Indur M. Goklany

Indur M. Goklany is a science policy advisor in the United States Department of the Interior (DOI). Trained as an electrical engineer, he has often promoted views at odds with the scientific consensus on climate change, asserting that there is a lack of agreement among scientists and arguing that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide has various beneficial effects.

Views on environmental policy In 2017, Goklany was promoted to the position of Assistant Director of Programs, Science and Technology Policy at the Department of the Interior. In that role he was responsible for reviewing climate policies. He has repeatedly inserted climate change denial language into DOI’s scientific reports, which are used to make decisions on matters like water and mineral rights. The wording includes claims that there is a lack of consensus for global warming among scientists and that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is beneficial.

He took part in the making of Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies are More Dangerous than Global Warming Itself, a film created by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank engaged in manufacturing climate change denialism. He has also been critical of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the United Nations Population Fund over their stance on population growth saying, "For many groups like the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), World Population Day, which fell on July 11, is another chance to bemoan 'the relentless growth in human population,' while the United Nations Population Fund says 'stabilizing population would help sustain the planet.' The problem, however, is not population but poverty."

In 2021, Climate Feedback fact-checked an article by Breitbart which repeated inaccurate and misleading claims made by Goklany in a post for the Global Warming Policy Foundation. The reviewers noted that Goklany is "an electrical engineer, not a climate scientist, who hasn’t published any peer-reviewed research in at least the past decade on the topics he wrote about".

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