Getting fossil fuel interests out of academia
As part of a wider campaign to delay climate policy, fossil fuel interests have strategically used their funding relationships with universities around the world to undermine academia’s ability to help address the climate crisis. For example, it has been documented that Exxon, Chevron, and the American Petroleum Institute, in 1998, developed a strategy to leverage academia to halt ambitious climate action. A strategy that included building “cooperative relationships with all major scientists whose research in this field supports our position”, while actively using PR firms to discredit scientists who were vocal about the dangers of climate change. More recently, a U.S. House Oversight Committee investigation uncovered a BP executive in 2019 describing the company’s relationships with universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Tufts, and Columbia as “key parts of [BP’s] long-term relationship-building and outreach to policymakers and influencers in the US and globally."