Ten years ago, on this day, August 25, 2013, the vicious stupid thugs at the Institute for Public Affairs lose some corporate funding (but of course can then turn that around to proclaim their fearless independence).
Some of the world’s largest companies have dropped financial support and membership for the free-market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs amid concern at its vociferous campaign against action on climate change.
Petroleum giants ExxonMobil and Shell and large miners are among the multinationals that have confirmed leaving the Liberal-linked IPA, led by party member John Roskam, who this year was compared to Jesus Christ with his disciples by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.
Schneiders, B. and Millar, R. 2013. Climate hard line costs IPA support. Sydney Morning Herald, 25 August.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly xxxppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm423 , but check here for daily measures.
The context was that IPA had been a proud culture warrior in defeating Gillard’s carbon price and generally being asses. But this kind of “swinging for the fences” mentality comes with risks and costs, as we have seen already with the Global Climate Coalition and the Heartland Institute.
What I think we can learn from this is that there are are limits on what funders are willing to risk, and if you go too hard too far too fast some of your more mainstream groups which are also at the same time trying to spin a CSR (corporate social responsibility) line will clutch their pearls for fear of being exposed as hypocrites and being subject to consumer boycotts and so forth.
What’s interesting is sometimes the culture warriors just forget that there are limits and you saw this happened with Monkton with the swastika comment. They get trigger happy/high on their own supply and the Red Mist descends and they lose touch with what is going to fly and what isn’t.
What happened next
The IPA to my knowledge has continued to be asshat on climate change but I have not bothered to see whether they have dialled it down a notch, maybe someone can tell us.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.