| Edit this page |
Discuss this page |
Page history |
What links here |
Related changes |
Deniers: William O’Keefe
DETAILS
CEO, George C. Marshall Institute.
President and Founder, Solutions Consulting, Inc. Member, Board of Directors, Competitive Enterprise Institute. Registered lobbyist, ExxonMobil Corporation. President Emeritus, Global Climate Coalition. Former Senior Vice President, Jellinek, Schwartz and Conolly, Inc. Former Chief Administrative Officer, Center for Naval Analyses. Bio here and here.
According to federal lobbying records, O'Keefe was a paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil, 2001-2005 on the issues of environment and climate change, with contacts with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. He writes frequently about climate change in his role at the George C. Marshall Institute.
O'Keefe has a long history of involvement with the fossil fuel industry. O'Keefe served as Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, a position he held until 2000.
KEY QUOTES
1 June, 2001
"The President said what most people familiar with this issue already knew: Kyoto is flawed and will not work."
Source: George C Marshall Institute website
30 September, 2005
"For almost two decades, the climate debate has been dominated by advocates and environmental ministries, primarily those from the European Union. They used the image of a distant environmental apocalypse caused by human activity to fashion an unsustainable and unachievable treaty and to demonize any one who questioned their orthodoxy. That orthodoxy holds that climate science is settled, that humans are the major cause of warming in recent decades, and that there is only one way to avoid a climate-induced apocalypse later this century. That one way is to drastically reduce green- house gas emissions to levels 60% below 1990 levels by 2050. That orthodoxy is not built on observation, measurement, validation, and objective analyses, which are the bases of scientific information and sound policy."
Source: William O'Keefe, "Climate Policy, A Reality Check," Remarks to Society of Environmental Journalists, Sept 2005 [PDF]
QUOTES
17 December, 2001
"We have no capacity to influence Mother Nature, and if it turns out that the majority of warming is the result of natural variability, ... policy actions that adversely affect the economy will do so without the benefit of improving the climate."
Source: "The Scientific Certainties Of Climate Change Doubtful," Chemical Market Reporter, 12/17/01
6 January, 2004
"The current climate change debate isn't about action or inaction. It is about whether proposed actions are consistent with our state of knowledge and other important societal priorities. Our nation should not be frightened into adopting unknown and unproven technologies until they can contribute to healthy economic growth and until we better understand the impact of human activities on our climate system."
Source: "Climate debate isn't about action, it's about knowledge," Atlanta Journal-Constitution 1/6/04
22 March, 2004
"Every independent and credible analysis has concluded that it would have adverse economic impacts on most nations."
...
"The range for the United States varies from about a 1 percent to almost a 4 percent reduction in GDP." That would translate into something between $130 billion and $500 billion annually, or $2,000 to $5,000 per family -- figures that seem high. A 4 percent reduction for a family making $50,000 a year would be about $2,000. A 1 percent reduction would cost about $500 a year, or about $40 a month. "The reason for a large negative impact is simple." "Forced reductions in CO2 emissions involve suppressing energy use. While energy efficiency continues to improve, it is an objective reality that growing economies require more energy, not less."
Source: "The Costs of Climate Change" UPI, March 22, 2004
3 June, 2004
"It should be self evident that until we better understand natural variability, feedbacks, climate sensitivity, cloud formation, water vapor, solar variability, and ocean currents, we cannot adequately understand the extent of human influence or the appropriate actions to mitigate it."
Source: "The Challenge of Making Climate Science Policy Relevant" [PDF ]
3 June, 2004
“Until we have a better theoretical understanding of these processes and better measurement data, efforts to build and use more complex models will simply squander scarce resources and perpetuate the conflict we have witnessed over the past decade.”
Source: "The Challenge of Making Climate Science Policy Relevant" [PDF ]
KEY DEEDS
4 April, 2002
O'Keefe was a guest on NPR's "Morning Edition," contributing to a discussion about IPCC Chairman Robert Watson, who called for regulations of the fossil fuel industries. O'Keefe argued that Watson's conclusions were not scientifically justified. The same program mentioned that ExxonMobil had written to the White House, criticizing Watson and requesting that he be replaced.
Source: [npr 4/4/02 http://preview.tinyurl.com/2xw84c Transcript, "US government decides not to back current head of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," Morning Edition, 4/4/02]
9 June, 2000
Appeared on an NBC Nightly News report on the Clinton Administration's "National Analysis of the Long Term Consequences of Global Warming." O'Keefe said of the report "Everybody who has read the full document comes to the same conclusion. That it is a document that is designed to scare, not to enlighten, to mislead, not inform. And that's unfortunate."
Source: Transcript, NBC Nightly News 6/9/00
ORGANIZATIONS
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Source: CEI website, 3/04
George C. Marshall Institute
Source: George Marshall Institute website 5/06
American Petroleum Institute
Source: "Earth Last," The American Prospect, 5/7/04
Global Climate Coalition (disbanded as of March 2006)
Source: wikipedia, December 2004 version of site (via archive.org's entries), and SourceWatch entry.
United for Jobs
Source: United for Jobs June 30, 2004
ExxonMobil Corporation
Source: House of Representatives, Office of the Clerk, Lobbying Disclosure Registration (via archive.org)