Meet the DC thinktank giving big oil ‘the opportunity to say they’ve done something’

The fossil fuel industry has a long history of hiring PR firms to sow confusion about climate change - but the Climate Leadership Council isn't just a front group

The New York Times op-ed opened on a provocative note: There is a real danger that the climate debate is deteriorating into a game of name-calling," it began, with oil and gas companies all too often portrayed as opponents of climate progress."

The January 2020 article was written by the founder of the Climate Leadership Council (CLC), a Washington DC-based non-profit that advocates for scrapping certain fossil fuel regulations and replacing them with a carbon tax, with the proceeds from the tax returned to Americans as a rebate. Among the group's corporate founding members" are some of the world's biggest oil and gas companies, including Shell, BP and, until 2021, Exxon - companies that have indeed spent decades, and billions of dollars, opposing climate progress.