Exposing the well funded & manufactured campaign of blame on the ‘Exxon knew climate change would be dangerous’ fiasco

New Disclosures Help Pull Back Curtain on Who’s Funding Manufactured Climate Investigation
by Steve Everley
energyindepth.org , Dallas, Tex.
A letter reportedly being circulated among a handful of Democrats this week in the U.S. House of Representatives, calling for an investigation into energy companies’ opinions on climate change, references news reports that the letter’s authors characterize as independent journalism. But according to online records, the reports were actually financed by large foundations that oppose oil and natural gas development.
Fewer than two dozen Democratic members of the U.S. House have signed on to a letter circulated by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), which cites “investigations by the Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News” that accused at least one U.S. oil and natural gas company of “financing efforts to amplify doubt about the state of climate science.” Congressman Lieu’s office says it will send the letter “in a few weeks,” which means it wouldn’t be delivered until after the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris.
Contrary to the letter’s suggestion, the LA Times merely published the investigations that were cited. They were not authored by reporters from the LA Times, but rather by a group of researchers affiliated with the Energy and Environment Reporting Fellowship at the Columbia School of Journalism, which was disclosed at the end of the two reports.
But what was not revealed in the pages of the LA Times is who provided funding for the reports. According to the Fellowship’s website, the program receives funding from a number of anti-fossil fuel foundations:
“The program is supported by the Energy Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Family Fund, Lorana Sullivan Foundation and the Tellus Mater Foundation.” (emphasis added)
As well-documented in a 2014 oversight report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) actively backs campaigns to ban oil and natural gas development, including major financing for the activist group 350.org, which environmental activist Bill McKibben co-founded. RBF’s support for 350.org and its anti-fossil fuel campaigns is significant, as McKibben himself called RBF a “great ally.”
According to RBF’s website, the Fund supports efforts to “reduce reliance on carbon-intensive energy sources.”

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