“nobody seems to want to talk about climate change": Former Pew Center on Global Climate Change loses Pew funding, makes a decision to rebrand, changes name

From Pew Climate Change Center To C2ES, What’s Behind the Name Change? | The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media

...one need not be such an old-timer on matters dealing with climate change to wonder about the transition recently announced by the respected Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

That name is no more. Now it’s the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, abbreviated to C2ES.

...Rather than choosing to “go silently into the night,” Claussen recently told an E&E News interviewer, “we made a decision to rebrand.” Asked how having HP, Shell, and Entergy as its principal financial sponsors rather than the decidedly greenish Pew Charitable Trusts, Claussen replied, “I don’t think I would ever do this if I wasn’t going to be independent, and I actually think they value our independence.” She pointed out that the big monied interests (and there are others too helping to fund the group) “can hire a lobbyist to do a particular job for them, or they’re part of an association that will speak for their sector.”

....Around the Nation’s Capital, interviewer Monica Trauzzi continued, “nobody seems to want to talk about climate change.” Has that term in itself become so toxic politically that the very words need to be avoided? C2ES Executive Vice President Elliot Diringer, years ago an environmental reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, insists that wasn’t part of the name-change equation. He says the “for” terminology and the “Solutions” wording reflect more internal brain-storming, and he insists that shying away from climate change matters just isn’t in the cards....Right now may not be the time that phones are ringing off the hooks around the I-495 Beltway with frantic policy calls concerning climate change. But given the nature of the challenges surely lying ahead, it’s a matter of when, and not whether, those rings will return. One can hope that something like the old Pew Center — be it C2ES or someone else — will be there to answer the calls.