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Douglas Grandt answerthecall@me.com

Its not just what #ExxonKnew, its what #ExxonDid next
November 15, 2015 at 1:51 PM
Rex Tillerson Rex.W.Tillerson@ExxonMobil.com, David Rosenthal David.S.Rosenthal@exxonmobil.com, Kenneth P Cohen
kenneth.p.cohen@exxonmobil.com

DELIVERABLES
GRANT REPORTS
$ MILLIONS FUNDING

Schedule the retirement of all refineries, replace refineries with renewables, reinvent
ExxonMobil as an energy company

Its not just what #ExxonKnew, its what

#ExxonDid next
By Cindy Baxter | November 12, 2015 | Climate Investigations Center | Bit.ly/CIC12NovExxon

In the wake of Inside Climate News and the Columbia University/LA Times investigations into
ExxonMobils history on climate science, the company has been terribly busy telling the world
that it stands by its scientific work.
In a classic example of Public Relations 101, ExxonMobils lead spokes, Ken Cohen, has been
huffing and puffing and standing up for climate science, pushing everybodys focus onto the
peer reviewed studies Exxon scientists published.
But this isnt the point. Yes, its now clear that #ExxonKnew. As Neela Bannerjee of Inside
Climate News said this week about her investigation:
I came away with enormous regard for many of the Exxon scientists who researched
climate change and for the managers and executives who gave them the resources and

climate change and for the managers and executives who gave them the resources and
latitude to freely investigate a problem their own company was contributing to.
But its what #ExxonDid next is what we think the NY Attorney General should focus on in his
investigation. If Exxon had capable climate scientists on the case, and it knew all that it did,
then how could it have done what it did next?
Ken Cohen is, according to The Holmes Report, a lifetime Exxon employee, having been
with the company since 1977. Hes Vice President for Public and Government Affairs, a role
he stepped into in 1999 after having been Legal Counsel. He was promoted into this role by
Lee Raymond, company CEO and Chairman, who had long held skeptical views on climate
change.
Cohen is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the ExxonMobil Foundation, a position he
has held since 1999, and still holds today, according to the Foundations 2014 tax form, the
most recent available document.
And its the ExxonMobil Foundation that has doled out a total of at least $30.9 Million from
1998 through 2014 to think tanks running climate denial campaigns - blocking policy solutions
and attacking the scientific consensus on climate change.

Let us be clear: contrary to media reports, ExxonMobil did not stop funding denial in
2008 it might like you to think it did, but its still funding denial today.
According to Steve Coll in his book Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power,
Ken Cohen and his public affairs shop, in tandem with the K Street office in Washington,
oversaw contributions to free-market advocates who published, spoke out, and file
lawsuits to challenge policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or assess
the long-term impact of global warming.
To the public eye, Exxons Public Information and Policy Research section of its Worldwide
Giving report, published every year on its website, looked like the company was just giving the
usual cash to right wing think tanks that many corporations do.
In the early 2000s there are numerous grants that have descriptions indicating money
dedicated to climate change work. We saw this in the 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 ExxonMobil
Worldwide Giving reports.

In 2003, ExxonMobil earmarked over $1 million dollars worth of grants for climate change. In
2004, Exxon listed over $1.6 million in climate specific grants among the $3.4 million given to
groups who we know were engaged on the climate science and policy debate.
By engaged in the debate, we mean running full on climate denial campaigns. These were
the ExxonMobil-funded army of climate deniers.
For example, in 2003, the organization Frontiers of Freedom received two ExxonMobil grants,
$95,000 for Global Climate Change Outreach and $50,000 for Global Climate Change
Activities.
In 2004, there is a Climate Change grant for $10,000 to Steve Milloys Advancement of
Sound Science Coalition the junk science organisation set up by Philip Morriss PR
companies APCO and Burston Marstellar to challenge the science of second hand smoke.
Milloy then moved to challenging global warming, ozone depletion, etc.
Also in 2004, The American Leglislative Exchange Council (ALEC) got $222,000 from
ExxonMobil, $137,000 of which was earmarked for climate change issues. ExxonMobil is still
funding ALEC today.

Others who were funded for climate change work that year were the George Marshall Institute,
Heartland Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow
(CFACT), all organisations who are, to this day, running denial campaigns.
CFACT, Heartland and some of the CEI staff are planning to head to Paris this year, where
theyll be working with leading Republican - global warming is a the biggest hoax perpetrated
on the American People - denier, Senator James Inhofe.
However, the following year, in 2005, things got strange. The public version of Cohens
ExxonMobil Foundations grants contained no descriptons intead vague, anodyne
explainations (e.g General Support), whereas the forms the Foundation submitted to the IRS
contained more detail about the grants. The public version is published in Exxonmobils
Worldwide Giving Report, released each spring around the annual shareholders meeting, and
officially filed with the IRS as a 990 form.
The 2005 ExxonMobil Foundation 990 lists a total of $996,500 in grants described as
specifically for climate change-related work. The 2005 Worldwide Giving Report lists none.
.

There is so much more.

Information on all the Exxon-funded groups is available at ExxonSecrets
Check out all the ExxonMobil Foundation climate grants flagged in these Document Cloud
files:

2005 Worldwide Giving Report

2005 IRS Form 990
2004 Worldwide Giving Report
2003 Worldwide Giving Report
We have all these records going back to 1998 filed on DocumentCloud.
But we must ask this question of Ken Cohen:
If ExxonMobil knew all the science, and you now claim Exxon never suppressed its
scientists, why did the foundation you chair spend so much money on climate denial?
We have so many more questions:
Who, specifically, at the ExxonMobil Foundation solicited and approved these grants?
Who annually reviewed the deliverables and grant reports from the funded organizations?
Who was the point of contact at ExxonMobil for the grantees?
Did proposals come in unsolicited from NGOs like Heartland or Frontiers of Freedom?
Or did you select or conduct outreach to those groups to set up these projects?
Where are the ExxonMobil Foundation documents? the grant proposals, the grant reports
back to ExxonMobil Foundation?
Coming next: Lee Raymond and Rex Tillerson