Rethinking the think tanks: how industry-funded "experts" twist the environmental debate

Sierra, July-August, 2002 by Curtis Moore

"Y0U KNOW US BETTER THAN YOU THINK," boast the ads of Koch Industries, a conglomerate owned by reclusive billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. And it's true: Most of us have unknowingly wolfed a burger ground from Koch beef, ridden on tires made from Koch's Trevira polyester, or escaped the rain beneath a roof covered ,with Koch asphalt.

But there's a darker side to the boast. Turn on National Public Radio most any afternoon, leaf through a newspaper or news magazine, watch a congressional hearing, or surf the Internet, and you will likely encounter the thoughts of Charles and David Koch(pronounced "coke"). The views will seem to be coming from an independent think tank--the Cato Institute or Citizens for a Sound Economy, for example. Yet behind these groups stands the brothers' vast fortune: Koch Industries is the nation's second-largest privately owned company and the largest privately owned oil company, with annual revenues of more than $30 billion. Charles cofounded Cato in 1977; in 1986 David helped launch CSE. The brothers are following in dad's footsteps: Fred Koch was a charter member of the ultraconservative John Birch Society in 1958.

Today, Koch money--and cash infusions from corporate allies such as Exxon, Philip Morris, General Motors, and General Electric--funds industry-friendly messages that fill our airwaves and editorial pages, and influence outcomes in the halls of Congress and courtrooms across the country.

Consider, for example, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Washington, D.C.-based organization bolstered by periodic bursts of funding from both cofounder David Koch and brother Charles. CSE is often described as a "consumer group," but according to internal documents leaked to the Washington Post, 85 percent of CSE's 1998 revenues of $16.2 million came not from its 250,000 members, but from contributions of $250,000 and up from Koch Industries as well as other corporations, including U.S. West and Philip Morris.

What kind of exposure can such money buy? In 1995, for instance, CSE's $17 million budget (made possible that year with grants from the Kochs, Archer Daniels Midland, DaimlerChrysler, and General Electric, among others) was spent producing more than 130 policy papers, delivering them to every single congressional office, sending out thousands of pieces of mail, and getting coverage of its viewpoints in more than 4,000 news articles around the nation. CSE's representatives have appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows and published 235 op-ed articles. What do they tell us? Among other things, that "environmental conservation requires a commonsense approach that limits the scope of government," acid rain is a "so-called threat [that] is largely nonexistent," and global warming is "a verdict in search of evidence."

These opinions were echoed on MSNBC, C-SPAN, PBS's News Hour With Jim Lehrer, and elsewhere by representatives from the libertarian Cato Institute. Cato "experts" are working hard to pound home a variety of anti-environmental points. They have argued that the global ban on chlorofluorocarbons--the chemicals that destroy stratospheric ozone--is a case of science being "distorted, even subverted." They've suggested that concerns over lead paint, asbestos, radon, and similar in-home poisons amount to "hysteria." And they've maintained that federally funded research at Harvard and other universities--used, for example, in the regulation of air pollution--"has frequently been tainted by poor methodology ... and even borderline cases of fraud."

Fashioning themselves after the very university research centers they deplore (or old-style "think tanks" that are only a step removed from universities), these groups have neither the neutrality nor the expertise of their academic counterparts. They are simply self-described as "libertarian" or "market liberals," as if this explains why their conclusions differ so sharply from those of academic or government researchers. No mention is made of the corporate money that is lavished on them--or the corporate agenda, which is, at heart, their raison d'etre.

Indeed, if the voices denying the existence of global warming or decrying tighter fuel-economy standards were obviously those of the oil, coal, auto, and similar industries, the messages would be seen for what they are--half-truths at best, and outright lies at worst--and ignored. But when the voices appear to be those of disinterested, public-spirited organizations advocating "economic freedom" or "sound science," the messages are often accepted uncritically by journalists--and then by the public at large.

John Stossel, an ABC correspondent, has become notorious for blurring the line between industry spin and science. On June 29, 2001, in a one-hour special called "Tampering With Nature," Stossel interviewed a scientist identified as "Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia" who not only discounted the dangers of global warming, but said, "Maybe a little warming is better." It is true that Michaels is a professor at the University of Virginia--but he is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and has been on a personal retainer from the Western Fuels Association, a group of coal-owning, coal-burning electricity generators located in the West and upper Midwest.