Message From the Editor

In last week’s newsletter, we featured the profile of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) from our Climate Disinformation Database. This Ottawa-based think tank is a member of the Atlas Network, a web of hundreds of right-wing groups worldwide that push free-market ideals. The Atlas Network has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, and many of its member organizations have campaigned against climate legislation and supported climate science denial.

This week, we’re proud to share a piece by Geoff Dembicki, co-published by the Guardian and the Narwhal and based on our research into the Atlas Network. In it, Geoff, who is also a DeSmog writer, investigates Atlas and MLI’s attempts to undermine Indigenous energy rights in Canada.

He brought to light a yearslong campaign by MLI and Atlas to push back against Canada’s efforts to align its laws with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which strengthens Indigenous rights to contest projects, including pipelines and drilling, on their traditional lands.

Geoff also illuminated how, throughout this campaign to block UNDRIP, MLI not only worked to influence the media and politicians. It also assiduously cultivated a network of Indigenous advisors to speak out against the declaration and “shield” it from opposition and criticism.

These tactics are but another example of what Geoff reported on for us last month: that support from Indigenous communities is increasingly being seen as “the magic sauce” for getting fossil fuel projects approved.

Have a story tip or feedback? Get in touch: editor@desmog.com. Our UK team has been charting the fossil fuel ties of potential successors to Boris Johnson. Stay in the loop with our UK newsletter!
Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director
P.S. Our research into groups like Atlas and MLI is made possible by generous donors. If you’d like to help, can you chip in $10 or $20 right now?

Image credit: wanderin' wolfgang (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Voters Agree: Fossil Fuel Funding in Climate Research Is a Massive Conflict of Interest​​​​​​​

— By Celina Scott-Buechler, Common Dreams (4 min. read) —

Over the past few years, fossil fuel combustion has been responsible for approximately 73 percent of the United States’s greenhouse gas emissions and 89 percent of the world’s emissions. As these emissions have accumulated in the atmosphere, they have increased global average temperatures by more than 1 degree Celsius since preindustrial times — almost 10 percent — and with them the intensity and frequency of costly natural disasters.

Liz Truss Cites Economist Linked to Climate Deniers in Defence of Her Tax Cut Plan​​​​​​​

— By Adam Barnett (3 min. read) —

The current favourite to replace UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has defended her plans to slash taxes by citing an economist from a think-tank with ties to the country’s main climate science denial group.

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss referenced a Daily Express article earlier today by Patrick Minford, a free-market economist who is best known for his dubious 2017 claim that a no-deal Brexit would boost the UK economy by £135 billion per year.

Aviation Tycoon Paid for Anti-Net Zero MP’s Tory Gala Ticket

— By Adam Barnett, Phoebe Cooke, and Michaela Herrmann (3 min. read) —

A leading opponent of climate action in parliament accepted a £2,000 gift from a businessman in the aviation industry, highlighting concerns over the influence of high-carbon interests on British politics.

Wycombe MP Steve Baker – who leads an anti-net zero grouping in parliament – attended the Conservative Party’s summer ball last month with a ticket paid for by aviation fuel executive Christopher Harborne, according to the latest register of interests.

As Alarm Over Plastic Grows, Saudis Ramp Up Production in the US

— By Mark Schapiro (16 min. read) —

The flares started last December, an event Errol Summerlin, a former legal-aid lawyer, and his neighbors had been bracing for since 2017. After the flames, nipping at the night sky like lashes from a heavenly monster, came the odor, a gnarled concoction of steamed laundry and burned tires.

Thus did the Saudi royal family mark the expansion of its far-flung petrochemical empire to San Patricio County, Texas, a once-rural stretch of flatlands across Nueces Bay from Corpus Christi.

Steve Baker Reboots Libertarian Bloc With Funding From Head of Climate Denial Group

— By Rich Collett-White and Adam Barnett (5 min. read) —

Conservative MP Steve Baker is reviving a Thatcherite pressure group with financial support from the chair of the UK’s principal climate science denial group, raising fears the organisation will serve as a new hub of opposition to green policies.

Baker, a staunch critic of Britain’s net-zero measures, is due to relaunch Conservative Way Forward, which faced scrutiny in 2015 following the suicide of one of its employees, at an event in Westminster on Monday.

From the Climate Disinformation Database: Ross McKitrick

Ross McKitrick is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Guelph. McKitrick is also a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Vancouver, British Columbia. McKitrick’s areas of specialization include environmental economics and policy analysis. He co-authored the 2002 book Taken By Storm (website now defunct) with fellow climate skeptic Christopher Essex. According to the book’s description, the “assumption that we know what is happening and how to control it” regarding climate change is false. The revised version was released in 2008.
Read his full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database and Koch Network Database.