Mother Jones: Climate Change Deniers Without Borders

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/climate-deniers-atlas-foundation

Climate Change Deniers Without Borders

How American oil money is pumping up climate change skeptics abroad—and how they could derail any progress made in Copenhagen.

— By Josh Harkinson

Tue Dec. 22, 2009 3:59 AM PST

Writing two weeks ago in Poland's most popular tabloid, the Super Express, an economic analyst named Tomasz Teluk claimed that a potential climate agreement in Copenhagen might double Poles' electricity bills, hobble his coal-dependent country, and even lead to one-world government. Fortunately, he wrote, the "'global warming' scare" has been hugely overblown: "As each of us learned in elementary school, carbon dioxide is a gas essential to the development of life, not a poison, so you do not have to eliminate it at any price."

Teluk, the founder of the http://www.globalizacja.org/en/">Globalization Institute, a libertarian think tank, is Poland's most prominent climate change skeptic. He has become a hero to Polish conservatives, who have convinced their government to resist strong emissions cuts and block the European Union from giving climate change assistance to developing nations. A leading Polish financial newspaper recently named his institute the country's best think tank. But Teluk is hardly a homegrown climate skeptic. Much of his rhetoric, such as his claim that http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-change-denial-07-plants-need-c02">CO₂ is good for you, echoes the well-worn claims of http://motherjones.com/special-reports/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-change-denial">American skeptics. And much of Teluk's newfound visibility can be traced back to his long-standing ties with conservative patrons and energy interests in the United States.

Americans have provided Teluk with jobs, fellowships, professional contacts, and money. This year, the Globalization Institute won a $10,000 grant from the http://atlasnetwork.org/">Atlas Economic Research Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think-tank incubator that's http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-change-denial-exxon">funded by ExxonMobil. Teluk isn't alone. The Globalization Institute is part of a loose network of some 500 similar organizations in dozens of countries that are often bankrolled by American foundations that are, in turn, backed by carbon-spewing American industries. The foreign groups' finances are opaque, yet an Atlas Foundation spokesman acknowledges that some of them wouldn't exist without dollars being pumped in. In the coming months, these groups will lead the fight in their own countries to derail http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/copenhagen-decoded">the shaky deal made in Copenhagen—which will likely prompt American skeptics to cite widespread international opposition to taking action on climate change.

With US-backed overseas think tanks parroting denier talking points in dozens of languages, the echo chamber is already up and running. "The correct policy approach to (the) non-problem (of climate change) is to have the courage to do nothing," writes http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-change-denial-10-lord-christopher-monckton">British skeptic Lord Christopher Monckton in an article summarized in Chinese on the website of the Beijing-based Cathay Institute for Public Affairs. As the United States stonewalled sub-Saharan African countries' demands for more climate-related foreign aid in Copenhagen, the IMANI Center for Policy and Education in Ghana and three other African think tanks backed by American interests signed on to a letter blaming poor nations for invoking "the climate change scapegoat to explain hunger, sickness, and climate vulnerability."

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[fascisthunter]

1. oooh do I wish for ill things upon the Oil investors

I really really do.... they are the ones who should be shot at in Iraq and Afghanistan, not our soldiers.