Two Brown faculty seek to create international collaboration to expose cabal that denies climate change

Alleging a secretive, clandestine cabal has been conspiring to prevent politicians from taking decisive action to save the planet from impending doom, Brown University recently launched the Climate Social Science Network to track down and expose the conspiracy their scholars have theorized exists.

Faculty members at the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES) conducted a study they allege reveals the strategies, funding sources and even identities of those who have, for decades, worked in the shadows to undermine and prevent any progress in saving the planet from climate change, according to a release from the university. They have dubbed the conspiratorial cabal that the allege, "the climate change countermovement."

“We want to be the hub of a global network that will build this field,” J. Timmons Roberts, a professor at IBES and a co-leader of the network, was quoted as saying in the release. “We think it’s one of the most important areas on climate change that has not been systematically researched.”

At the heart of the conspiracy is the fossil fuel industry, which is pulling the strings on numerous lobbyists, philanthropists and think tanks from behind the scenes, Roberts alleges in the release. Yet, Roberts also alleges that advocates from the railroad, automobile and real estate sectors are involved as well, all who Roberts speculates are motivated by the belief their profits are more important than saving the entire planet and species.

“There are a lot of dots that have been out there that people suspected but that nobody has really connected,” Roberts is quoted as saying in the release. “I think we're doing that in a way that nobody else is.”

Roberts is joined in the Climate Social Science Network by Robert Brulle, who came to IBES two years ago as a visiting professor. The pair expect to create a collaborative, international effort to expose the previously unsuspected conspiracy between companies with fossil fuel interests to oppose restrictions that would reduce use of fossil fuels.