Date: Monday Dec. 14, 2009 4:37 PM ET
MONTREAL — Ottawa has been funding an asbestos lobby group that promotes the work of prominent climate-change skeptics.
The revelation comes as Canada’s delegation struggles to avoid being cast as the villain at the Copenhagen climate conference, and environmentalists are urging the government to stop financing the group.
On its website, the Chrysotile Institute promotes a chapter that it says debunks the asbestos health-risk hoax from the 2007 book titled Scared to Death — From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares Are Costing Us the Earth.
But Chrysotile Institute president Clement Godbout says his organization actually has no position about the book’s chapter on climate change.
He says his group is only promoting the book for outlining how the science of asbestos, and its potential health risks, have been systematically exaggerated by the “anti-asbestos lobby.”
The book was written by prominent British newspaper columnist Christopher Booker and co-author Richard North.
Ottawa has been frequently knocked by opponents for cutting cash to organizations that believe in fighting climate change.
The Sierra Club of Canada now urges the government to stop funding the Chrysotile Institute, which has received more than $20 million from the federal government since 1984.
It says Canadian taxpayers are financing an organization that promotes bad science about the dangers of asbestos.
Wed, Dec 16, 2009
Misc.