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Billionaire Conservatives Spend Up To $1bn A Year To Fight Climate Science

By Countercurrents.org

22 December 2013
Countercurrents.org 

Dr. Brulle. Credit: CASBS

Not only well-known conservative foundations the largest and most consistent funders behind the climate denial campaign but the majority of donations are "dark money," or concealed funding. A new study by Drexel University 's environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD unravels the systematic efforts to discredit climate science.

The first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort found:

The conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate crisis.

The study findings said:

The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change. Such financial support has hardened conservative opposition to climate policy, ultimately dooming any chances of action from the US Congress to cut GHG emissions that are warming the planet.

The study report has been published on December 20, 2013 in Climatic Change .

Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, conducted the study during a fellowship at Stanford University 's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Key findings of the study include:

A Phys.org report [1] on the study findings said:

The study exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement.

The study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort.

Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are "dark money," or concealed funding.

 

The climate change countermovement is a well-funded and organized effort to undermine public faith in climate science and block action by the US government to regulate emissions. This countermovement involves a large number of organizations, including conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, trade associations and conservative foundations, with strong links to sympathetic media outlets and conservative politicians.

The report cited Brulle. "The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on the issue of global warming. Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight – often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians – but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers, in the form of conservative foundations. If you want to understand what's driving this movement, you have to look at what's going on behind the scenes."

To uncover how the countermovement was built and maintained, Brulle developed a listing of 118 important climate denial organizations in the US .

He then coded data on philanthropic funding for each organization, combining information from the Foundation Center with financial data submitted by organizations to the Internal Revenue Service. The final sample for analysis consisted of 140 foundations making 5,299 grants totaling $558 million to 91 organizations from 2003 to 2010.

"The real issue here is one of 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."

A report by Suzanne Goldenberg said [2]:

“I call it the climate-change counter movement,” said Brulle. “It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this. This is a large-scale political effort.”

Brulle's study offers the most definitive exposure to date of the political and financial forces blocking American action on climate change.

It was not always possible to separate funds designated strictly for climate-change work from overall budgets, Brulle said. “Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.”

Some of the think tanks on Brulle's list – such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) – said they had no institutional position on climate change and did not control the output of their scholars. 

Brulle acknowledged that he was unable to uncover the full extent of funding sources to the effort to oppose action on climate change. About three-quarters of the funds were routed through trusts or other mechanisms that assure anonymity to donors – a trend Brulle described as disturbing and a threat to democracy.

“This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power,” he said. “They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hear people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don't have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy.

“That is the bottom line here. These are unaccountable organizations deciding what our politics should be. They put their thumbs on the scale … It is more one dollar one vote than one person one vote.”

The vast majority of the 91 groups on Brulle's list – 79% – was registered as charitable organizations and enjoyed considerable tax breaks. Those 91 groups included trade organizations, think tanks and campaign groups. The groups collectively received more than $7bn over the eight years of Brulle's study – or about $900m a year from 2003 to 2010. Conservative think tanks and advocacy groups occupied the core of that effort.

The funding was dispersed to top-tier conservative think tanks in Washington , such as the AEI and Heritage Foundation, which focus on a range of issues, as well as more obscure organizations such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and the John Locke Foundation.

Funding also went to groups that took on climate change denial as a core mission – such as the Heartland Institute, which held regular conclaves dedicated to undermining the United Nations climate panel's reports, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which tried and failed to prosecute a climate scientist, Michael Mann, for academic fraud.

AEI was by far the top recipient of such funds, receiving 16% of total funding over the eight years, or $86.7m. Heartland Institute, in contrast, received just 3% of the total, $16.7m. There was also generous support to Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group affiliated with the conservative Koch billionaires, which received $22.7m.

The Guardian report said:

An investigation by the Guardian last February found that the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund had distributed nearly $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups from 2002-2010. The Donors group has now displaced such previous prominent supporters of the climate denial movement as the Koch-affiliated foundations and corporations like Exxon Mobil, Brulle said.

A number of the groups on Brulle's list – both as funders and recipients – refused to comment on his findings or disputed his contention that they were part of a movement to block action on climate change.

Whitney Ball, the president of the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, said the organisation had no say in deciding which projects would receive funding. However, Ball told the Guardian last February that Donors offered funders the assurance their money would never go to Greenpeace. “It won't be going to liberals,” she said at that time.

Recipients of the funds also disputed the assertion they were part of a larger effort to undermine climate science or block action on climate change.

“We do believe that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that man-made emissions will lead to some warming,” said David Kreutzer, an energy and climate-change fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “We are opposed to mandatory greenhouse gas emissions cuts.”

He said many conservatives saw a carbon tax, cap-and-trade and other climate policies as a government takeover by stealth.

“What we are not interested in doing is a huge shift of power to the government under the guise of preventing some climate problem,” he said.

The Hoover Institution, which received about $45m, claimed to produce no work on climate change – while displaying on its website an article by a Hoover research fellow on an August 2013 Hoover poll on economic, energy and environmental issues.

Source:

1. Phys.org, Science X network, http://phys.org/news/2013-12-koch-brothers-reveals-funders-climate.html

[2] US environment correspondent, theguardian.com, “Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change”, Dec 20, 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/conservative-groups-1bn-against-climate-change

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