Slashdot Mirror
Billionaires Secretly Fund Vast Climate Denial Network
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Suzanne Goldenberg reports that conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, helping build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing 'wedge issue' for hardcore conservatives. 'We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,' says Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust. Ball's organization assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes with a guarantee of complete anonymity for donors who wished to remain hidden. The money flowed to Washington think tanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore. 'The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing,' says Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records. 'These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable.'"
The one thing that strikes me these days, is the way how the exact same people who solved the problems you are talking about - DDT, leaded gasoline, smog etc. - are still demonized and portait as plotting to destroy the earth.
They didn't solve those problems, they created them. They created the polluting products. DDT, leaded gasoline, cigarettes, CFC aerosols etc. Government regulation stopped them from manufacturing those polluting products anymore, or at least cut down on them. Without the government regulation they would have kept on polluting, and more so every year.
It's exactly the same now. They won't fix their polluting till government regulation makes them do so. And they are putting that government regulation off for as long as possible by denying science, just as they did before.