Editing Stop Esso campaign (section)

==Esso's reaction==

In response to Stop Esso, Esso gave financial support to climate change research. However, it continued to encourage [[George W. Bush|President Bush]] and other world leaders not to sign the Kyoto Protocol which mandates decreased production of greenhouse gases.

A proportion of Esso's greenhouse gas production arose because of the flaring of gas in Nigeria. When natural gas is brought out with oil, Esso in Nigeria burned the gas rather than processing it. Esso pledged to cease this practice by 2006.<ref name=Macalister2004/>

At the same time, Exxon-Mobil funded provided the non-profit, [[Public Interest Watch]], with $120,000 of the group's $124,094 budget covering August 2003 to July 2004, when the group called for the [[Internal Revenue Service]] to audit [[Greenpeace USA]]<ref name="Wall Street Journal">{{cite web |publisher=[[Wall Street Journal]] |url= 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114291044305003774 |title= Did a Group Financed by Exxon Prompt IRS to Audit Greenpeace?|accessdate=2013-07-20}}</ref> According to [[Phil Radford]], [[Greenpeace USA]] Executive Director, "We might not have thought more about it, but in 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported Public Interest Watch wasn't as obscure a group as we'd thought. Instead, Public Interest Watch received $120,000 of its $124,000 budget from ExxonMobil, the multinational entity Greenpeace has clashed with for years over its drilling, spilling, and denial of climate change." [[Greenpeace USA]] received a clean audit from the IRS.<ref name="Huffington Post">{{cite web |publisher=[[Huffington Post]] |url= 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-radford/an-open-letter-to-the-con_b_3293838.html |title= An Open Letter to the Congressional Committee Investigating Politically-Motivated IRS Audits |accessdate=2013-07-20}}</ref>