Message From the Editor

This week E&E News published a ground-breaking investigation exposing that major automakers General Motors (GM) and Ford have known for more than 50 years about the risks and potential impacts of climate change caused by the fossil fuels that power their vehicles. And not only that, these auto giants instead for years donated to climate science denial groups and, even today, are pinning their profits on gas guzzlers. Like Exxon, Detroit knew too, reports Dana Drugmand [[link removed]].

Recently, an open letter emerged pushing for the controversial herd immunity response to COVID-19. Read about the right-wing think tank [[link removed]] with ties to Koch network funding and a firm invested in fossil fuels that hosted the launch of the letter and its climate science denial parallels.

Los Angeles has a long history intertwined with the oil industry. As the city struggles with the painful challenges of affordable housing, Marissa Pianko details how developers have ended up targeting a former toxic oil field to help solve this problem. Her deep reporting joins photographer Peter Bennett’s beautiful portraits of residents affected by the development. Read the story [[link removed]].

Thanks,

Brendan DeMelle

Executive Director

P.S. Thank you to all the readers who have already stepped up to support our public interest journalism and research. If you haven’t yet, can you pitch in $10 or $20 right now? [[link removed]]

Detroit Knew: GM and Ford Were Aware of Climate Risks Decades Ago Too, Investigation Reveals [[link removed]]— By Dana Drugmand (10 min. read) —

Groundbreaking reporting this week by E&E News revealed that, similar to major oil companies like Exxon, American automakers Ford and General Motors (GM) engaged in early cutting-edge climate science research and that the companies were aware as early as the 1960s of potential climate risks that stem from burning the fossil fuels that power their vehicles. The investigation, published Monday, October 26, also describes how the auto giants largely dismissed those risks and actively lobbied to block action and fund climate science denial campaigns.

“Just as with the oil industry, the auto industry was really focused on potential regulatory threats from pollution to its business long ago,” Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law, a nonprofit law firm which helped uncover historical documents on Ford scientists’ climate research, told DeSmog.

READ MORE [[link removed]] A Right-Wing Think Tank Is Behind the Controversial Great Barrington Declaration Calling for COVID-19 Herd Immunity [[link removed]]— By Dana Drugmand (12 min. read) —

An open letter that emerged earlier this month opposing COVID-19 shutdowns and calling for a “herd immunity” approach to addressing the coronavirus — which already has claimed over 220,000 American lives — is one of the latest examples of how right-wing ideology and think tanks that have long cultivated climate science denial are now engaging in COVID disinformation and promoting messaging dangerous to public health.

Known as the Great Barrington Declaration, this statement advocating for herd immunity was introduced in early October at an event hosted by the American Institute for Economic Research, a conservative free-market think tank located in the western Massachusetts town of Great Barrington. This think tank, funded in part through a corporate investment firm with holdings in major oil and petrochemical companies, operates a network for the international business community that partners with other institutions backed by Koch and fossil fuel cash.

READ MORE [[link removed]] Affordable Housing Developers Set their Sights on Former Toxic Oil Fields in LA [[link removed]]— By Marissa Pianko (14 min. read) —

On a busy corner in Vista Hermosa, a neighborhood just west of downtown Los Angeles, early signs of construction have begun on a 7-story, 64-unit apartment building called Firmin Court. The project’s developer, the Decro Group, has pledged that the new building, which is one of six active multi-family developments under construction in a five-block radius, will provide supportive and affordable housing for “chronically homeless individuals, persons at risk of becoming homeless, and low-income families.”

At a time where affordable housing ranks as a top concern for Angelenos, many see projects like these as signs of progress.

READ MORE [[link removed]] The Koch Operatives Behind the Trump Energy Department's Renewables Research Censorship [[link removed]]— By Ben Jervey (5 min. read) —

Two Trump Energy Department appointees with deep ties to Koch Industries and the Koch donor network have been burying reams of agency research that looks favorably on renewable energy, according to an in-depth investigation by Grist and InvestigateWest. Published October 26, the investigation reveals how the appointed high-ranking officials mandated political review of research, watered down reports, and slow-walked or shelved scientific findings and studies when they favored renewable deployment over continued reliance on fossil fuels.

Documents obtained by InvestigateWest reveal clear political interference in the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), much of it coordinated by Dan Simmons, the office’s Assistant Secretary, and Alex Fitzsimmons, the former Chief of Staff to Simmons. While the article notes the lobbying histories of DOE’s top brass, Simmons and Fitzsimmons also have recent ties to the Koch network.

READ MORE [[link removed]] Trump Pledges to 'Save Your Fracking' and Biden Says No Ban — But Most Pennsylvania Voters Oppose Fracking [[link removed]]— By Sharon Kelly (8 min. read) —

“To all the people of Pennsylvania, hear this warning,” President Trump said at a campaign rally last week in Erie, Pennsylvania. “If Biden’s elected, he will wipe out your energy industry.”

“Only by voting for me,” Trump added, “can you save your fracking in Pennsylvania.”

If Trump had made those comments in 2014, “saving” fracking might have been a popular position, polls from the time suggest. That year, 64 percent of Pennsylvanians said they had a favorable view of the natural gas drilling industry, and just 15 percent voiced strong opposition, a poll by Franklin & Marshall College found.

READ MORE [[link removed]] Book Review | The Crash of Flight 3804: A Lost Spy, a Daughter’s Quest, and the Deadly Politics of the Great Game for Oil [[link removed]]— By Frank Kaminski, Resilience (9 min. read) —

The Crash of Flight 3804 is a triumph on two fronts. First, it’s a comprehensive history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East that manages the uncommon feat of placing this history into its proper context: America’s need for Middle Eastern oil. It also serves as an exciting, moving account of author Charlotte Dennett’s decades-long journey to expose the truth behind her father’s death. Her father, Daniel Dennett, was a U.S. counterintelligence agent stationed in Beirut, Lebanon, during and after World War II, and his job was to protect oil and other American interests from fierce competition from America’s wartime allies. In his daughter’s view, this likely led him to become one of America’s first victims of “the Great Game for Oil,” as she calls it.

READ MORE [[link removed]] From the Climate Disinformation Database: American Institute for Economic Research [[link removed]]

American Institute for Economic Research [[link removed]] (AIER) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in the town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. This conservative free-market think tank runs the Bastiat Society program, a network for the international business community that partners with other institutions backed by Koch and fossil fuel cash. AIER also owns American Investment Services, an investment advisory group with holdings in firms like Chevron, Duke Energy, Dow Chemical, and ExxonMobil, whose earnings are then put back into AIER. The think tank was behind the contested Great Barrington Declaration [[link removed]] promoting herd immunity as a COVID-19 strategy.

Read the full profile [[link removed]] and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database [[link removed]] or our new Koch Network Database [[link removed]].

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