<http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/22/3099141/climate-denying-groups-funding/#>
Conservative Donors Pump $1 Billion A Year Into Climate Denying
Groups, Study Finds
BY KILEY KROH ON DECEMBER 22, 2013
Organizations that actively block efforts to address climate change
are funded by a large network of conservative donors to the tune of
nearly $1 billion a year, according to the first in-depth study into
the dark money that fuels the denial effort.
The study
<http://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20-%20Climatic%20Change.ashx>,
published Friday in the journal Climatic Change, analyzed the income
of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups, and industry associations, funded
by 140 different foundations, that work to oppose action on climate
change. The study's author, Robert Brulle, refers to these
organizations as the climate change counter-movement, and concludes
that their outsized influence "has not only played a major role in
confounding public understanding of climate science, but also
successfully delayed meaningful government policy actions to address
the issue."
"It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this," Brulle
told the Guardian. "This is a large-scale political effort."
From 2003 to 2010, the organizations had a total income of more than
$7 billion, averaging out to over $900 million per year. Over the
eight year span, their funding has increased by 13 percent and in
2010, total funding for the organizations was nearly $1.2 billion. An
important caveat, as Brulle notes, is that many of the organizations
are multi-purpose, so not all of the income was devoted to
anti-climate change initiatives.
Brulle defines the climate change counter-movement as the organized
effort to prevent policies that will limit the carbon pollution
emissions that drive man-made climate change. Their efforts cover a
range of activities, from lobbying to political contributions to
media campaigns that attempt to discredit the scientific consensus
around global warming.
The 91 groups include trade associations, think tanks, and advocacy
organizations. The vast majority of the groups - 78 percent - were
registered as charitable organizations and enjoyed considerable tax
breaks.
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Heritage Foundation,
two of the best-known conservative think tanks in the U.S., were also
among the top recipients of funding. AEI received 16 percent of the
total grants that were made to organizations active in the climate
change counter-movement and Heritage was close behind, receiving 14
percent of total grants.
The largest and most consistent funders of organizations leading the
charge on climate change denial are a number of well-known
conservative foundations, such as the Searle Freedom Trust, the John
William Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the
Sarah Scaife Foundation.
A key shift Brulle uncovered is that traditionally high-profile
funders of climate denial, such as the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil,
have moved away from publicly funding organizations that oppose
action on climate change. The single-largest funders are the combined
foundations Donors Trust/Donors Capital Fund, providing more than $78
million in funding to the groups over the eight year span. These
donor directed foundations make grants on behalf of an individual or
corporation, thereby funding their preferred causes while keeping
their identity a secret. As a result, writes Brulle, "these two
philanthropic organizations form a black box that conceals the
identity of contributors to various CCCM organizations."
The Donor Trust/Capital giving increased dramatically over the period
of time Brulle examined, from just 3.3 percent in 2003 to 23.7
percent in 2010. At the same time, the funding from Koch Affiliated
Foundations and ExxonMobil Foundation declined significantly, with
Exxon effectively ending public funding of climate change
counter-movement groups in 2007.
Just as it's impossible to know whether Koch Foundations and
ExxonMobil are channeling their climate-denying funds through third
party groups such as Donors Trust, most funding for denial efforts is
untraceable. Despite extensive data compilation and analyses, only a
fraction of the hundreds of millions in contributions to climate
change denying organizations can be specifically accounted for from
public records. According to Brulle, approximately 75 percent of the
income of these organizations comes from unidentifiable sources.
Despite the significant amount of "dark money" being funneled into
efforts that seek to obstruct action on climate change or misinform
the public, Brulle concludes that sufficient evidence exists that "a
number of major conservative foundations have clearly played a
crucial role in the development and maintenance of the [climate
change counter-movement]."
The result is not just an obfuscation of fact and deliberate effort
to slow any progress on addressing the most pressing issue of our
time, but an assault on democracy. "Without a free flow of accurate
information, democratic politics and government accountability become
impossible," said Brulle. "Money amplifies certain voices above
others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square.
Powerful funders are supporting the campaign to deny scientific
findings about global warming and raise public doubts about the roots
and remedies of this massive global threat. At the very least,
American voters deserve to know who is behind these efforts."
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