The Scum at the Top
Commentary on the Rats in Washington
The 'Obfuscation Agenda' -
The Letter to ExxonMobil.
By John D. Rockefeller IV And Olympia Snowe
Opinion Journal from The Wall Street Journal
Editorial Page
© December 4, 2006
Editor's note: This is the text of a letter Sens.
Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) and Snowe (R., Maine) sent
to ExxonMobil's CEO. A related editorial appears
here.
October 27, 2006
Mr. Rex W. Tillerson
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
ExxonMobil Corporation
5959 Las Colinas Boulevard
Irving, TX 75039
Dear Mr. Tillerson:
Allow us to take this opportunity to congratulate
you on your first year as Chairman and Chief
Executive Officer of the ExxonMobil Corporation.
You will become the public face of an undisputed
leader in the world energy industry, and a
company that plays a vital role in our national
economy. As that public face, you will have the
ability and responsibility to lead ExxonMobil
toward its rightful place as a good corporate
and global citizen.
We are writing to appeal to your sense of
stewardship of that corporate citizenship
as U.S. Senators concerned about the credibility
of the United States in the international
community, and as Americans concerned that
one of our most prestigious corporations has
done much in the past to adversely affect that
credibility. We are convinced that ExxonMobil's
longstanding support of a small cadre of global
climate change skeptics, and those 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.
Obviously, other factors complicate our
foreign policy. However, we are persuaded
that the climate change denial strategy
carried out by and for ExxonMobil has helped
foster the perception that the United States
is insensitive to a matter of great urgency for
all of mankind, and has thus damaged the stature
of our nation internationally. It is our hope
that under your leadership, ExxonMobil would
end its dangerous support of the "deniers."
Likewise, we look to you to guide ExxonMobil
to capitalize on its significant resources
and prominent industry position to assist this
country in taking its appropriate leadership
role in promoting the technological innovation
necessary to address climate change and in
fashioning a truly global solution to what is
undeniably a global problem.
While ExxonMobil's activity in this area is
well-documented, we are somewhat encouraged
by developments that have come to light during
your brief tenure. We fervently hope that
reports that ExxonMobil intends to end its
funding of the climate change denial campaign
of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)
are true. Similarly, we have seen press reports
that your British subsidiary has told the Royal
Society, Great Britain's foremost scientific
academy, that ExxonMobil will stop funding other
organizations with similar purposes. However, a
casual review of available literature, as performed
by personnel for the Royal Society reveals that
ExxonMobil is or has been the primary funding
source for the "skepticism" of not only CEI, but
for dozens of other overlapping and interlocking
front groups sharing the same obfuscation agenda.
For this reason, we share the goal of the Royal
Society that ExxonMobil "come clean" about its
past denial activities, and that the corporation
take positive steps by a date certain toward a
new and more responsible corporate citizenship.
ExxonMobil is not alone in jeopardizing the
credibility and stature of the United States.
Large corporations in related industries have
joined ExxonMobil to provide significant and
consistent financial support of this
pseudo-scientific, non-peer reviewed echo
chamber. The goal has not been to prevail in
the scientific debate, but to obscure it. This
climate change denial confederacy has exerted
an influence out of all proportion to its size
or relative scientific credibility. Through
relentless pressure on the media to present the
issue "objectively," and by challenging the
consensus on climate change science by misstating
both the nature of what "consensus" means and
what this particular consensus is, ExxonMobil
and its allies have confused the public and
given cover to a few senior elected and appointed
government officials whose positions and opinions
enable them to damage U.S. credibility abroad.
Climate change denial has been so effective
because the "denial community" has
mischaracterized the necessarily guarded
language of serious scientific dialogue as
vagueness and uncertainty. Mainstream media
outlets, attacked for being biased, help lend
credence to skeptics' views, regardless of their
scientific integrity, by giving them relatively
equal standing with legitimate scientists.
ExxonMobil is responsible for much of this
bogus scientific "debate" and the demand for
what the deniers cynically refer to as "sound
science."
A study to be released in November by an American
scientific group will expose ExxonMobil as the
primary funder of no fewer than 29 climate change
denial front groups in 2004 alone. Besides a
shared goal, these groups often featured common
staffs and board members. The study will estimate
that ExxonMobil has spent more than $19 million
since the late 1990s on a strategy of "information
laundering," or enabling a small number of
professional skeptics working through
scientific-sounding organizations to funnel
their viewpoints through non-peer-reviewed
websites such as Tech Central Station. The
Internet has provided ExxonMobil the means to
wreak its havoc on U.S. credibility, while
avoiding the rigors of refereed journals. While
deniers can easily post something calling into
question the scientific consensus on climate
change, not a single refereed article in more
than a decade has sought to refute it.
Indeed, while the group of outliers funded by
ExxonMobil has had some success in the court of
public opinion, it has failed miserably in
confusing, much less convincing, the legitimate
scientific community. Rather, what has emerged
and continues to withstand the carefully
crafted denial strategy is an insurmountable
scientific consensus on both the problem and
causation of climate change. Instead of the
narrow and inward-looking universe of the
deniers, the legitimate scientific community
has developed its views on climate change
through rigorous peer-reviewed research and
writing across all climate-related disciplines
and in virtually every country on the globe.
Where most scientists dispassionate review of the
facts has moved past acknowledgement to mitigation
strategies, ExxonMobil's contribution the overall
politicization of science has merely bolstered
the views of U.S. government officials satisfied
to do nothing. Rather than investing in the
development of technologies that might see us
through this crisis--and which may rival the
computer as a wellspring of near-term economic
growth around the world--ExxonMobil and its
partners in denial have manufactured controversy,
sown doubt, and impeded progress with strategies
all-too reminiscent of those used by the tobacco
industry for so many years. The net result of this
unfortunate campaign has been a diminution of this
nation's ability to act internationally, and not
only in environmental matters.
In light of the adverse impacts still resulting
from your corporations activities, we must request
that ExxonMobil end any further financial
assistance or other support to groups or
individuals whose public advocacy has
contributed to the small, but unfortunately
effective, climate change denial myth. Further,
we believe ExxonMobil should take additional
steps to improve the public debate, and
consequently the reputation of the United
States. We would recommend that ExxonMobil
publicly acknowledge both the reality of
climate change and the role of humans in
causing or exacerbating it. Second, ExxonMobil
should repudiate its climate change denial
campaign and make public its funding history.
Finally, we believe that there would be a
benefit to the United States if one of the
world's largest carbon emitters headquartered
here devoted at least some of the money it has
invested in climate change denial pseudo-science
to global remediation efforts. We believe this
would be especially important in the developing
world, where the disastrous effects of global
climate change are likely to have their most
immediate and calamitous impacts.
Each of us is committed to seeing the United States
officially reengage and demonstrate leadership on
the issue of global climate change. We are ready
to work with you and any other past corporate
sponsor of the denial campaign on proactive
strategies to promote energy efficiency, to
expand the use of clean, alternative, and
renewable fuels, to accelerate innovation to
responsibly extend the useful life of our fossil
fuel reserves, and to foster greater understanding
of the necessity of action on a truly global
scale before it is too late.
Sincerely,
John D. Rockefeller IV
Olympia Snowe
Cc:
J. Stephen Simon
Walter V. Shipley
Samuel J. Palmisano
Marilyn Carlson Nelson
Henry A. McKinnell, Jr.
Philip E. Lippincott
Reatha Clark King
William R. Howell
James R. Houghton
William W. George
Michael J. Boskin
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January 15, 2007