Are the Estonians funding the NRSP?

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Canada’s latest and greatest climate change denial group, the Natural Resource Stewardship Project, has come up with a laughable reason for hiding it’s funding sources. According to a recent CanWest News Service article, the NRSP‘s executive director, Tom Harris, states that “a confidentiality agreement doesn’t allow him to say whether energy companies are funding his group.”

Unfortunately for Harris and his secretive little club, such a a statement does not diffuse speculation, it only begs the question more. What organization could be funding Harris’s NRSP that necessitates such secrecy? Even the Competitive Enterprise Intstitute, an industry front group with a great deal more profile than the NRSP, readliy admits they lobby-for-dollars on behalf of of industry leaders like Ford Motor Company and ExxonMobil.

I actually e-mailed Harris a few weeks ago when his new group was formed asking who was backing the NRSP. Harris promptly responded that I would receive “a package” shortly. I haven’t heard from Harris, but I have definitely become more wary of misshapen letters and unlabelled packages delivered to my office.

So DeSmog fans, who is funding the Not Really Science People? Since Harris won’t tell us, we can speculate to our hearts content.

Best guess wins a much-coveted DeSmog t-shirt. To kick things off, I’m betting the NRSP is being funded by the Estonian government, who has a vested interest in denying the realities of climate change due to its well-known obsession with Kiwi-fruit.

 

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Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmogBlog.

He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning.

Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks.

Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder.

Prior to DeSmogBlog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health.

In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications.

Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

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