Davies, a noted climate accountability researcher, founded the Climate Investigations Center and has been featured in national and international media, including PBS Frontline’s “The Power of Big Oil” and Paramount+’s “Black Gold”
Press Releases
July 17, 2023
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Center for Climate Integrity is pleased to announce that noted researcher and climate accountability advocate Kert Davies has joined the organization as its new Director of Special Investigations.
A climate activist, researcher, and media spokesperson who has been conducting corporate accountability research and campaigns for more than 25 years, Davies founded the Climate Investigations Center in 2013 and previously served as research director for Greenpeace, science policy director at Ozone Action, and a researcher at the Environmental Working Group.
“We are very excited and humbled to have Kert Davies join our growing team at CCI,” said Center for Climate Integrity President Richard Wiles. “There are few people with such deep and comprehensive knowledge of the skeletons in Big Oil’s closet as Kert. As someone who has known and worked with Kert in different capacities for 30 years, I know his expertise and doggedness will greatly enhance CCI’s mission to support communities in efforts to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its climate deception. Big Oil, beware.”
“I feel fortunate and energized to be joining the skilled team at the Center for Climate Integrity,” said Kert Davies, now CCI’s Director of Special Investigations. “CCI’s ongoing work is thorough, innovative and relentless. At this moment in time, as the devastating climate crisis unfolds daily in headlines and in our lives, the work to reveal evidence of corporate climate denial and deception is more important than ever.”
Davies has degrees in Environmental Studies from Hampshire College and the University of Montana. Originally from Philadelphia, he has lived in the Washington, D.C., area for 30 years. He has appeared on PBS, NPR, BBC, CNN, and ABC News and been quoted in outlets such as The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Financial Times, and others.
A timeline of Kert Davies’ notable climate accountability work:
2002 - Published Denial and Deception: A Chronicle of ExxonMobil’s Efforts to Corrupt the Debate on Global Warming
2004 - Director of the Greenpeace data visualization project ExxonSecrets, (now offline), which helped expose the oil giant ExxonMobil’s funding of organizations and individuals working to discredit the validity of climate science and delay climate policy action.
2005 - Leader in Expose Exxon coalition
2009 - Revealed American Petroleum Institute’s “Energy Citizens” campaign designed by Edelman PR
2010 - Published Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine
2013 - Founded and directed the Climate Investigations Center
2014 - Revealed Edelman PR contracts with fossil fuel interests after a survey of large PR companies, creating surge of attention to the role of PR industry.
2015 - Published Willie Soon expose, a five year FOIA investigation with Greenpeace into corporate funding of climate denier Dr. Willie Soon at Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics by ExxonMobil, American Petroleum Institute, the Charles Koch Foundation and Southern Company.
2015 - Leader in ExxonKnew coalition work
2016 – Launched Climate Files, a web based archive of internal corporate documents on climate change, now cited by academics and litigators.
2018 - Testified at Philippines Commission on Human Rights hearing on climate denial and accountability in New York City
2018 – Published internal Shell documents discovered by Jelmer Mommers of De Correspondent
2019 - Published Global Climate Coalition document archive.
2019 - Published Imperial Oil archival document collection with DeSmog
2022 – Featured in Paramount+ Protozoa production “Black Gold”
2022 – Featured in PBS Frontline/BBC co-production “The Power of Big Oil”