SMOKE AND FUMES Beyond Exxon and Beyond the US: The Expanding Investigations into Climate Denial preceding pages at crucial junctures, including in distribution lists for API research. To date, the primary focus in investigations of climate science and climate denial, including within the oil and gas industries, has centered on the United States. This focus is understandable in light of the extensive data that has already come to light, the documented effectiveness of climate denial efforts in sowing uncertainty, skepticism, and denial in the United States, and the demonstrable impacts of climate obstruction and inaction on US climate policy at home and abroad. Similar efforts have been documented within Europe itself—funded both by European companies and their US counterparts. Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) shed light on such industry denial efforts in Europe in a report released in 2010. CEO documented, for example, how BP directly funded the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank that promotes radical free market approaches to issues.202 IEA has produced a number of documents featuring some of the favorite arguments of prominent climate change deniers, including that “government It is important to recognize the relevant inquiry doesn’t end with those companies. As earlier noted, the coal industry has a well-documented history of climate denial, and a handful of the largest coal producers are also listed among the major carbon producers. Nor should that inquiry stop at US borders. The oil and gas companies involved in denial efforts operated worldwide, and knowledge was shared widely across the industry and within individual companies. It is highly likely that major carbon producers in Europe and elsewhere had notice equivalent to that of their US counterparts. To date, the role of European oil and gas companies in climate denial has received less scrutiny than their US counterparts. Nonetheless, a modest but compelling body of evidence demonstrates industryfunded denial was a transboundary phenomenon. Evidence suggests that European companies such as British Petroleum (United Kingdom) and Royal Dutch Shell (Netherlands and United Kingdom) participated in multiple aspects of US climate denial efforts dating back to the original Smoke and Fumes Committee, either directly through their US subsidiaries or through companies they later acquired. Both BP and Shell, for example, were active in the American Petroleum Institute, and appear numerous times throughout the To date, the role of European oil and gas companies in climate denial has received less scrutiny than their U.S. counterparts. Nonetheless, a modest but compelling body of evidence demonstrates industryfunded denial was an international phenomenon. claims about the seriousness of global warming are suspect” and that global warming will actually be beneficial to the planet.203 In the same report, CEO also profiled seven other prominent climate denial groups in Europe—the International Policy Network, CFACT Europe, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Instituto Juan de Mariana, CEPOS, Institut Economique Molinari, and Hayek Institute—noting that without mandatory financial transparency, it was unclear who was funding these organizations.204 Additional information indicates European denial groups were also being funded by American sources. For example, ExxonMobil provided the International Policy Network with nearly $400,000 from 2003 through 2006.205 Moreover, organizations known to be funded by ExxonMobil and the Charles Koch Foundation in the United States 25 have deep and persistent ties to organizations in Europe.206 For example, CFACT Europe, based in Germany, is the European branch of the US Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (US CFACT).207 While CFACT Europe’s finances are secret, US CFACT had received over $500,000 from ExxonMobil.208 The American Friends of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the American branch of IEA, received $50,000 from ExxonMobil.209 Similarly, individuals with ties to American denial groups often hold positions or have significant relationships with European denial groups. In 2010, Holger Thuss, founder and then Executive Director of CFACT Europe, was also listed on the US CFACT website as a staff member.210 Gabriel Calzada, founder of Instituto Juan de Mariana, authored a 2009 report declaring that renewable energy policies would destroy 2.2 jobs for every job they produced.211 That report was commissioned by the US-based Institute for Energy Research, which has received over $300,000 from ExxonMobil, as well as funding from Koch-affiliated sources.212 Much remains to be discovered about these operations, the companies involved, and their intersection with broader industry efforts around the world. One thing, however, is already clear: For major carbon producers around the world and the communities harmed by their decades of action and inaction on climate change, the investigations into Exxon are the beginning of this story, but they are by no means the end.