University funding from fossil fuels slowing switch to green energy – report
By Dharna Noor, The Guardian.
Excerpt: Fossil fuel companies’ funding of universities’ climate-focused efforts is delaying the green transition, according to the most extensive peer-reviewed study to date of the industry’s influence on academia. For the study, published in the journal WIREs Climate Change on Thursday, six researchers pored over thousands of academic articles on industries’ funding of research from the past two decades. ...During the past two decades, non-profits, campus organizers and a small group of scholars have sounded the alarm about oil companies’ influence in academia, drawing parallels to tobacco, pharmaceuticals and food producers who have also funded scholarship. In the new study, researchers found that out of roughly 14,000 peer-reviewed articles about conflicts of interest, bias and research funding across all industries from 2003 to 2023, only seven mentioned fossil fuels. ...“We find that universities are an established yet under-researched vehicle of climate obstruction by the fossil fuel industry,” the authors write. The analysis found that oil companies have long influenced universities to focus on climate efforts that would enshrine a future for fossil fuels, despite experts’ repeated warnings that the world must stop burning coal, oil and gas to avert the worst climate impacts....