CORPORATE FUNDING LINKED TO CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH
Newly released documents suggest Wei-Hock Soon, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, has in the last decade accepted more than $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry for his work denying that greenhouses gases pose any threat to humanity, according to the New York Times.
Soon, who has a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering and minimal formal training in climatology, claims variations in the sun’s energy to be largely at fault for global warming, with human activity as a much smaller factor, and says his funding has not played a part in his scientific findings.
“What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change,” said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, to the New York Times.
Though Soon’s acceptance of funding for work was previously known, the new documents prove that some monetary contributions have been tied to particular papers. Soon failed to disclose the conflict of interest in these papers, as per the contemporary standards of publishing.
According to the Times, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics often distances itself from Dr. Soon’s conclusions, and the Smithsonian has published acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change.
Harvard science historian Naomi Oreskes said in recent decades, scientific journals and academic institutions had been passive in detecting “research created to serve a corporate agenda.”
— Devin Blomquist
TEENS SUE GOVERNMENT OVER FAILURE TO ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE
Many youths have taken to the courts in a movement called the “Children’s Climate Crusade” to request governmental action be taken regarding climate change and future generations, according to EcoWatch.
Mary Christina Wood, law professor at the University of Oregon and author of Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological Age, explained the youth movement to EcoWatch as a request of the judicial system to require the government to do its due diligence in figuring out how to lower carbon emissions.
According to Woods, the request is based on legal grounds due to the Public Trust Doctrine, which lists the government as a trustee of resources that support public welfare and survival, and it requires them to maintain such resources for future generations.
Kids vs. Global Warming and WildEarth Guardians, two non-profit organizations, partnered with Our Children’s Trust to file a federal lawsuit, but their petition to be heard before the U.S. Supreme Court was denied in December. The organizations plan to make their claims in lower courts until the federal government is ordered into action.
At the state level, there are cases pending in Colorado, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington, but youth supported by Our Children’s Trust have filed petitions in every state in the U.S.
“As a youth, and therefore someone on the frontlines of climate change chaos, I have everything to gain from taking action and everything to lose from not,” said Kelsey Juliana, a youth plaintiff involved in the Oregon case, to EcoWatch.
— Devin Blomquist
