The Money Behind the Climate Change Skeptics Conference [1]
Submitted by Anne Landman [2] on
An article in the Independent links funding for the "2008 International Conference on Climate Change [3]" held in New York earlier this month to tobacco and oil companies. As an earlier Spin [4] noted, the global warming skeptics [5] conference was organized by the Heartland Institute [6] think tank [7]. Heartland has opposed scientific consensus on both secondhand tobacco smoke [8] and climate change [9]. Heartland claims on its website [10] that no energy industry money was used to support the conference, but did not address tobacco industry [11] funding. Still, a substantial number of conference sponsors [12] -- including the Competitive Enterprise Institute [13], Independent Institute [14], Americans for Tax Reform [15], Frontiers of Freedom [16] and Citizens' Alliance for Responsible Energy [17] -- have received support from energy or tobacco companies, or both. The Heartland Institute itself has received funding from Exxon [18] and Philip Morris [19].