Suzuki shills for big corporations

In a recent Institute for Canadian Values posting, Joseph C. Ben-Ami demonstrates that – if we accept David Suzuki’s claims that climate change skeptics are motivated by their financial ties to big industry – the Suzuki Foundation is nothing but a shill for big industry.

After Suzuki insinuates that scientists who disagree with him are “shilling” for big corporations, Oakley asks him where he gets his funding. Suzuki replies that his foundation takes no money from governments and complains that “corporations have not been interested in funding us.”

Corporations uninterested? Is it possible that the Great Suzuki has failed to attract a single corporate donation to his feel-good campaign to save the earth? Not one?

Actually, the David Suzuki Foundation’s annual report for 2005/2006 lists at least 52 corporate donors including: Bell Canada, Toyota, IBM, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Microsoft, Scotia Capital, Warner Brothers, RBC, Canon and Bank of Montreal.

The David Suzuki Foundation also received donations from EnCana Corporation, a world leader in natural gas production and oil sands development, ATCO Gas, Alberta’s principle distributor of natural gas, and a number of pension funds including the OPG (Ontario Power Generation) Employees’ and Pensioners’ Charity Trust. OPG is one of the largest suppliers of electricity in the world operating 5 fossil fuel-burning generation plants and 3 nuclear plants… which begs the question – is Suzuki now pro-nuclear power?

For those that may not yet get it, the source of your funding does not necessarily preclude your ability to comment on important social and political issues. Neither does it imply that your research and fact finding will necessarily be slanted in one direction or another.

Those who immediately regress into hysterical cries of “THEY’RE FUNDED BY INDUSTRY!!!!!”, are proving that they have no more convincing arguments. They can’t win with their science or their research skills, so they descend into ad hominem and guilt by association fallacies.

The quality of your research, your findings, etc. should be judged on the ability of those findings to withstand serious review and scrutiny. On that matter, the Suzuki Foundation’s research and work is badly in need of some serious repair.