Ray Evans is an Australian business leader, a conservative, and campaigner against climate change mitigation efforts.
Contents |
Evans was educated at the Melbourne High School before he attended University of Melbourne and graduated in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering [1]. During his years at university, he served as President of the Melbourne University ALP Club and as a delegate from the Federated Fodder and Fuel Trades Union to Victorian ALP State Conferences, among others [2].
Evans taught electrical engineering at Deakin University, Victoria. From 1982 until 2001, Ray Evans was Executive Officer at Western Mining Corporation, (WMC Ltd) a major Australian mining company, (under Hugh Morgan). Since July 2001, Ray Evans has been the Director of Ray Evans & Associates, a consultancy specialising in political and economic advice.[1]
In January 1986 Evans, along with Peter Costello and two others, founded the H R Nicholls Society, a think tank of the New Right of which he is still President. The Society has had considerable influence over Liberal Party policies. The initial motivation for founding the Society was industrial relations - opposition to the setting of the minimum wage by Justice Henry Bourne Higgins and commitment to "freedom in the labour market".[2]
Evans is also a founder of the Lavoisier Group, a group opposed to the ratification of the Kyoto treaty and believing that the science associated with global warming is uncertain.[3] Evans was also instrumental in establishing a number of right-wing organisations, such as the H.R. Nicholls Society, the Bennelong Society, and the Samuel Griffith Society, for all of which he was either President or Treasurer.[4] According to author Clive Hamilton, many of these groups "shared the same post office box".[4]
A supporter of the Greenhouse Mafia, Evans remains a committed campaigner against climate change initiatives, dubbing global warming "the mother of environmental scares".[5] In collaboration with Hugh Morgan, Evans worked against the Kyoto Protocol, and has been central to the campaign to prevent the former Federal Liberal Government from taking actions to cut emissions.[6]
Evans appeared on the ABC's discussion panel about the Great Global Warming Swindle, a documentary which questioned the science behind global warming.[7] He has stated that environmentalism is a "religious belief," and published a book Nine Facts About Climate Change in 2007.[8]
Evans was quoted in The Age as saying that Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth is "bullshit from beginning to end", and that "the carbon-dioxide link [to global warming] is increasingly recognised as irrelevant".[9]