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climate disinformation
Report Reveals How US Taxpayers Are Unwittingly Subsidizing Climate Lies
"It is high time for the American public to understand just how much charitable money is funding climate change disinformation and to recognize the key individuals behind this effort."
Sep 18, 2024
A report published Wednesday identifies nearly 140 "climate disinformation organizations" in the United States financed by wealthy donors who receive massive subsidies from the nation's taxpayers.
The analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Climate Accountability Research Project (CARP) explains that wealthy donors are "pouring billions of dollars" into nonprofit organizations to "advance misleading, self-serving agendas that do irreparable harm to our planet"—all while reaping the benefits of charitable contribution deductions in the U.S. tax code.
"Funds directed to fossil fuel industry-friendly think tanks and policy groups help turn disinformation into accepted truth and sow doubt about science," the analysis notes. "Then, these ideas get turned into action—or, more often, inaction—by the policy brass of lawmakers and presidential administrations."
The new report highlights "two troubling examples of this chain of influence: The Competitive Enterprise Institute, or CEI, received $21 million in charitable contributions from 2020 to 2022; it bills itself as 'instrumental' both in blocking ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and in pressuring former President [Donald] Trump to withdraw from the 2016 Paris agreement."
"And the Heritage Foundation received $236 million in contributions over the same three years; this money allowed Heritage to write Project 2025, a policy blueprint overseen by several former Trump administration appointees, that proposes changes to the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency that would be disastrous for our climate," the report adds.
IPS and CARP estimate that donors to the two right-wing organizations were able to deduct "much of" their $257 million in gifts—effectively receiving major public subsidies.
"We are calling for fundamental transparency reforms so we can assess the total amount of taxpayer-subsidized charitable donations flowing to climate disinformation organizations."
In total, the report counts 137 "climate disinformation" nonprofits that received charitable donations between 2020 and 2022, with six of them focused "largely or entirely" on climate issues. The 137 organizations collectively received $5.8 billion in contributions over the three-year period examined in the analysis, which estimates that the total sum the nonprofits spent on climate disinformation "could range anywhere from a conservative $219 million into the billions of dollars."
The three "climate disinformation charities" that held the most in assets in 2022, according to the new report, were the Charles Koch Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Seminar Network.
Between 2020 and 2022, the climate disinformation groups that received the most in total contributions were the Seminar Network, the Stand Together Foundation, and the 85 Fund—an organization connected to Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo.
Chuck Collins, director of IPS' Program on Inequality and a co-author of the report, said in a statement that the analysis "provides some much-needed transparency so that the American public can understand the deceptive ways in which the rich seek to advance and protect their interests."
"Based on our findings from the data sources available to us, we are calling for fundamental transparency reforms so we can assess the total amount of taxpayer-subsidized charitable donations flowing to climate disinformation organizations," said Collins. "Many of these donors have built their fortunes in energy or the banking, insurance, transportation, and legal businesses that support the carbon-intensive industries, so they have strong personal interests in ensuring the world's dependence on fossil fuels."
The report notes that wealthy donors have recently been funneling billions of dollars into so-called donor-advised funds (DAFs), which IPS and CARP describe as a kind of "charitable bank account: a donor can donate to a personalized fund managed by a sponsoring nonprofit organization, and take a charitable deduction for that donation right away, but the donor then retains advisory privileges that let them recommend grants out of the fund to whichever charities they want, on whatever timeline they want."
IPS and CARP found that the three largest sponsors of DAFs between 2020 and 2022 were the National Philanthropic Trust, the Schwab Charitable Fund, and DonorsTrust.
"Because DAFs have a near-complete lack of donor and grantee reporting requirements, they allow for a high level of secrecy in donating funds," the report observes.
Private foundations are also major funders of climate disinformation, according to the new report, which lists the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Searle Freedom Trust, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, among others.
The report outlines a number of potential policy changes to stem the ability of individuals and organizations with fossil fuel ties to secretively finance climate disinformation with the help of taxpayer subsidies, including barring private foundations from "using grants to donor-advised funds to meet their payout requirements" and requiring DAF sponsors to disclose "the names of all individual donors who have contributed $10,000 or more to each DAF account."
"It is high time for the American public to understand just how much charitable money is funding climate change disinformation and to recognize the key individuals behind this effort," the analysis says.
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State Department-Commissioned Report Warns AI Could Be an 'Extinction-Level' Threat
The report says the U.S. government must move "quickly and decisively" to address the threat of artificial intelligence.
Mar 11, 2024
A report released on Monday that was commissioned by the U.S. State Department warns that artificial intelligence could pose an "extinction-level threat."
"Given the growing risk to national security posed by rapidly expanding AI capabilities from weaponization and loss of control—and particularly, the fact that the ongoing proliferation of these capabilities serves to amplify both risks—there is a clear and urgent need for the U.S. government to intervene," the report states.
The report compares the development of AI to the development of nuclear weapons and claims it might "destabilize global security" if it's not properly regulated. The report says the U.S. government must move "quickly and decisively" to address the threat of AI.
🚨 A new report commissioned by the U.S. government has identified "urgent and growing" national security risks "reminiscent of the introduction of nuclear weapons" - including "extinction-level threat to the human species" - from the development of advanced AI & artificial… pic.twitter.com/SvLrdEzz9e
— Future of Life Institute (@FLI_org) March 11, 2024
"The three authors of the report worked on it for more than a year, speaking with more than 200 government employees, experts, and workers at frontier AI companies—like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and Meta—as part of their research," Timereports. "Accounts from some of those conversations paint a disturbing picture, suggesting that many AI safety workers inside cutting-edge labs are concerned about perverse incentives driving decision making by the executives who control their companies."
The report recommends that the U.S. create a new federal agency to regulate the companies developing new AI tools and limit the growth of AI. Experts say such a move does not seem likely.
“I think that this recommendation is extremely unlikely to be adopted by the United States government,” Greg Allen, director of the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Time.
AI is a rapidly developing, and experts have warned that many of the companies creating new AI tools are not acting responsibly. A report from earlier this month also noted how generative AI is increasing the spread of climate disinformation and using up valuable resources.
The U.S. was one of 18 countries that joined an agreement in November to keep AI systems "secure by design," but further action will be needed to accomplish that goal.
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Sanders Aims to Convince Fox News Readers Climate Action 'Is a Moral Responsibility'
"Either we maintain the status quo and continue to see more heatwaves, drought, floods, and extreme weather disturbances or we move away from fossil fuels and do our best to make sure that the planet we leave our kids and future generations is healthy and habitable."
Aug 08, 2023
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who caucuses with the Democrats and even sought the party's presidential nomination twice, on Tuesday tried to convince Fox News' predominantly Republican audience that not only are scientists right about fossil fuels dangerously warming the planet, but swift and sweeping climate action "is a moral responsibility."
Sanders is no stranger to Fox's opinion page, having previously authored articles on everything from Big Pharma and corporate greed to Medicare for All and Social Security. However, his latest piece—"Climate Change Is a Threat to the Planet: We Must Address It"—takes on a topic readers of the right-wing network's website aren't necessarily eager to tackle.
The results of an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll published last week showed that 53% of Americans—including 80% of Democrats and 54% of Independents—believed that addressing climate change should be given priority, even at the risk of slowing economic growth. However, 72% of Republicans said the economy should be given priority, even at the risk of ignoring climate change, a 13-point increase from 2018, despite more frequent and devastating extreme weather events in recent years.
Survey results released in November by Climate Action Against Disinformation revealed that among U.S. respondents, belief in climate misinformation "was consistently highest among regular Fox News consumers," with majorities of the network's audience accepting lies about electric vehicles, fossil fuels, renewable energy, and whether scientists largely agree or disagree on what causes climate change.
Sanders, in his new piece, spent several paragraphs addressing claims that "climate change is not real. Or, if it is, it has nothing to do with carbon emissions—and there is nothing we can do about it."
Then, he wrote: "If this is what you believe I would respectfully disagree and I would urge you to get on the phone and call friends and family around the country to hear about what their communities are experiencing. I would also suggest that you check out (reliable) websites and take a look at what's going on in virtually every part of the world."
While fossil fuel giants rake in billions of dollars, communities across the United States and around the world are enduring unprecedented and deadly extreme heat. July is expected to have been the hottest month in recorded history.
The senator highlighted recent records in Brownsville, Texas; Miami, Florida; and Phoenix, Arizona, as well as various locations in China, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and European countries. He pointed out that "parts of the Middle East exceeded 150°F—near the most intense heat that the human body can survive. It's winter right now in South America, but that hasn't stopped temperatures from exceeding 100°F in some places."
"And it's not just that temperatures have been soaring on land. Our oceans have never been warmer. Right now, 44% of the world's oceans are experiencing a marine heatwave," Sanders noted. He also laid out in plain language how scientists have concluded that human activity—particularly the use of fossil fuels—has created current conditions.
Sanders emphasized the dangers of rising temperatures, explaining that they "create more flooding, extreme weather, droughts, wildfires, and disease. And that means more human suffering, death, mass migrations, and international instability." He also appeared to address readers who may still argue for prioritizing the economy over the climate emergency:
Climate change will not only impact the physical well-being of humans, it will also have enormous economic implications. The Deloitte Economics Institute estimates that if left unchecked climate change could cost the global economy $178 trillion over the next 50 years as a result of lower productivity and employment, food and water scarcity, and worsening health and well-being. We'll also have to spend huge amounts of money repairing the damage that extreme weather causes.
That's the bad news.
The good news is that we can still avoid the worst impacts of climate change, save a great deal of money, and make our energy grid more resilient by transitioning away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy and energy efficiency.
"While the path forward to a cleaner and more sustainable energy future for planet Earth will not be easy, and mistakes will certainly be made, the choice we face is pretty clear," Sanders warned. "Either we maintain the status quo and continue to see more heatwaves, drought, floods, and extreme weather disturbances or we move away from fossil fuels and do our best to make sure that the planet we leave our kids and future generations is healthy and habitable."
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