The formation of the Tea Party was at first thought to be a grass-roots phenomenon, brought about by a rising citizen outrage against bank bail-outs and President Obama’s efforts to lessen the effects of unaffordable mortgages. Soon it was discovered to be a “movement” supported and funded by Americans for Prosperity, founded by David Koch. There is evidence that much of the misinformation being passed around to deny global warming emanates from an impressive number of countermovement groups.
I found many articles that focused on one or a few of these groups, but the most comprehensive was published in PhysOrg on December 20, 2013:
“The climate change countermovement is a well-funded and organized effort to undermine public faith in climate science and block action by the U.S. 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 article describes a study conducted by Dr. Robert Brulle:
“Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science in Drexel's College of Arts and Sciences, conducted the study during a year-long fellowship at Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
“Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the counter-movement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the counter-movement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are "dark money," or concealed funding.
The data also indicates that Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, two of the largest supporters of climate science denial, have recently pulled back from publicly funding counter-movement organizations. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to counter-movement organizations through third party pass-through foundations like Donors Trust and Donors Capital, whose funders cannot be traced, has risen dramatically.
“To uncover how the counter-movement was built and maintained, Brulle developed a listing of 118 important climate denial organizations in the U.S. 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.
“Key findings include:
• Conservative foundations have bank-rolled denial. The largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating 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. These foundations promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.
• Koch and ExxonMobil have recently pulled back from publicly visible funding. From 2003 to 2007, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were heavily involved in funding climate-change denial organizations. But since 2008, they are no longer making publicly traceable contributions.
• Funding has shifted to pass through untraceable sources. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to denial organizations by the Donors Trust has risen dramatically. Donors Trust is a donor-directed foundation whose funders cannot be traced. This one foundation now provides about 25% of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systematic denial of climate change.
• 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. Approximately 75% of the income of these organizations comes from unidentifiable sources.”
“In every state in the country, there is at least one ostensibly independent ‘free-market’ think tank that is part of something called the State Policy Network— there are sixty-four in all, ranging from the Pelican Institute, in Louisiana, to the Freedom Foundation, in Washington State. According to a new investigative report by the Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal watchdog group, however, the think tanks are less free actors than a coördinated collection of corporate front groups—branch stores, so to speak—funded and steered by cash from undisclosed conservative and corporate players. Although the think tanks have largely operated under the radar, the cumulative enterprise is impressively large, according to the report. In 2011, the network funneled seventy-nine million dollars into promoting conservative policies at the state level.
“… S.P.N.’s catalogue displays visions of state policy projects that align with the group’s agenda. That agenda includes opposing President Obama’s health-care program and climate-change regulations, reducing union protections and minimum wages, cutting taxes and business regulations, tightening voting restrictions, and privatizing education.
“The S.P.N. operates as a tax-exempt nonprofit, allowing it to take tax-deductible contributions that it does not have to publicly disclose. According to the study by the Center for Media and Democracy, the donations include more than a million dollars run through the organizations DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, which serve to erase the donors’ names, operating, as Mother Jones put it, like a ‘dark-money ATM for the conservative movement.’
“Numerous wealthy conservative individuals and foundations pass money through those two groups. In addition, according to the Center for Media and Democracy study, corporate donors to the S.P.N. have included many of America’s largest companies, such as Facebook, Microsoft, A.T. & T., Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Philip Morris and Altria Client Services (both subsidiaries of Altria), GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft, and funds from various entities linked to the fossil-fuel billionaires Charles and David Koch. Melissa Cohlmia, the director of corporate communication for Koch Companies Public Sector LLC, told me, ‘We think State Policy Network is a worthy organization that is focused on creating more opportunity for everyone, thereby making people’s lives better.’
“Tracie Sharp, the president of the S.P.N., …acknowledged privately to the members that the organization’s often anonymous donors frequently shape the agenda. ‘The grants are driven by donor intent,’ she told the gathered think-tank heads. She added that, often, ‘the donors have a very specific idea of what they want to happen.’ She said that the donors also sometimes determined in which states their money would be spent.”
According to Greenpeace USA,
“Billionaire oilman David Koch used to joke that Koch Industries was "the biggest company you've never heard of." Now the shroud of secrecy has thankfully been lifted, revealing the $67 million that he and his brother Charles have quietly funneled to climate-denial front groups that are working to delay policies and regulations aimed at stopping global warming, most of which are part of the State Policy Network.
“From 1997 to 2011, the Kochs funneled over $67 million to organizations who are working in lockstep with the Kochs' agenda while presenting themselves as experts. Some top recipients of Koch money include the American Council on Science and Health, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, the Heartland Institute, and the State Policy Network.
In Part 4, I will discuss the most effective organization furthering global warming denial.
D. Norman
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