Competitive Enterprise Institute

Climate Denial

Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has been a member and sponsor of Cooler Heads Coalition (CHC), the longest running association of climate change denying organizations, since its inception in 1997.

“The fuels that produce CO2 have freed us from a world of backbreaking labor, lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need; the people we love. [Ominous Music] Now, some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant.  Imagine if they succeed. What would our lives be like then? Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution. We call it life.”-Competitive Enterprise Institute

Funding

The CEI has received at least $2,100,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. Of that total, CEI received $275,000 worth of grants earmarked for climate change programs specifically.

2004 Exxon Climate Grants to CEI

1997 Exxon Climate Grants to CEI

These grants came the same year as Cooler Heads Coalition was formed by CEI at Consumer Alert

For more information on funding please contact us directly.

Competitive Enterprise Institute updates

Global Climate Information Project ClimateFacts.org 1997 TV Ads

Success! Just recovered some 23 year old TV ads via my old friend Eric Gravley of PlanetVox. Way back in the late 1990s, early 2000s, before YouTube, before digital media, DVRs, “on demand” and all the things we take for granted today, Gravely and team ran a production studio, made documentaries and taped important stuff

Patrick Michaels, Climate Change

Patrick Michaels’ 30 Years of Climate Denial

I. Michaels Cancels on Fossil Fuel Impact Investigation On September 28, 2018, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines was scheduled to hear Patrick Michaels in their ongoing investigation into carbon majors’ contributions to climate change and its impacts on Filipinos. Michaels, currently the Director of the Center for the Study of Science at

McCain, Climate Change

The Covert Attack on Sen. McCain’s Climate Leadership by ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers

InsideClimate News’ Marianne Lavelle published a long piece this weekend, chronicling Senator John McCain’s rise and fall as a climate leader.  The story highlights a campaign I worked on in 2000, where we asked all the presidential candidates the simple and still pertinent question, “What’s Your Plan?” on global warming. McCain was one of the

Lee Raymond, Exxon Mobil Climate Change Denial, Lee Raymond, Rex Tillerson

Climate Lawsuits: Depose Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson

As we have been saying…lots of climate lawsuits are landing in State and Federal courts nationwide. As these suits move forward, there is a short list of people who ought to be deposed first. Former ExxonMobil CEOs, Rex Tillerson and Lee Raymond, top the list. Rex Tillerson worked at Exxon for his entire corporate career

Red Team Heartland

Heartland Institute’s Climate Red Team Lists Revealed

The Heartland Institute is frustrated that their yearlong campaign to create a ‘Red Team-Blue Team’ debate on climate has failed.  Leaked internal email reveals their anxiety and desperation that the Trump team isn’t doing enough to kill action on climate change.  In what appears to be retiring Heartland director Joe Bast’s swan song, things are not going

Trump, Climate Change

Exxon and Koch Funded Deniers Who Pushed Trump to Exit Paris Climate Agreement

The Money Behind Paris Agreement Opposition On May 8th, 2017, forty four climate denying “free market” anti-government organizations wrote a letter to President Trump urging him to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, which he did three weeks later on June 1st. On September 5th, 2017, Robert O’Harrow Jr. of the

Spiders defend their Web Of Denial – to the tune of at least $92m

As Democrat Senators spent their second day this week outlining the cash funneled to front groups in the fossil fuel-funded climate Web of Denial, predictably, some of the spiders started crawling out of that web. The senators received a sharply worded missive from a line-up of 22 free market groups, 21 of whom have received

Competitive Enterprise Institute NYT Ad Signatories Got $10 Million from Exxon

This week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute ran a full page ad in the New York Times complaining that the undersigned groups were being attacked in the course of several state investigations into Exxon’s campaign of climate denial.  Not wanting to give the CEI broadcast any oxygen, but what really caught our eye is the list

Exxon Mimics Big Tobacco’s First Amendment Plea

ExxonMobil’s claim last week in a Texas court that the First Amendment bars an attorney general’s investigation into its history of climate denial is probably a loser. Big Tobacco tried to use the First Amendment defense to shield itself when the U.S. Department of Justice sued the cigarette makers for conspiring to mislead the public

It’s not just what #ExxonKnew, it’s what #ExxonDid next

In the wake of Inside Climate News and the Columbia University/LA Times investigations into ExxonMobil’s history on climate science, the company has been terribly busy telling the world that it stands by its scientific work. In a classic example of Public Relations 101, ExxonMobil’s lead spokes, Ken Cohen, has been huffing and puffing and standing up