Morris, Julian

Julian Morris and euro pals

married okonski?!

===

reason fdn desmog

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May 6, 2019

Reason.comattempted to refute the findings of a UN-sponsored study on the rate of global species extinction. The report issued by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) predicted that up to one million species would become extinct over the coming decades as a direct consequence of human activity, and recommended “transformative change” to halt the widespread destruction of global ecosystems. Reason categorized the study’s conclusion as another example in “a long line of apocalyptic extinction predictions.” [33], [34], [35]

April 22, 2016

Julian Morris, Vice President of research at the Reason Foundation,published an article in the Orange County Register titled “Climate pact likely to do more harm than good” where he contends that the agreement reached at the Paris COP21 climate conference would be “unlikely to significantly reduce any climate-related harms.” [31]

“[B]y slowing down the rate of innovation and economic growth across the world, it could seriously hinder adaptation. And those consequences could be dire, especially for the poor who currently suffer most from climate-related problems,” Morris writes. [31]

According to Julian Morris, “economic analyses suggest that global warming of up to 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels could generate net benefits for humanity.” He lists benefits as decreased heating costs, fewer temperature-related deaths, and increases in global crop production. [31]

March, 2016

The Reason Foundation was one of nearly 100 think tanks named in a**subpoena to ExxonMobil for communications** since January 1, 1977 with groups addressing issues with respect to climate change. [30] AG walker]

Ronald Bailey, science correspondent at Reason magazine, describes the subpoena as a “anti-free-speech effort”and argues that they are “a huge step in the direction of using the courts to silence people who hold views that differ from those of powerful government officials.” [30]

Bailey notes that “Over the years I have worked with several groups listed in the USVI subpoena on a wide variety of public policy issues relevant to resisting government encroachments into free markets, mostly not having anything to do with climate change.” [30]

2015

Since Pope Francis released the Encyclical on the Environment, the Reason Foundation has released a number of articlescritical of him. Reason magazine has said Pope Francis “doesn’t really understand capitalism,” and “hates free markets.” [16], [17], [18]

August 6, 2015

The Reason Foundation released a study, titled “Assessing the Social Costs and Benefits of Regulating Carbon Emissions,” by Julian Morris(the Foundation’s Vice President of Research.)[20]

According to the Reason Foundation, the study “shows that estimates of the ‘social cost of carbon” have been falling’ — and would fall further if new scientific evidence were incorporated. The study calls into question the analyses used to underpin the Obama administration’s newClean Power Plan and other federal regulations targeting emissions of greenhouse gases.” [21]

August, 2015

Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason Magazine, quotes the industry-funded American Enterprise Institute, as well as Patrick Michaels and Paul Knappenberger of the Cato Institute in an article titled “Obama’s Clean Power Plan Would Reduce Global Warming by -0.015 Degree By 2100.”[22]

In the piece, Bailey also promotes his book, The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century,where he says that “the [climate] models are running hotter than actual temperatures.” he admits that his book was made possible by the Cato Institute, which “generously provided me with a grant that allowed me the time to write The End of Doom.”

January, 2015

Reason magazine released an overall positive review of Alex Epstein‘s book,The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. Epstein is the founder of the Center for Industrial Progress (:{CIP:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:), a group that regularly publishes articles “debunking” environmentalism, and promoting the oil and coal industries. [19]

According to Ronald Bailey, Alex Epstein “makes a persuasive case that cheap and abundant fossil fuels are critical to enabling billions to escape conditions of Malthusian privation.”

August 29, 2014

Reason‘s science correspondent Ronald Bailey published an articlewhere he claims that doing nothing to prevent climate change would result in the same cost as climate action:

“In other words, doing nothing about climate change will cost future generations roughly the same as doing something,” Bailey writes.[23]

May 21 – 23, 2012

The Reason Foundation is listed as an official Co-sponsor (:{PDF:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:) of the Heartland Institute‘s Seventh International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7). [24]

June 7, 2002

Kenneth Green of the Reason Foundation signed a joint letter to President Bush on the :{EPA:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:‘s Climate Action Report.[25]

Those who sign the letter describe themselves as “opponents of the Kyoto Protocol and similar domestic proposals to ration energy,” and applaud Bush for his “resolution in the face of continuing environmentalalarmism.”

The letter describes the 2002 Climate Action Report as “a compilation and summary of junk science produced by the Clinton-Gore Administration in order to support their Kyoto agenda,” and urge the report to be withdrawn and “re-written on the basis of sound science.”

negin imi

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/exxonmobil-climate-science-denial/

no lnx

The truth about ExxonMobil's campaign to fund climate science denial

Elliott Negin and Independent Media Institute October 26, 2021

In a secret video recording made public in late June, a top ExxonMobil lobbyist—Keith McCoy, who was fired soon afterward—not only conceded that the oil giant's support for a carbon tax is a sham, but he also admitted that the company quietly financed climate science denier groups to stave off government action and maximize its profits—a fact that my organization, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and others revealed more than a decade ago.

"Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes," McCoy, then ExxonMobil's senior director of federal relations, said during the interview. "Did we join some of these 'shadow groups' to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that's true. But there's nothing illegal about that. We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders."

For all his candor, McCoy got at least one thing wrong. ExxonMobil did "join"—in other words, pay—denier groups to spread disinformation to blunt initial government attempts to curb carbon emissions. But McCoy inaccurately used the past tense. In fact, the company continues to fund them.

That videotaped interview caused some major heartburn for McCoy's boss, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, especially since theHouse Committee on Oversight and Reform has invited Woods—as well as top executives from the American Petroleum Institute, BP America, Chevron, Shell Oil and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—to testify at a hearing on October 28 on the "long-running, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming."

ExxonMobil has been at the heart of that campaign. Since 1998, the company has paid a network of seemingly independent think tanks and advocacy groups more than $39 million to manufacture doubt about climate science and stymie government action. Only Charles Koch and his late brother David, owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries, are known to have spent more.

In 2020, according to ExxonMobil's most recent corporate grantmaking report, the company spent $490,000 on three grantees—the American Enterprise Institute ($100,000), the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University ($140,000), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ($250,000). That amount is down from the $790,000 the company reported it spent on nine climate science denier groups in 2019 and a fraction of what it spent in the past, but there's a catch.

True, the company lost more than $22 billion in 2020 and cut back its grants across the board. But another factor for this decline is that ExxonMobil changed how it reports grants. As first reported by Salon, the company only listed grants of $100,000 or more in its 2020 annual giving report. In previous years, it included grants of $5,000 or more. The change reduces transparency and ultimately means there is no way to tell how much the company spent in smaller donations to support climate disinformation in 2020 or compare the grants it made in 2020 with previous years.

Only three denier groups—the same three named in the 2020 grantmaking report—received $100,000 or more from ExxonMobil in 2019. That year, their grants collectively amounted to $625,000. The other six denier groups the company funded in 2019—the Center for American and International Law ($5,000), the Federalist Society ($10,000), the Hoover Institution ($15,000), the Manhattan Institute ($90,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000) and the Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000)—collectively received $165,000. None of those grants, even if ExxonMobil continued them, would wind up in the 2020 report, given the company's new threshold.

Still, it's worth taking a closer look at where the bulk of ExxonMobil's self-reported climate disinformation budget did go in 2020.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Since 2014, ExxonMobil has given more than $5 million on top of its annual dues to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—a major player in blocking action on climate change for decades. A few years after becoming an ExxonMobil grantee, the Chamber gained some unwanted notoriety by financing a widely debunked report that then-President Trump cited as a primary rationale for pulling the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.

In 2019, however, the Chamber appeared to flip 180 degrees, declaring on its website, "Our climate is changing and humans are contributing to these changes. Inaction is simply not an option." The assertion that human activity is merely contributing to climate change is inaccurate, given that burning fossil fuels is the primary cause, but the statement did represent a quantum leap from when the association spuriously maintained in comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009 that "a warming of even 3 [degrees Celsius] in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans."

That said, the Chamber vowed in an August 24 press release to "do everything [it] can to prevent" the proposed $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill—which would slash carbon emissions from the electric power and transportation sectors—"from becoming law." And in a section on its website addressing climate change, the Chamber calls for "the increased use of natural gas" to make "further progress."

Increase the use of natural gas?! That runs counter to what climate science says about the need to swiftly decarbonize the energy sector, essentially trading one major carbon pollution source—coal—for another—methane, which is 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the planet. Moreover, according to a December 2019 study in the scientific journal Environmental Research Letters, the carbon dioxide emissions attributable to the boom in natural gas use over the last decade alone have now surpassed the emissions avoided by closing coal-fired power plants.

The American Enterprise Institute

Economist Benjamin Zycher might be considered the climate science denier in residence at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), which has received $4.86 million from ExxonMobil since 1998. Zycher insists that a carbon tax would be "ineffective," has called the Paris climate agreement an "absurdity," and rejects the scientific consensus about the causes and seriousness of global warming.

Zycher published his most recent broadside against climate science in the Summer 2021 issue ofNational Affairs, a formerly independent conservative policy quarterly that AEI brought in-house in 2019. In his essay, "The Case for Climate-Change Realism," he falsely argued that the "available science" does not support the notion that human activity is "the single most significant cause of climate change" and the "available data" undercut the assessment that extreme weather events are "evidence of an ongoing climate crisis."

As he has in previous articles, Zycher cited roundly debunked hypotheses for the primary causes of climate change, including a shift in northern Pacific Ocean circulation patterns called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which scientists have determined is incapable of causing a long-term warming trend, and "changes insolar activity," when, in fact, the sun's energy has declined since the 1980s while average global temperatures have continued to climb.

This summer was not a fortuitous time to be peddling discredited theories. On August 9, less than two months after Zycher posted his essay, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark, nearly 4,000-page "code red for humanity" report warning that the climate crisis is close to spiraling out of control and human activity is "unequivocally" to blame.

Zycher's main objective? To make a case, no matter how specious, for continued reliance on fossil fuels, which he falsely claimed are less expensive than renewables. Proposals to cut carbon emissions, including the Paris agreement, would have little real impact, he argued, and could "be accomplished only by substituting expensive energy for cheaper energy." In fact, according to a recent analysis by Bloomberg, it is "now cheaper to build and operate new large-scale wind or solar plants in nearly half the world than it would be to run an existing coal or [natural] gas-fired power plant." To be sure, no one would confuse Zycher for a scientist or National Affairs for a peer-reviewed journal. But he serves ExxonMobil's interests as a seemingly independent expert who continues to express doubt about climate science and the viability of renewable energy, thereby providing cover for climate science deniers in Congress.

George Washington University's Regulatory Studies Center

The relatively unknown Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington (GW) University received $140,000 from ExxonMobil in 2020 and $1.2 million from the company since 2013.Director Susan Dudley founded the center in 2009 after serving as President George W. Bush's "regulatory czar" at the Office of Management and Budget and, before that, running the Regulatory Studies Program at Koch-financed Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She currently serves in various capacities for other longtime climate science disinformation groups, including the Koch-founded Cato Institute, the Federalist Society, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The Regulatory Studies Center portrays itself as an "objective, unbiased" policy shop, but—like the Mercatus Center—its primary raison d'être is to weaken and quash government regulations, according to a 2019 analysis by the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. The GW center's main tools are reports and public comments it submits to Congress, and although it does not get much mainstream news media attention,it has found a receptive audience on Capitol Hill—and in the previous administration. Much of the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda, Public Citizen found, echoed the center's recommendations, including "dramatically reducing the cost that the government attributes to carbon emissions."

But should the Regulatory Studies Center be lumped in with climate science disinformation groups? In response to the Public Citizen report, as well as criticism from UnKoch My Campus and GW student groups, the center issued a statement in February disputing the charge that it rejects climate science. "Contrary to unsubstantiated claims, no one in the Regulatory Studies Center questions climate science," it said. "In fact, most of the Center's scholars do not focus on environmental or energy issues at all. Those who have written on climate issues address economic and legal questions, not the science."

Whether or not the center directly disputes climate science is beside the point. In the face of incontrovertible scientific evidence, most ExxonMobil-funded disinformation groups have revised their position on the reality of climate change. Instead of challenging the science, their efforts now tend to focus on denigrating renewable energy, overstating the costs of transitioning to a clean energy economy while ignoring the benefits, and preventing government action. That is exactly what the Regulatory Studies Center does.In recent years, for example, it has published papers and filed public comments opposing stronger efficiency standards for home appliances and vehicles that would dramatically reduce carbon emissions.

The center also has enlisted the help of unabashed climate science deniers. In the fall of 2018, for example, it tapped Julian Morris to file a public comment supporting the Trump administration's proposed rollback of Obama-era standards for cars and light trucks designed to increase fuel economy and, for the first time, substantially reduce tailpipe carbon emissions.Morris, president and founder of the International Policy Network and vice president of research at the Reason Foundation—two libertarian, climate science denier organizations—falsely declared in a paper published in March 2018 that the "effects of climate change are unknown—but the benefits may well be greater than the costs for the foreseeable future."

Millions More for Disinformation

The money ExxonMobil donated in 2020 to AEI, the GW Regulatory Studies Center and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce represents only a small percentage of the company's recent outlays to sway public opinion and blunt government climate action. It is difficult to document all of the company's related expenditures, but they include:

More than $5 million on Facebook ads in 2020, which is more than half of the $9.6 million that the U.S. oil and gas industry spent on the ads, according to an analysis by the think tank InfluenceMap that reviewed more than 25,000 ads on Facebook's U.S. platform. Many of the ads described natural gas as a "green" fuel source and argued that cutting carbon emissions would drive up energy costs.

An estimated $10 million in annual dues to the American Petroleum Institute (API) (based on how much Shell Oil recently revealed it paid). The U.S. oil and gas industry's oldest and largest trade association, API is working overtime to block stricter methane emissions standards. McCoy indirectly referenced API during the secretly taped interview when he said ExxonMobil relied on third parties to publicly represent its interests in Congress. "We don't want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing," he said. "It's getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be, for the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of Congress."

At least $100,000 in annual dues to trade associations (based on what it reported it spent in 2019) that have a long track record of peddling climate disinformation, including the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.[ipaa]

Nearly $834,000 during the 2018 and 2020 election cycles to 118 of the 139 climate science deniers currently in Congress. Over that same time period, the company reportedly spent nearly$41 million to lobby in Washington, but neither McCoy nor ExxonMobil's other in-house lobbyists have broached the topic of a carbon tax—the company's avowed top priority—with legislators since 2018, according to its quarterly lobbying reports.

So while ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods and his colleagues proclaim that they fully understand the threat posed by climate change and are "committed to being part of the solution," the evidence shows they continue to spend tens of millions of dollars every year to promote gridlock in Congress on the issue.The future of the planet as we know it hangs in the balance, but as McCoy acknowledged in his interview, ExxonMobil was—and still is—looking out for its investments and its shareholders' short-term interests, regardless of the long-term consequences.

Elliott Negin is a senior writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C.

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Background

Morris is the president, founder (in the 2001 rebranding), and past Executive Director of theInternational Policy Network (IPN), a UK-based free market think-tank. He is also the vice president of Research at the Reason Foundation,[2] and has previously worked with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London. [3],[4]

According to their website, the IPN is a charity based in the UK, and a non-profit (501c3)organization in the US. The North American arm of the IPN has received $390,000 from ExxonMobil.

According to UK Charity Commission filings (PDF), the IPN works under the umbrella of the Atlas Research Foundation (UK).[5]

An archive of IPN's website in 2001 shows that IPN “was formerly called The Atlas Economic Research Foundation UK, a charity established by Trust Deed in 1971.” The Atlas Foundation was originally founded by Sir Antony Fisher, who also founded the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEI), and assisted in creating the Manhattan Institute, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) and the Fraser Institute. [6], [7]

Atlas has also received funding from :{ExxonMobil,:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: including at least $1,082,500 since 1998.

Stance on Climate Change

“The science of climate change is far from settled.Arguably, it will never be settled. If climate is indeed a chaotic system, as it seems to be, then it is unlikely that we will ever be able perfectly to describe all the relationships between different variables in the system.” [8]

Key Quotes

“… universal adoption of the institutions of the free society would better enable adaptation to climate both now and in the future. It would also ensure that, if at some point in the future, a real catastrophe, whether human-induced or otherwise (including climate change), does loom on the horizon, humanity would be in a better position to address it.” [9]

Key Deeds

May 21 - 23, 2012

Julian Morris was a speaker at the :{**Heartland**:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:Institute's 7th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC7).

DeSmogBlogresearched the co-sponsors behind Heartland's ICCC7 and found that they had collectively received over $67 million from ExxonMobil, the Koch Brothersand the conservative Scaife family foundations.

May, 2010

Morris was a speaker (PDF) at the Heartland Institute's 2010 International Conference on Climate Change.[10]

December, 2006

Morris Contributed to Section II (Economics) of the Stern Review: a Duel Critique (PDF). Other authors of “The Stern Review: A Dual Critique” include the high profile climate skeptics Richard Lindzen, Ross McKitrick, Chris de Freitas and Bob Carter. [11]

The original Stern Review, a report commissioned by the British government, supported supported the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and advocated immediate action to mitigate the serious global threat climate change poses.

September, 2000

Morris wrote an article for the Heartland Institute titled “Ten tips to help our planet … revisited.” The article first denounces recycling, announcing that “we don’t need to recycle everything. We aren't running out of room for our trash.” [12]

The article makes other points:

“Energy supplies [especially coal] in the U.S. and globally are abundant and growing more plentiful over time” so there is no need to conserve energy.
Chemical pesticides and herbicides are safer than natural ones.
Ivory and fur trade should be encouraged internationally because if ivory could be readily sold “villagers would be even more protective of the elephants.”
Private property “is not incompatible with environmental protection: in fact, it is the best guarantor.”
“Buses and trains are less energy-efficient per passenger mile than cars and trucks.”
National parks should be effectively privatized: “Realistic fees, with the revenues staying in the place where they are collected, should be the main financial support for our national parks.”
Don't support Environmental Defence because they will waste your money.

Morris also provides advice on how to stay informed on global warming:

“Don’t rely on newsletters and fundraising letters from environmental groups to tell you what problems are real and need attention. Check out the materials produced by The Heartland Institute, PERC, Pacific Research Institute, Cato, and other organizations devoted to sound science, rational economics, and free market environmentalism.”

And, further on this point: “young children should have a chance to experience and enjoy the wonders of nature without being force-fed a diet of anti-business and anti-technology half-truths,” so should also learn from these “organizations devoted to sound science.”

The Heartland Institute is known for its continuous opposition to mainstream global warming science, and hosts its annual event to draw media attention to climate change skepticism. They have received signification funding from the oil and tobacco industries as well as from numerous right-wing foundations.

Affiliations

**The International Policy Network** **(IPN)** — President, Founder (Listed as such after 2001 rebranding; original founder appears to have been Antony Fisher in 1971), and past Executive Director.
**The Heartland Institute**— “Expert.” [13]
**Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)**— “Honorary Fellow.” [14] andpast member, Academic Advisory Council [15]. Also served as past director of IEA's “environment and technology” program. [16]
**:{International Climate Science Coalition :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:(ICSC)** — Member, Policy Advisory Board. [17]
Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development — Co-Editor. [18]

Publications

Morris co-authored Global Warming: Apocalypse or Hot Air? (1994) for the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Morris's books include Sustainable Development: Promoting Progress or Perpetuating Poverty(Profile Books, 2002) and Rethinking Risk and the Precautionary Principle (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999).

He is also the co-editor (with fellow skeptic Indur :{Goklany:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:) of the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development (EJSD). [18]

Resources

“Julian Morris,” Profile at the International Policy Network (policynetwork.net). Archived December 11, 2004.
“Reason Foundation Staff: Julian Morris,” The Reason Foundation. Accessed January, 2012.
“Julian Morris,” profile at the International Policy Network. Accessed January, 2012.
“People: IPN's Staff,” The International Policy Network. Archived March 13, 2007.
“Atlas Economic Research Foundation (UK) working as The International Policy Network UK: Report and Financial Statements” (PDF), July 24, 2008, Retrieved January, 2012, from charitycommission.gov.uk (Charity no: 262982).
“About IPN,” International Policy Network. Archived December 12, 2001.
“Founder’s Story,” Atlas Network. Accessed January, 2012.
Julian Morris. “Which Policy to Address Climate Change?” (PDF), International Policy Press, December, 2008
Julian Morris. “The Role of Market Institutions in Enabling Adaptation to Climate Change,” Reason Foundation, September 7, 2006.
“4th International Conference on Climate Change” (PDF), The Heartland Institute. Retreived January, 2012, from the University of Hartford web server (uhaweb.hartford.edu).
“The Stern Review: A Dual Critique” (PDF), World Economics, Vol. 7, No. 4 (October - December, 2006).
“Ten tips to help our planet…revisited,” The Heartlander, September 1, 2000.
“Heartland Experts: Julian Morris,” The Heartland Institute. Accessed January, 2012.
“Fellows and advisors,” Institute of Economic Affairs. Accessed January, 2012.
“About the IEA: Personnel,” Institute of Economic Affairs. Archived March 9, 2005.
“About the IEA: Personnel,” Institute of Economic Affairs. Archived February 20, 2003.
“WHO WE ARE,” International Climate Science Coalition. Accessed January, 2012.
“Editors,” Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development. Accessed January, 2012.
“Julian Morris,” SourceWatch profile.
“Julian Morris,” Wikipedia entry.
ExxonSecrets Factsheet: Julian Morris.
“Julian Morris,” PowerBase Profile.

TAGS:

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denial industry

julian morris

international policy network

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climate change denier

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climate misinformation

smogger

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denial database

http://desmog.uk/2015/06/02/how-julian-morris-led-british-charge-against-climate-science-2003

Julian Morris, the president and founder of the International Policy Network(IPN), was leading the British charge against climate science and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2003.

The London-based free market think tank published Adapt or Die: The Science, Politics and Economics of Climate Change just in time for the climate negotiations at the Conference of the Parties (COP) summit held in Milan in December.

Adapt or Die was a veritable directory of climate sceptics from both the UK and the US.

The foreword by University of London professor Philip Stott opens with: “This book is both important and timely because it confronts one of the most tenacious myths of the new millennium, namely the dangerously mistaken belief that the correct approach to climate change is to try and ‘manage’ climate itself.”

Morris contributed a chapter under the title “Warming Aid, Chilling Trade”, in which he made the rather hilarious claim that “The international establishment, including environmentalists… have bullied two of the world’s three largest oil producers into accepting the basic proposition that global control of energy resources is really necessary.”

The book was edited by Morris’s wife, Kendra Okonski, who was also working at the IPN.

Free Market Fire

The two met when Okonski was working as a research assistant for climate denier Fred Smith at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) – funded by Philip Morris, Dow Chemicals and ExxonMobil – after graduating from a free market college.

Okonski had gained a reputation, even among the free market zealots, as being “fiery” and determined.

Morris had been speaking at a conference called the Precautionary Principle held by American non-profit organisation Consumer Alert three years earlier, when Okonski was swept off her feet by his chiselled good looks and devotion to the free markets.

Smith recalls: “He was delivering a speech; he looked down at Kendra, with her big eyes, and thought: ‘scary’. It was a public policy marriage.”

Morris said: “Kendra is a beautiful, engaged and inspiring woman; she is the love of my life. We share a deep desire to improve the lot of humanity through the empowering institutions of a free society: property rights, markets and the rule of law. So far as I am aware, we came to those ideas independently, but I cannot speak for Kendra.”

Exxon Funding

At the time of Adapt or Die’s publication, the IPN was being heavily funded by ExxonMobil.

In 2003, the oil company donated $50,000 to Morris, his wife and their small team in Covent Garden. This would have nearly covered the entire £51,732 spent on their “climate change and sustainable development programme”.

The following year, this was increased to $115,000 in recognition of their excellent work in attacking climate science.

Martin Agerup, a contributor to Adapt or Die, was invited to London by Morris and Okonski to give a workshop on how to run a think tank. He saw no indication of generous funders behind the scenes.

“I even stayed at their private flat once, when they invited me over, and they were very cost-conscious. I think they were running on a very tight budget. I remember that they were very concerned… When I was invited over I had to fly Ryanair or something like that. A really, really cheap ticket.”

He added: “Climate was their pet issue, something they found really interesting but had difficulties finding funding for that, I think.”

Sceptic Think Tanks

Overall, ExxonMobil gave a total of £3.5 million to climate sceptic think tanks in the US during 2003.

The American Enterprise Institute was given $225,000, the Cato Institute $25,000 and the Marshall Institute $25,000. The oil giant donated a further $50,000 to the Friends of the Institute of Economic Affairs the following year for “climate change issues”.

This was entirely unrelated to the fact that the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London had just published Climate Alarmism Reconsidered by Dr Robert Bradley.

In the book’s foreword, Philip Booth, the IEA's Editorial and Programme Director, wrote: “scary climate scenarios are not supported by the balance of evidence. What is known with far more confidence is that a moderately warmer and wetter world has significant benefits to offset costs for many decades to come.”

The publication was written with the help of the Morris, CEI and Exxon-funded scientists Richard Lindzen and Pat Michaels.

Morris remained busy going into 2004. He gave a presentation at free marketeer Friedrichvon Hayek’s old stomping ground, the Mont Pelerin Society – one of many neoliberal think tanks that Hayek set up – and told the assembled economists that it would be the free market rather than regulations that would solve the problem of climate change, if there were indeed a problem.

Next time in ourDeSmog UKepic history series we recall the falling out between long-term friends and free marketeers Julian Morris and Roger Bate.

@brendanmontague

6/15

How Julian Morris Led the British Charge Against Climate Science in 2003. A look at Julian Morris’s ExxonMobil-funded, climate sceptic publication Adapt or Die.

How the Free Market Friendship Between Julian Morris and Roger Bate Came to an End. This post recalls the falling out between long-term friends and free marketeers Julian Morris and Roger Bate.

desmog uk

DeSmog UK’s epic history investigates how the former Institute of Economic Affairs director general, John Blundell, recruited British students with a flair for free market economics to the USfor internships at Koch-funded think tanks.

By the early 1990s John Blundell was a well established founder and supporter of several American free-market think tanks. So to help grow the neoliberal network, he organised eight-week paid internships in the United States each year for 30 British students who had demonstrated flair and a keen interest in free market economists.

Blundell asked the think tanks such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), supported by the Kochs, to take on some of the young hopefuls. “Fred Smith at CEI agreed but only if he could have Roger Bate,” Blundell confirmed.

Roger Bate (pictured above) was sharp, energetic and almost fanatical. He had met Smith in 1992 at the week-long “Université d’été des Nouveaux Économistes” in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Now a free-market economist, Bate was around this time completing an MSc in environment and resource economics at University College London (UCL). Bate was influenced by Jimmy Sheehan, a CEI “staffer” who was working on a book about the global environmental movement and a monograph for the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London.

Cross Pollination

Bate would, in turn, recruit his friend Julian Morris to the climate cause. The two men would have a profound influence on the germination and cross pollination of scepticism in London and around the world.

Morris was the handsome, charming and well spoken son of a chemical engineer from Epping. He first became interested in free market economics when he was a 22-year-old student completing an MA at the highly regarded Edinburgh University in 1991.

He read a startling and challenging article in the Financial Times which was based on a monograph by professor Sir Douglas Hague published by the IEA which called for the privatisation of universities.

Morris also read free-marketeer Friedrich von Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Societyand attended events at the IEA, where he met Blundell and Linda Whetstone, the daughter of IEA founder, Antony Fisher.

Naive Environmentalist

“I was myself a naive young environmentalist,” Morris wrote some years later. “I had just written a paper on how to establish a global system for restricting emissions of carbon dioxide and was about to embark on a masters course in environment and resource economics run by Professor David Pearce at University College London.”

At the time, there was much buzz about a conference due to take place in Rio de Janeiro that was being hailed as the 'Earth Summit' and global warming was a hot item on the agenda.

It was during his masters at UCL that Morris became close friends with Bate and became increasingly immersed in free market ideas and the think tank world.

“I am not dogmatic in my approach”, Morris told me. “I care deeply about the environment.”

Blundell would later arrange for Morris to fly out to the United States through the Charles G Koch Foundation, taking up a short internship at the Atlas Foundation - both of which Blundell worked for.

“Charles and David Koch are two of the finest, most upstanding businessmen and philanthropists in the world,” Morris told me during an email interview.

While in the US, Morris completed his research for his IEA monograph The Political Economy of Land Degradation in 1995. On his return, he set up shop as a consultant economist and worked for the European Environment Agency, Save the Rhino International and the World Wildlife Fund.

But over the coming years Morris would make considerably more money running think tanks that challenged the science of climate change and attacked policies that would reduce carbon emissions.

Coming up in January: The DeSmog UK history series continues with a look at how fossil-fuel funded scientists launched a full-scale attack against the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prior to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

@Brendanmontague

Key player with Roger Bate at the pro-corporate think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs. Director of the International Policy Network.Profiles:GMWatch SpinProfile UK

http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Julian_Morris

Julian Morris was co-director, with Roger Bate, of the environment and technology programme of the rightwing think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs until 2001. He is now a member of its academic advisory board.^[1] Morris has been director of the International Policy Network (IPN) since 2001.^[2] Bate was also a co-director at the IPN for a time.^[3] Morris is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Buckingham^[4].

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Global warming sceptic

In 1994 Morris and Bate wrote a book entitled Global Warming: Apocalypse of Hot Air, which disputed the likelihood of global warming.^[5] This was followed in 1997 with a book edited by Morris entitled Climate Change: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom.^[6] Both books were published by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Morris is also among the contributors to an IPN book which attacks the Kyoto protocol. It was edited by Kendra Okonski, IPN's communications director.^[7] The book's other contributors include several who connect to Morris and who have been active in the GM debate - Martin Livermore, Barun Mitra and Philip Stott.^[8]

Morris argued in an August 2010 article that recent floods in Pakistan and China were unlikely to have been caused by global warming, he cited alternative theories:

Underpinning both the floods in Pakistan and China and the drought in Russia is a change in the usual pattern of the jet stream. Each hemisphere has a polar jet (7-12km above sea level) and a subtropical jet (at 10-16km). In the Northern hemisphere, the polar jet pushes cooler air south and induces rain in mid-latitudes, while the subtropical jet pushes warm air north. But in mid-June, a kink appeared at the intersection, causing warm air to remain further north and east than normal and causing more cold air and rain to fall over northern Pakistan and China.

To make matters far worse, this kink in the jet stream was kept in place by a phenomenon called a blocking event. This kept the Russian heatwave going for nearly two months and massively exacerbated the precipitation in Pakistan and China.Such blocking events are rare and there is no evidence of links with global warming. However, an explanation has been proposed by Professor Mike Lockwood, an astrophysicist at the University of Reading in the UK, who shows in a recent paper that blocking events in winter are related primarily to solar activity (although he cautiously said in an email to me that he cannot say much (yet) about summer conditions as most of our work to date has been on wintertime which shows relatively strong solar effects in the Eurasian region.). So the culprit is quite possibly the sun, not human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Morris went on to argue that free market solutions would help Pakistan to deal with future environmental disasters, arguing that:

Last week, Pakistan requested that the IMF restructure a US$10bn loan because the floods prevent it meeting the conditions. But Pakistans reliance on Western aid (including these soft loans) has undermined incentives for economic reform. When governments must rely on local taxes rather than taxpayers in foreign countries, they are more strongly motivated to create conditions that generate wealth at home.

At present, Pakistan remains hidebound by restrictions on economic activity. Inefficient and expensive law courts make it difficult to enforce contracts. Restrictions on property make ownership insecure and undermine investment. Employment regulations and corruption make it difficult to operate a formal business, driving economic activity underground, where it cannot be taxed. These factors put Pakistan near the bottom of every ranking of economic freedom and are the main reasons for its weak economy and slow growth.

Instead of relying on foreign aid, governments of poor countries should remove these barriers to enterprise. Then next time they are struck by a natural disaster, people will be better able to cope and far fewer will suffer and die.

Morris attended a New York conference entitled 'Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?' alongside Kendra Okonski as representatives of the International Policy Network^[9]. The conference was co-sponsored by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which was created by Antony Fisher of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Atlas network was given $100,000 by ExxonMobil in 2008^[10]. The conference was organised by the Heartland Institute who described it as 'the world's largest-ever gathering of global warming sceptics'^[11].

Downplaying environmental risks

Morris has also coedited a book with Okonski entitled Environment & Health: Myths & Realities which, according to the IPN's website, illustrates that:

"On balance synthetic pesticides are beneficial to humanity..."
"The effects of “gender-bending” chemicals -– endocrine disruptors –- on humans have not been established by science, but scientific evidence refuting the idea has been under-reported by the media."
"Dietary nitrates (caused by agricultural fertiliser run-off) pose no threat to human health..."
"Expenditures to prevent low doses of radiation are unnecessary and a wasteful use of society’s resources, especially since natural radiation levels are far higher and cause no human health problems."
"Fears over dioxinpoisoning are now totally unjustified..."
"Overall human mortality from heat waves caused by global warming is not likely to increase..."
"The precautionary principle reflects a general “chemo-phobia” in society..."^[12]

Anti-precautionary principle

Morris argues that "The precautionary principle has become an excuse for imposing arbitrary regulations."^[13] He has campaigned against the precautionary principle as can be seen in the following publications:^[14]

Morris, J. (2002), ‘The Relationship between Risk Assessment and the Precautionary Principle,’ Toxicology, Vols. 181-182, pp. 127-130.

Morris, J. (2002) ‘The Precautionary Principle and Biotechnology,’ Int. J. Biotechnology, Vol 4, No. 1, pp. 46-61.

Morris, J. (ed.) (2000), Rethinking Risk and the Precautionary Principle, Oxford: Butterworth- Heinemann

Anti-organic food

Morris has been a key contributor to several BBC programmes raising questions about organic food. One of these programmes ('Counterblast', BBC 2, 31 Jan 2000) was presented by Roger Bate in his then role as director of the European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF). As far as viewers knew, Morris had no connection with ESEF, but an ESEF domain inquiry prior to the website's removal revealed that Morris was the site's administrative contact.^[15]

This suggests ESEF may, like the IEA's Environment Unit, have been synonymous with Bate and Morris. Bate and Morris also co-edited a book, Fearing Food: Risk, Health and the Environment,^[16] to which Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute contributed. Avery has been at the heart of the anti-organic campaign. Bate and Morris appear unembarrassed by the dubious nature of Avery's claims, repeating them in the BBC programmes they contributed to and using them in a publicity stunt to launch their book.^[17]

The book claimed the following were myths:

"Pesticides are bad for the environment and bad for human health."
"Antibiotic resistance in animals is spreading to humans."
"Nitrate fertilizers are a threat to human health."
"Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are bad for the environment and bad for our health."
"Instances of food poisoning would be reduced if we had more regulations."
"Subsidies are needed in order to ensure that food and fish are produced in environmentally sound ways."
"Packaging and transporting food is environmentally unfriendly."^[18]

Affiliations

Institute of Economic Affairs | International Policy Network | University of Buckingham

Notes

↑ "Julian Morris", International Policy Network, Accessed 3-Spetember-2010.
↑ "Julian Morris", International Policy Network, Accessed 3-September-2010.
↑ "About International Policy Network", International Policy Network, 5 December 2002.
↑ Julian Morris, Catastrophe and prosperity, Daily News Egypt, 30-August-2010
↑ R. Bate and J. Morris, eds. Global Warming: Apocalypse of Hot Air, London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1994.
↑ J. Morris, ed. Climate Change: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1997.
↑ "Kendra Okonski", International Policy Network, accessed 5 February 2009.
↑ Kendra Okonski, ed., "Adapt or Die: The science, politics and economics of climate change", International Policy Network, 1st December 2003, accessed 5 February 2009.
↑ Jonathan Owen and Paul Bignell, Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers; cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming, The Independent, 7-February-2010
↑ Jonathan Owen and Paul Bignell, Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers; cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming, The Independent, 7-February-2010
↑ Jonathan Owen and Paul Bignell, Think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers; cash supported concerted campaign to undermine case for man-made warming, The Independent, 7-February-2010
↑ "New book debunks environment, health myths", International Policy Network, 21 June 2004, accessed 6 February 2009.
↑ J. Morris, ed. Rethinking Risk and the Precautionary Principle, Oxford: Butterworth- Heinemann, 2000, p. viii.
↑ "Julian Morris", International Policy Network, accessed 5 February 2009.
↑ "Pro-GM scientists and the right", Norfolk Genetic Information Network, accessed 5 February 2009.
↑ J. Morris and R. Bate, eds., Fearing Food: Risk, Health and the Environment, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999.
↑ "Big Tobacco Behind Euro Anti-Organic Campaign", Norfolk Genetic Information Network, accessed 5 February 2009.
↑ J. Morris and R. Bate, eds., Fearing Food: Risk, Health and the Environment, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1999, back cover.

Categories:

Philip Stott is professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and a leading climate change sceptic. He also edits the Journal of Biogeography.

Contents [hide]

Climate change denial and pro-GM blogs

Stott edits his own campaigning website, AntiEcohype,^[1] which contains a number of his articles on topics such as climate, sustainability, biotechnology and forests. This website was superseded by a blog, EnviroSpin Watch^[2]. This blog was in turn superseded as of October 2007 by a new blog, Global Warming Politics ^[3]. At one time Stott also ran a separate 'Pro-Biotech' website. He is a regular panelist on a 'critical environmental programme' (his description)^[4] - BBC Radio 4's Home Planet.^[5]

Climate activities

Although he presents himself as an expert debunker of environmental myths, Stott does not appear to have had a single paper published in a scientific journal in the fields in which he most frequently applies this 'expertise', eg climate change or tropical ecology. His views are also generally at odds with the scientific consensus on such issues. ^[6]

In a letter to The Guardian^[7] on climate change, Stott attacked the scientific consensus as the problem, saying, 'It is surely time in the UK for a more adult scientific openness about the limitations of our current knowledge.' Yet in the case of biotechnology he seems unwilling to acknowledge any limitations or uncertainties. In fact, according to Stott, genetic engineering can already be confidently declared 'an advance vital for human development' and indeed, 'essential for human survival', being the 'finest of all human adaptations'. These quotations come from an article which he describes as 'one of my more balanced pieces' (personal communication).

Prof Stott also claims to use the tools of post-modernism to expose the 'religious' zeal underlying environmental concerns. Despite this anxiety to 'deconstruct' the language of what he terms 'eco-hype', he shows no comparable interest in unpacking the language of 'techno-utopianism' or of 'sound science' myth making. On the contrary, his own writings on biotechnology are full of religious zeal and what can only be termed 'bio-hype'. Here's Prof Stott on the human genome project, 'Today, we shall truly eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 1.17), for two teams of scientists... have come together to announce the decoding of the alphabet of human life. And we shall be as gods".' In another essay Stott talks of 'that Holy Grail of the human genome, our very own alphabet of life' and continues, 'We are truly standing on a great peak and a new country lies at our feet.'^[8]

Pro-GM

Prof Stott displays an extreme antipathy towards those with concerns about genetic engineering and presents them as extremists with semi-clandestine political agendas. Asked in an interview to account for the resistance to GM foods in Europe, he claimed:

the real reason for the hysteria is indeed the exploitation of the fears... by extreme environmental groups, who often have little interest in the 'science', but who have social agendas of their own. These groups want to 'stop-the-world-and-get-off' and they will abuse and misuse 'science' to achieve their ends. They are avowedly anti-capitalist, anti-development, anti-science, sometimes even anti-farming, and most certainly anti-American, and they want to position America, and its biotech companies, as the 'Great Satan.' Many were at Seattle and Washington DC for the WTO and World Bank protests, and they regularly visit St Louis in small numbers to attack Monsanto, DuPont, etc.^[9]

Affiliations and networks

Ironically, Stott's vision of extremists with underlying agendas exploiting the GM debate fits many of those with whom Philip Stott aligns himself. He serves on the Advisory Forum of the Scientific Alliance, whose founder describes himself as 'a businessman who is totally fed up with all this environmental stuff' and has suggested Tony Blair introduces martial law. He has also founded a People's Alliance - aka The New Party (the name of Oswald Mosley's first political party), which is so far to the right it has been labelled 'fascist'.

Stott contributes articles to Spiked, an online 'magazine' to which he has a link from his EnviroSpin Watch blog.^[10] Spiked is part of a semi-clandestine network of political extremists (the LM Group).

Stott also regularly collaborates with a small coterie of right wing contrarians, including Matt Ridley and Julian Morris, centered principally on the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the related European Science and Environment Forum(ESEF). The latter was set up with funding from Philip Morris as part of the tobacco giant's covert PR campaign to undermine industry-critical research .

Stott likes to emphasise that he is 'a totally independent academic' and that he does not take corporate money, but he appears perfectly happy to closely collaborate with those who do. He also authors material for Tech Central Station, founded by the conservative journo/corporate lobbyist, James Glassman.

Stott appeared as a key contributor in the Counterblast TV programme attacking organic farming, presented by Roger Bate as director of ESEF. According to Stott, "The idea that [organic] can replace other forms of agriculture is a dangerous lie."^[11]

Even though his anti-environmental conclusions correspond precisely with those of the pro-corporate right, Stott claims to be a 'Guardian reader' and that he 'comes from the left'. It is hard to marry such claims with someone who refers disparagingly to the Society Section of The Guardian as 'tear-stained'; labels subject areas like Development Studies 'dubious'; and implies environmentalism is socialism with a green face: 'Environmentalism has become the main vehicle for the resurgence of command-and-control ideas after the collapse of the socialist model in the wake of the Cold War. Discuss...'^[12]

At the end of May 2001 theU.S. Embassy and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where Stott worked at the time, hosted a Conference entitled: Seeds of Opportunity: The role of Biotechnology in Agriculture. Stott was the conference chairman. According to the conference blurb, 'Participation will be broad-based, including ... representatives from... environmental groups'. In reality, however, not a single representative from any environmental group spoke at the conference which was heavily weighted in favour of GM.

Indeed, the only environmental group known to have been invited to contribute, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), withdrew because of doubts about the accuracy of the information it had been given. According to Graham Wynne, Chief Executive of the RSPB: 'When we received the details, the balance of the conference content was different to that which had been understood at the time of the invitation to speak.'^[13]

Although he constantly deprecates 'ad personam abuse', Stott dismisses the RSPB as the ' "Our feathered friends are more important than anything else in the world!" brigade', labelling the million-member organisation 'nerds with binoculars'! (The 'Real' Green Dictionary - Philip Stott 2001) He also dismissed Dr Arpad Pusztai as a 'maverick' during a BBC Radio 4 programme, The Moral Maze. This piece of 'ad personam abuse' is particularly ironic given that Stott's views are seriously at odds with the scientific consensus on a number of issues.^[14]

The environment correspondent of the Guardian, John Vidal, has described Prof Stott - in Stott-like vein - as 'an alarming academic' who pushes George Bush's agenda (The Guardian, June 6, 2001). The director of the Environmental Research Foundation, Peter Montague, is equally blunt: 'It is evident that Professor Stott has abandoned his role as a serious scholar and has become a cheerleader for the biotech industry.'^[15]

Stott has been an Advisory Committee member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation since 2009.

Notes

↑ Forests, AntiEcohype website, accessed 3 Oct 2009
↑ Home page, EnviroSpin Watch website, accessed 3 Oct 2009
↑ Home page, Global Warming Politics blog, accessed 3 Oct 2009
↑ Philip Stott, It's time to visit the 'Home Planet' again..., EnviroSpin Watch blog, Tuesday, February 01, 2005, accessed 3 Oct 2009
↑ Home page, Home Planet website, accessed 3 Oct 2009
↑ see Jeff Harvey's comments on Prof Stott's lack of relevant scientific credentials
↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,458853,00.html
↑ (Biotechnology: Mary Shelley or Galileo?)
↑ Johan Bakker, Some Straight Talk About GMOs - Interview With Professor Philip Stott, Agriculture Online, 3 July 2000, archived on Monsanto website, accessed 3 Oct 2009
↑ http://greenspin.blogspot.com/
↑ Philip Stott, The ‘Organic Myth’, AgAir Update ("an international agricultural aviation publication"), undated, accessed 3 Oct 2009; the same quote is available as a headline and within the article at The Organic Myth: The Idea that it can replace other forms of agriculture is a dangerous lie, BBC Online, 31 Jan 2000, accessed Oct 3 2009
↑ (These comments were all taken from just one page of Stott's blog)
↑ Ref needed
↑ see Jeff Harvey's comments http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/Disgrace.html
↑ [http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/3187

Categories:

Martin Livermore is the Director of the Scientific Alliance.

:{Ironically, Stott's vision of extremists with underlying agendas exploiting the GM debate fits many of those with whom Philip Stott aligns himself. He serves on the:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Advisory Forum of the [Scientific Alliance,}: whose founder describes himself as 'a businessman who is totally fed up with all this environmental stuff' and has suggested Tony Blair introduces martial law. He has also founded a People's Alliance - aka The New Party (the name of Oswald Mosley's first political party), which is so far to the right it has been labelled 'fascist'.]

Contents [hide]

Background

Livermore was formerly a PR man for the biotechnology company DuPont, as well as for the agrifood giants Unilever and Dalgety. After leaving DuPont in 2001, he set up his own consultancy, Ascham Associates. He claims to have 'extensive networks in the food chain, public sector, NGO and think tank communities'.

The links on Ascham Associates' website are revealing. They include: CropGen, the Sustainable Development Network, Philip Stott's Anti-Ecohype site, Tech Central Station Europe, the International Policy Network, the Scientific Alliance, EuropaBio, Agricultural Biotechnology in Europe, and Spiked Online.

Livermore works closely with people involved in many of these organisations and plays a part in some. For instance, Livermore is a Fellow of the International Policy Network and has recently contributed a chapter to an IPN book attacking the Kyoto protocol edited by :{Kendra Okonski:(style="background-color:#fff200"):}:. He is on the Advisory Forum of the Scientific Alliance along with Philip Stott, Vivian Moses of CropGen, and Spiked contributor/ suppporter Bill Durodie. Sense about Science list a 'Mr M Livermore' amongst those from whom it has received 'financial contributions'.

According to Livermore's firm Ascham, 'Having had considerable experience in dealing with a wide range of stakeholders, including CSOs (Civil Society Organisations), in the biotechnology sector, we are in an ideal position to help companies manage such relationships sensitively and positively wherever possible.' However, in August 2000 Livermore's activities in this area gave rise to adverse publicity for his then employer DuPont when The Guardian reported Livermore's unsuccessful efforts to lobby such organisations. Livermore was trying to encourage them to withdraw from the Five Year Freeze coalition which wants a freeze on the commercial growing of GM crops. 'A UK representative of DuPont has sparked the behind the scenes row,' The Guardian reported, 'by attempting to persuade four of the largest and most influential partners in the five-year freeze to withdraw their support'. Annoyance was caused by Livermore's suggestion that these organisations, which had arrived at their position of support for the Five Year Freeze democratically, did not reflect 'the opinions and best interests' of their members. A spokesperson for Unison, Britain's biggest trade union, commented that Livermore's approach was 'based on insufficient knowledge and understanding of the issues'.

Livermore has written a number of letters to the national press in support of GM crops in the name of the Scientific Alliance. In late October 2003 The Times reported that, 'More than 100 leading scientists have made a once-in-a-generation appeal to Tony Blair to save British science'. The Times also referred to the signatories as 'leading scientists' and '114 eminent researchers' (Scientists test Blair and find him wanting). Among the 'eminent researchers' who had signed the letter to the Prime Minister was one listed as 'Dr Martin Livermore Plant Scientist; Independent Consultant'. Not only is Livermore not 'eminent' and without a doctorate, he is not a 'researcher' in the accepted sense of the word and his training was in chemistry, not plant science.

The letter to Blair was organised by Sense about Science. The following letter appeared in The Guardian on 3 November 2003.

Letters to the Editor

GM science

"The best scientists will work with industry," proclaims Professor Chris Leaver (Scientists complain GM debate was mishandled, November 1). In which case, the ones who wrote to Tony Blair must be luminaries. The letter's signatories read like a roll call of special interests. Take, for instance, Dr Martin Livermore. He runs an agri-food PR consultancy, prior to which, he did PR for DuPont. He is also part of the anti-environmental Scientific Alliance, as are several other signatories. Yet more belong to the biotech industry funded, pro-GM lobby group, Cropgen. Roll over, Gregor Mendel. A new breed of scientist is at work. Jonathan Matthews, GM Watch

Affiliations

Supporters of Nuclear Energy

Notes

Categories:

Professor Vivian Moses has worked tirelessly to promote GM crops and food in the UK, most notably through his role as Chairman of the panel of scientists of CropGen, the biotech-industry funded lobby group. He is on the advisory panel of Sense About Science, as well as being a Scientific Advisory Forum member of the Scientific Alliance. He has written articles on GM for a number of publications, including Spiked.

Vivian Moses formally retired in 1993 and is now emeritus professor of microbiology at Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London, and visiting professor of biotechnology at King's College, London. He is also Emeritus/Founding Director of The Centre for Genetic Anthropology at UCL. Throughout the 1960s, and for about 12 years in total, he was a staff scientist of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, funded by the Atomic Energy Commission, at the University of California, Berkeley. His research there was on bio-organic chemistry, principally control of macromolecular synthesis in microbes.^[1]

From 2000-2002 Vivian Moses played a co-ordinating role in the EU project Educating The European Public For Biotechnology,^[2] which looked at "the sources of informative material available to the general public" in the light of their importance in terms of the "present and future economic and social significance of biotechnology, together with current consumer attitudes".^[3] Among the participants in the project was Peggy Lemaux of UC Berkeley.

Vivian Moses has said that although the "public should be allowed to make their own informed choice about GM foods, it is essential that the biotechnology industry takes the lead in helping educate people on this issue."^[4]

The final report of the EU project, "Biotechnology: Educating The European Public" gives specific mention to CropGen, the lobby group which Moses chairs, as a "particularly noteworthy initiative... undertaken by a group of agricultural biotechnology companies active in the UK" who founded "CropGen to make the case for crop biotechnology."^[5]

As part of this mission, the CropGen website features a number of questions and answers. For instance, one question asks, 'What are the long-term aims of all this research into GM?' (question 68). CropGen's answer is, 'To continue to use our new knowledge carefully and thoughtfully for the benefit of mankind and the environment'. But several of Moses' publications display considerably more candor about the essential purpose of biotechnology. This is perhaps evident even from their titles, which include "From Cells to Sales", "Entrepreneurial professors", Biotechnology: A Guide for Investors, Exploiting Biotechnology, and Biotechnology: The Science and the Business, which he edited with Ronald Cape.

In their introductory chapter to Biotechnology: The Science and the Business, Moses and Cape describe many definitions of biotechnology as unrealistic and 'rather noble in character, expressing lofty aspirations' while failing to convey that 'biotechnology is not some academic activity, a kind of consequence of innovative laboratory experimentation or a kind of social crusade, but is itself an intensely industrial and commercial matter'. Moses and Cape add, 'Perhaps if pushed, we might describe biotechnology as making money with biology..' (p.1; emphasis in original). Biotechnology, they emphasise, 'is about selling'.^[6]

In another of his books, 'Exploiting Biotechnology', Moses describes biotechnology similarly, as 'fundamentally about making money with biology'. Alternative definitions are described as both 'elaborate' and 'a bit woolly'.

He is equally frank in Exploiting Biotechnology about the extraordinary extent of the commercialisation of biology: 'By the end of the 1970s a number of commercial companies were already working directly to generate saleable products based on the new knowledge'. Their corporate laboratories, Moses tells us, 'were almost indistinguishable from the best in the universities... And the scientists, too, were indistinguishable, hardly surprising as most had joined from university laboratories and many who remained professors accepted part-time consultancies with the companies.' (p.2) At no point does Moses appear to consider that this situation may in any way be problematic.

Notes

↑ See, for example, W. L. NICHOLAS, ELLSWORTH C. DOUGHERTY, EDER LINDSAY HANSEN, OSMUND HOLM-HANSEN, and VIVIAN MOSES, The Incorporation of 14C from Sodium Acetate-2-14C into the Amino Acids of the Soil-Inhabiting Nematode, caenorhabditis briggsae, Journal of Experimental Biology 37,435-443 (1960)
↑ Educating the European Public for Biotechnology, BOKU website, accessed 6 May 2009
↑ "Educating the European Public for Biotechnology", BOKU website, accessed 6 May 2009
↑ Vivian Moses, cited by Andy Rowell in "The alliance of science: 'Independent' groups share pro-GM common ground", The Guardian, 26 March 2003, accessed 6 May 2009
↑ "Biotechnology: Educating The European Public", BOKU, Coordinator: Prof Vivian Moses, May 31 2002, p. 223
↑ Vivian Moses and Ronald Cape, Biotechnology: The Science and the Business, CRC, 1999, p.2

Categories: