop funding climate-change deniers
ExxonMobil should “end any further financial assistance” to climate-change-denying lobbyist groups, say Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) in a scathing letter sent to ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson on Friday. According to an upcoming report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, the oil behemoth funded 29 climate-change-skeptic groups in 2004 alone, and has spent more than $19 million since 1990 funding groups that promote “science” that hasn’t been peer reviewed. The senators singled out the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Tech Central Station website as Exxon-funded skeptic groups. ExxonMobil’s support, and “skeptics’ access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy,” the senators wrote. We congratulate them on their exquisite mastery of understatement.
