For 20 Years, ExxonMobil Paid Climate Liars To Weaken Support For Climate Action Across Latin America

Exxon funded rightwing thinktanks to spread climate change denial across Latin America, according to hundreds of previously unpublished documents that reveal a coordinated campaign to make the global south “less inclined” to support the UN-led climate treaty process. The documents, which include copies of the actual cheques Exxon sent, consist of internal documents and years of correspondence between the Texas-based fossil fuel company and Atlas Network, a US-based coalition of more than 500 free-market thinktanks and other partners worldwide.

The money Exxon sent to Atlas Network helped finance Spanish and Chinese translations of English books denying that human-caused climate change is real; flights to Latin American cities for American climate deniers; and public events that allowed those deniers to reach local media and network with politicians. One goal was to convince the developing world of “the adverse effects of global climate change treaties”, Atlas Network explained to its fossil fuel donor.

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But by 1997, Exxon was “comfortable with the support we provide to US-based organisations and on US-related issues”. It asked Atlas Network for help “in nurturing free-market thinktanks outside the United States”, particularly in Asia, the former Soviet Union, Europe and Latin America. The following year, Exxon sent a $50,000 check to Atlas Network – which adjusted for inflation would be roughly $100,000 today. The oil company’s goal was to grow “international groups which have the ability to influence government policies”. Atlas Network later reported back that its partners in Latin America had produced a Spanish translation of a booklet by Fred Singer entitled “The Scientific Case Against the Global Climate Treaty” which claimed “there is no significant scientific support for a global ‘threat’ of climate warming”.

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At least one event featured the now-deceased US climate denier Patrick Michaels, who had referred to climate change as “hysteria”. Atlas Network had aimed to introduce Michaels and other American speakers to “ministers, politicians, editorial boards [and] business leaders”.

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Ed. - I guess the good news here (so to speak) is that Patrick Michaels and Fred Singer are both dead, so there's that.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/03/exxon-funded-thinktanks-to-spread-climate-denial-in-latin-america-documents-reveal