Myron Ebell

Myron Ebell is director of energy and global warming policy at CEI. He also serves as director of Freedom Action, a web-based grassroots activist organization loosely affiliated with CEI, and chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, which comprises over two dozen non-profit groups in this country and abroad that question global warming alarmism and oppose energy rationing policies. In March 2010, the Financial Times called Ebell “one of America’s most prominent climate-change skeptics.” In July 2009, the Business Insider’s Green Sheet named him third in its list of the Ten Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics, after Professor Freeman Dyson and Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, and commented, “Myron Ebell may be enemy #1 to the current climate change community.” Among numerous other recognitions, Vanity Fair magazine published a long, highly critical profile of Ebell in their May 2007 “second annual Green Issue.” Greenpeace featured Ebell and three of his CEI colleagues in “A Field Guide to Climate Criminals” distributed at the UN climate meeting in Montreal in December 2005. Rolling Stone magazine in its November 17, 2005 issue named Ebell one of six “Misleaders” on global warming in a special feature, along with President George W. Bush, Senator James Inhofe, and the late Michael Crichton. As a result of a BBC Radio interview in November 2004, seven members of the British House of Commons from all three major parties introduced a motion to censure Ebell “in the strongest possible terms.” In its May 22, 2004 special Issues and Answers issue, National Journal profiled Ebell as one of ten people who would lead the global warming debate during the next presidential administration. The Clean Air Trust in March 2001 named Ebell its "Villain of the Month" for his role in convincing the Bush Administration not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Prior to coming to CEI, Ebell was policy director at Frontiers of Freedom, a public-policy advocacy organization founded by former US Senator Malcolm Wallop. While at Frontiers of Freedom, he worked on property rights, the Endangered Species Act, federal-lands policies, and global warming. He previously served as senior legislative assistant to Rep. John Shadegg, where he helped develop landmark legislation that would reform the Endangered Species Act, and before that as Washington representative of the American Land Rights Association and as assistant to the chairman of the National Taxpayers Union. Ebell has appeared as a guest on numerous television shows, including the ABC Evening News, NBC Nightly News, PBS News Hour, BBC Newsnight, BBC World, CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, MSNBC, ITN, Voice of America, Televisa, Sky TV, Al Jazeera, PBS’s NOW, Fox News's Special Report with Bret Baier, O'Reilly Factor, and Hannity and Colmes, and on national television networks in Australia, Canada, France, Belgium, Greece, Switzerland, and Germany. He has spoken frequently on a variety of BBC radio news shows and on hundreds of radio talk shows, including G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, Lars Larson, Dennis Miller, Jim Bohannon, Blanquita Cullum, Janet Parshall, Neal Boortz, Thom Hartmann, Jane Chastain, Alan Colmes, Alan Nathan, Air America, and National Public Radio's Diane Rehm, Talk of the Nation, To the Point, Living on Earth, Morning Edition, and All Things Considered. In 2004 and 2009, he was featured in BBC Radio documentaries and in 2005 participated in a BBC World Television debate on the Kyoto Protocol. Ebell's writings have appeared in a variety of publications, including the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Human Events, Forbes, London’s Guardian, Standpoint Magazine, Newark Star Ledger, Riverside Press Enterprise, Philadelphia Inquirer, Manchester Union Leader, Anchorage Daily News, and Environmental Law Forum. Ebell has testified before eight House and Senate committees. On radio and television and in person, he has debated then-Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, then-EPA Administrator Carol Browner, then-CEQ Chairman Katie McGinty, then-Acting CEQ Chairman George Frampton, then-British Environment Minister Michael Meacher, former British Environment Minister John Selwyn Gummer, then-Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, European Environment Agency Executive Director Jacqueline McGlade, several Senators and Representatives, and the heads of the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, League of Conservation Voters, Wilderness Society, Greenpeace USA, Friends of the Earth UK, National Environmental Trust, Public Citizen, and Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy. In May 2005, the Oxford Union invited Ebell to speak in a debate on global warming. He also spoke on the opening plenary panel of the Society of Environmental Journalists’ annual meeting in 2004, along with Teresa Heinz Kerry, Ted Danson, and Franco Harris. The Weather Channel named CEI one of the ten most influential groups or individuals in the global warming debate; notably, no other non-profit groups, including environmental pressure groups, were named to the list. A native of Baker County, Oregon, Ebell holds a B.A. from Colorado College and an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. He also did graduate work at the University of California at San Diego and at Peterhouse, Cambridge University.