Monday, December 04, 2006

"Shut up," they explained.

OpinionJournal - Extra: "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."


From a letter by Sens. John D Rockefeller IV and Olympia Snowe

6 comments:

Luther said...

Just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. This is going to be a depressing two years.

chuck said...

I still think that congress legislating the value of pi, making it exactly 3, was an excellent idea. It would have made life so much simpler.

truepeers said...

Man, the guilt from being the privileged JDR IV must be Olympian, in winter time, with a pile of snow.

Unknown said...

So they write a letter, so who cares? It is not even winter yet and it was 13 degrees here this morning. I can remember winters in Oklahoma when the puddles did not freeze and they had a freakin blizzard. That is why so many people do not believe this stuff.

Charlie Martin said...

Well, Terrye, I would normally agree with you, but as Senators, these folks have ways of making lots of trouble for Exxon. I think this has a clear, if implied, threat. See the WSJ article I (belatedly) linked above.

Barry Dauphin said...

In their letter the specifically mention the website TechCentralStation, apparently not realizing it is now Technology Commerce Society (TCS). It is a big deal when Senators wrtie letters to corporations and tell them to shut up or we'll get you. It is also a big deal that they target a website (actually a darn good one). Imagine such a broadside coming from the Administration against the NY Times (i.e., not concerning a specific piece of reporting but about its existence). Their gag order won't work, but it is troubling. Surely there are many similar quiet efforts from the watermelons.