Exxon Again Cuts Funds For Climate Change Sceptics
US: May 26, 2008
NEW YORK - Exxon Mobil Corp is pulling contributions to several groups that
have downplayed the risks that greenhouse gas-emissions could lead to global
warming, continuing a policy started in 2006 by Chief Executive Rex
Tillerson.
Exxon will not contribute to some nine groups in 2008 that it funded in
2007. It said in its corporate citizenship report that the groups' "position
on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion on
how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an
environmentally responsible manner."
The groups Exxon has stopped funding include the Capital Research Centre,
Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the
George C. Marshall Institute, and the Institute for Energy Research,
according to Exxon spokesman Gantt Walton.
Exxon's tone on climate change has softened since Tillerson took the reins
of the company at the beginning of 2006, replacing the often-combative Lee
Raymond.
Tillerson has said that nations should work toward a global policy to fight
climate change and in 2006 the company stopped funding a handful of groups
that were climate change sceptics.
But environmental activists charged that Exxon continued to fund other
groups working against policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with
Greenpeace arguing that the company gave more than $2 million to climate
change sceptics in 2006 alone.
The company cut its spending again in 2007 on such groups, including the
Heartland Institute, which hosted a conference in March with the theme,
"Global warming is not a crisis."
(Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Braden Reddall)
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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