Over 200 leading scientists – including former NASA head James Hansen, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning psychiatrist Eric Chivian and the former director of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum James Powell – on Thursday, January 25, 2018 released a letter urging New York’s American Museum of Natural History to cut ties to donor and board member, Rebekah Mercer.

“The most important asset any museum has is its credibility. This can be damaged by ties to donors and board members who are publicly known for investing in climate science obfuscation and opposing environmental solutions,” the letter reads.

The scientists refer to billionaire Mercer as an “anti-science propagandist and funder of climate science misinformation.” While Mercer’s unmatched support for Breitbart.com and the Trump campaign are well known, her funding of climate science denial campaigns is starting to garner more attention.

The Mercer Family Foundation, led by Rebekah Mercer, has ramped up its funding of groups who attack climate science and policy solutions over the past decade. The foundation gave tens of millions of dollars to a list of organisations that include ringleaders of climate denial such as the Heartland Institute, which received $5.9 million from the Mercers from 2008-2016, more than the $4 million donated by the Mercers to the American Museum of Natural History.

Previously unreleased tax filings procured by researchers at the Climate Investigations Centre show grants to Heartland Institute for $800,000, the CO2 Coalition for $150,000 and the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide for $125,000. All of the organisations maintain that carbon dioxide pollution is beneficial for ecosystems, agriculture and humanity, a position in clear conflict with the international scientific consensus on climate change.

The Mercers have also been big supporters of climate denier Arthur Robinson, whose Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine dismisses climate change as “false religion”. The Mercers donated at least $1.6 million to the institute, and Rebekah Mercer nominated Robinson for a National Science Advisor position while she was a member of the Trump Transition Team.

“The science tells us climate change is more and more urgent every day, the Mercer-funded network says the opposite. Science deniers should not be in leadership positions at science museums,” said scientist Sandra Steingraber, a signatory on the letter.

The letter was organised by The Natural History Museum, a nonpartisan nonprofit traveling museum that collaborates with scientists, major public museums, educators, artists, and community groups. In 2015 the mobile museum coordinated a similar effort urging the American Museum of Natural History to cut ties to then-trustee David Koch. More than 550,000 people signed a petition, including dozens of top scientists. Mr. Koch resigned from the board a few months later amidst controversy, after serving for 23 years.

“At a time when science itself is under attack, trusted institutions of science are needed now more than ever. The museum’s ties to Mercer risk undermining the credibility of the institution and eroding the public’s trust. That’s a high price to pay,” said Beka Economopoulos, Director of The Natural History Museum.

Climate scientist, Michael Mann, said: “Rebekah Mercer is a top patron of Breitbart.com, a mouthpiece for the alt-right and a megaphone for alt-facts. The platform’s assault on truth and science undermines everything the American Museum of Natural History is about.”

Earlier this week, activists organized a demonstration outside the American Museum of Natural History to protest the museum’s ties to Mercer. And a new petition campaign has been launched calling for the museum to kick Mercer off its board, warning the institution that it could suffer a “loss of public trust” through its association with Mercer.

This month thousands of people shared a twitter comment by environmental economist Jonah Busch about misleading information on climate science on outdated panel in an Exxon-funded exhibit the American Museum of Natural History. To the museum’s credit, the institution’s response was swift: it committed to updating the panel to reflect the best available science. But the initial online public anger showed that trust in the museum is undermined by the museum’s association with known climate science opponents.

“This country is having a crisis of trust, museums are the last bastions of trust and we have to be very careful of preserving that,” said Jon Foley, executive director of the California Academy of Sciences, which doesn’t accept money from fossil fuels. “Science has never been more important to the country, yet it’s under more attack than we’ve seen in decades. It’s worrisome to see prominent – not just donors but trustees – of major museums on the one hand supporting science, but on the other undermining it by funding groups that are deliberately trying to sabotage science on things like climate change.”

Africans have been urged to take advantage of investment opportunities that accompany climate action to earn some money and lift their people from poverty.

Secretary-General of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), Mithika Mwenda, who made the submission, noted that the renewable energy revolution currently being witnessed in the world provides affordable access to energy to people who would otherwise not have access.

He stated that renewable energy has also aided in the reduction of emissions, thus contributing to the attainment of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ambitions of countries.

“We are witnessing renewable energy revolution and in Africa and the rest of the world, this is an explosive sector,” observed Mithika. “We need to take advantage of the investment opportunities coming with climate action; there are a lot of resources in this to help address poverty.”

At the COP21 climate talks which produced the Paris Agreement, the G7 committed to allocate $10 billion into the African Renewable Energy Initiative (AREI).

Though there are concerns with delivering the promise, the Initiative, in its current design, will help cure chronic energy poverty by supporting decentralized, modern, off-grid and people-owned energy systems not only for lighting, but also cooking, driving smallholder agribusiness and charging mobile phones.

Mithika added that green energy has helped save lives by reducing indoor pollution.

Fossil fuel vs. renewable energy economies

Mwenda was addressing an event on low-carbon and climate-resilient development, held on the sidelines of the 2018 African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Most African countries do not contribute any significant amount of greenhouse gases but there are commitments in their NDCs to ensure that their development pathways are carbon neutral.

In a climate-constrained world, investment in fossil fuel-based energy sources no longer makes sense.

But Africa faces the dilemma of whether to rapidly revert to renewable energy, have a mix of both fossil fuels and renewables, or ignore the global call and continue in the unsustainable model of development pursued by industrialized countries which brought the climate crisis.

What is evident, though, is the fact that the global community has shifted.

This shift should make African countries re-think their priority energy sources and investment in oil and in some instances coal, as it may not make economic sense in the long-run.

The Addis Ababa side-event, attended by climate actors from across the continent, is organised strategically to get African leaders to focus attention on climate change issues.

As the first Pan African convention after the COP23, the event offered an opportunity to exchange ideas and reflect on Africa’s victories during the Bonn Climate Change Conference, with a view of charting a collective path towards subsequent Global Dialogue processes on the subject.

“This gives us the platform to develop common African narratives that will have impact on the global stage,” said James Murombedzi, Officer-in-Charge of the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

Moving along the development pathway

Climate change is no longer discussed as a limited environmental or scientific matter but as a development issue.

African civil society therefore looks forward to leaders moving from the rhetoric to taking real action on the ground.

“The momentum for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the NDCs is picking up, but the question is: are we moving with that pace in Africa?” queried Mithika.

Some countries on the continent have developed very effective policy and legal frameworks to facilitate the implementation in the areas of transparency, adaptation, loss and damage, among others.

But there are others stuck on bureaucracies to push the climate agenda forward.

“We need to think broader about what is the impact of climate change on development. What does it mean for agriculture? What does it mean for energy, for infrastructure? So we are really talking about development,” said Mithika.

He believes that the ClimDev-Africa programme can rally the African continent around in mobilising action and “we need to ensure that critical centres that support the livelihoods of the African people and which are weather sensitive like agriculture are created”.

The Climate for Development in Africa (ClimDev-Africa) Programme is an initiative of the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB), established to create a solid foundation for Africa’s response to climate change.

Courtesy: PAMACC News Agency