Secret
funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks
Anonymous
billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups
working to discredit climate change science
14
February, 2013
Conservative
billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m
(£77m) to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science
behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.
The
funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network
of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to
redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly
polarising "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives.
The
millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors
Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern
Virginia suburbs of Washington DC. Donors Capital caters to those
making donations of $1m or more.
Whitney
Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her
organisation assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by
diverted to liberal causes.
The
funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible
opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the
conservative billionaire Koch brothers. Photograph: Chip
Somodevilla/Getty Images
"We
exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be
limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,"
she said in an interview.
By
definition that means none of the money is going to end up with
groups like Greenpeace, she said. "It won't be going to
liberals."
Ball
won't divulge names, but she said the stable of donors represents a
wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the
years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards
organisations working to discredit climate science or block climate
action.
Donors
exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball said. They
run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives
to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas
emissions, they found common ground.
"Are
there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not," she
went on. "Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you
tend to have a lot of differences on things like defence,
immigration, drugs, the war, things like that compared to
conservatives. When it comes to issues like the environment, if there
are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced."
By
2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks
or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a
human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental
regulations.
The
money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican party
politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian
scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of
a film attacking Al Gore.
The
ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against Barack
Obama's environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress
taking action on climate change.
Graphic:
climate denial funding
Those
same groups are now mobilising against Obama's efforts to act on
climate change in his second term. A top recipient of the secret
funds on Wednesday put out a point-by-point critique of the climate
content in the president's state of the union address.
And
it was all done with a guarantee of complete anonymity for the donors
who wished to remain hidden.
"The
funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to
public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different
groups are growing," said Kert Davies, research director of
Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate
groups using tax records.
"These
groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous
or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the
money. There is no way to tell who is funding them," Davies
said.
The
trusts were established for the express purpose of managing donations
to a host of conservative causes.
Such
vehicles, called donor-advised funds, are not uncommon in America.
They offer a number of advantages to wealthy donors. They are
convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax
breaks and are lawful.
That
opposition hardened over the years, especially from the mid-2000s
where the Greenpeace record shows a sharp spike in funds to the
anti-climate cause.
In
effect, the Donors Trust was bankrolling a movement, said Robert
Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who has extensively
researched the networks of ultra-conservative donors.
"This
is what I call the counter-movement, a large-scale effort that is an
organised effort and that is part and parcel of the conservative
movement in the United States " Brulle said. "We don't know
where a lot of the money is coming from, but we do know that Donors
Trust is just one example of the dark money flowing into this
effort."
In
his view, Brulle said: "Donors Trust is just the tip of a very
big iceberg."
The
rise of that movement is evident in the funding stream. In 2002, the
two trusts raised less than $900,000 for the anti-climate cause. That
was a fraction of what Exxon Mobil or the conservative oil
billionaire Koch brothers donated to climate sceptic groups that
year.
By
2010, the two Donor Trusts between them were channelling just under
$30m to a host of conservative organisations opposing climate action
or science. That accounted to 46% of all their grants to conservative
causes, according to the Greenpeace analysis.
The
funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible
opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the
conservative billionaire Koch brothers, the records show. When it
came to blocking action on the climate crisis, the obscure charity in
the suburbs was outspending the Koch brothers by a factor of six to
one.
"There
is plenty of money coming from elsewhere," said John Mashey, a
retired computer executive who has researched funding for climate
contrarians. "Focusing on the Kochs gets things confused. You
can not ignore the Kochs. They have their fingers in too many things,
but they are not the only ones."
It
is also possible the Kochs continued to fund their favourite projects
using the anonymity offered by Donor Trust.
But
the records suggest many other wealthy conservatives opened up their
wallets to the anti-climate cause – an impression Ball wishes to
stick.
She
argued the media had overblown the Kochs support for conservative
causes like climate contrarianism over the years. "It's so funny
that on the right we think George Soros funds everything, and on the
left you guys think it is the evil Koch brothers who are behind
everything. It's just not true. If the Koch brothers didn't exist
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