US climate deniers pump millions into Tory-linked think tanks
Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from Open Democracy under under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. This article was published 16 June 2022 while Boris Johnson was UK Prime Minister. Boris Johnson was followed by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak as prime ministers.
Our investigation reveals secretive funding sources for think tanks that boast of influencing the government
Influential right-wing UK think tanks with close access to ministers have received millions in ‘dark money’ donations from the US, openDemocracy can reveal.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Policy Exchange, the Adam Smith Institute and the Legatum Institute have raised $9m from American donors since 2012. Of this, at least $6m has been channelled to the UK, according to tax returns filed with US authorities – representing 11% of the think tanks’ total UK receipts, with the figure reaching 23% for the Adam Smith Institute.
In that time, all five have steadily increased their connections in the heart of government. Between them, they have secured more than 100 meetings with ministers and more than a dozen of their former staff have joined Boris Johnson’s government as special advisers.
Representatives from right-wing think tanks – many of whom are headquartered at 55 Tufton Street in central London – frequently appear in British media and have been credited with pushing the Tories further to the right on Brexit and the economy.
As openDemocracy revealed yesterday, ExxonMobil gave Policy Exchange $30,000 in 2017. The think tank went on to recommend the creation of a new anti-protest law targeting the likes of Extinction Rebellion, which became the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.
None of these think tanks disclose their UK donors. With the exception of the Adam Smith Institute, none provide any information about the identity of donors to their US fundraising arms.
But an investigation by openDemocracy has identified dozens of the groups’ US funders by analysing more than 100 publicly available tax filings.
The Scottish National Party MP Alyn Smith said that the findings showed that the UK’s lobbying laws were not tough enough.
“He who pays the piper calls the tune,” he told openDemocracy. “We urgently need to rewrite the laws governing this sort of sock puppet funding so that we can see who speaks for who.”
Last month, Smith asked an IEA representative who funded the think tank on BBC’s flagship question time show.
Among the US-organisations who have donated to UK think tanks are oil companies and several of the top funders of climate change denial in the US.
The think tanks’ US arms received $5.4m from 18 donors who have also separately donated a combined $584m towards a vast network of organisations promoting climate denial in the US between 2003 to 2018, according to research from climate scientists.
- The John Templeton Foundation, founded by the late billionaire American-British investor, has donated almost $2m to the US arms of the Adam Smith Institute and the IEA. Researchers claim that the John Templeton Foundation has a “history of funding what could be seen as anti-science activities and groups (particularly concerning climate-change and stem-cell research)”.
- The National Philanthropic Trust, a multi-billion-dollar fund that does not disclose its own donors, has given almost $2m to the IEA, Policy Exchange, TaxPayers’ Alliance and the Legatum Institute’s US fundraisers. The trust has donated $22m to climate denial organisations, one of which described it as a “vehicle” for funnelling anonymous donations from the fossil fuel industry.
- The Sarah Scaife Foundation, founded by the billionaire heir to an oil and banking fortune, has given $350,000 to the Adam Smith Institute and the Legatum Institute. The foundation is one of the biggest funders of climate denial in the US, contributing more than $120m to 50 organisations promoting climate denial since 2012. Last month, openDemocracy revealed that the foundation, which has $30m in shares in fossil fuel companies, gave $210,525 to a UK climate sceptic group.
Policy Exchange, the influential conservative think tank, published a report in 2019 – two years after taking money from ExxonMobil – claiming that Extinction Rebellion were “extremists” and calling for the government to introduce new laws to crack down on the climate protest group.
New anti-protest laws passed under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act last month appear to have been directly inspired by the report. The Home Office did not deny that it considered the recommendations when approached for comment.
The American Friends of the IEA also received a $50,000 donation from ExxonMobil in 2004, while the main UK branch of the IEA has received donations from BP every year since 1967.
The Legatum Institute has received $154,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2018 and 2019. The foundation was set up by the American billionaire co-owner of Koch Industries, one the biggest fossil fuel companies in the US.
Andy Rowell, co-author of “A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain”, told openDemocracy: “For years, there have been calls for think tanks, who are so often joined at the hip with government, to be transparent and disclose who funds them.
“The fact that so much dark money is behind these groups, and much of it is linked to climate denial groups, is a political scandal that can’t be allowed to continue, especially given our climate emergency.”
In all, US donors account for more than a tenth of the overall income of the IEA, Policy Exchange, Adam Smith Institute and TaxPayers’ Alliance.
Anti-green lobbying
While all the think tanks say they do not dispute the science on climate change, many are campaigning to increase the UK’s dependency on fossil fuels and deregulate energy markets in response to the cost of living crisis.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance, Adam Smith Institute and the IEA have all called for the UK’s ban on fracking to be overturned. In April, the government agreed to review the moratorium it had imposed in 2019, when scientists deemed fracking unsafe. The U-turn came after concerted pressure from anti-net zero Tory MPs and lobby groups.
The IEA has also called for the government to approve the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria, while the TaxPayers’ Alliance has called for the government to scrap green energy bill levies. Tory MP Ben Bradley has cited the TaxPayers’ Alliance in Parliament while claiming that levies will exacerbate the cost of living crisis.
Environmental groups say cutting the levies, which are used to invest in energy efficiency measures and renewable energy, would be self-defeating and merely delay the UK’s longer-term transition away from fossil fuels.
Johnson’s think tank cabinet
Right-wing think tanks like the IEA have come to play an increasingly influential role in shaping British politics, despite the lack of transparency around their funding.
The IEA has boasted that 14 members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet – including the home secretary Priti Patel, the foreign secretary Liz Truss and the business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, are “alumni of IEA initiatives”.
Ministers have recorded 26 meetings with the think tank since 2012, but there may be additional, undeclared private meetings. In 2020, Truss, who was then the secretary of state for trade, failed to declare two meetings with the IEA, arguing that they were made in a personal capacity.
Mark Littlewood, the director of the IEA, has boasted of securing access to ministers and MPs for his corporate clients, including BP, telling an undercover reporter in 2018 that he was in “the Brexit influencing game”.
Others like Policy Exchange, which was co-founded by the ‘levelling up’ secretary Michael Gove, can claim to have had some of their policy ideas taken up by the government.
Gove’s recently announced plan to allow residents to vote on whether to allow developments on their street was first proposed by Policy Exchange last year. Campaigners said the plan will not help increase the supply of affordable housing.
Several of the think tanks were accused by a whistleblower of coordinating with one another to advocate for a hard break from the European Union following the referendum vote.
Shamir Sanni, a former pro-Brexit campaigner who worked for TaxPayers’ Alliance before going public with his claims, alleged that the organisation regularly met with the IEA, the Adam Smith Institute to agree on a common line on issues relating to Brexit.
Sanni subsequently won an unfair dismissal case against the TaxPayers’ Alliance. The organisations he identified have all denied they act as lobbyists or coordinate.
The IEA referred openDemocracy to a statement about its funding posted on its website when approached for comment.
The TaxPayers’ Alliance, Adam Smith Institute, Policy Exchange and the Legatum Institute did not respond to requests for comment.
Original article by Adam Bychawski republished from Open Democracy under under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. This article was published 16 June 2022 while Boris Johnson was UK Prime Minister. Boris Johnson was followed by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak as prime ministers.
Rejecting Destruction to Communities, Groups Sue Biden Admin Over Offshore Lease Sale
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“This vast lease sale—for millions of acres—poses threats to Gulf communities and endangered species while contributing to the climate crisis this region knows far too well,” said one advocate.
Calling the Biden administration’s plan to go ahead with an offshore drilling lease sale “mind-boggling” as the United States faces escalating climate harms including “record heat, fires, and flooding,” several advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging the U.S. Interior Department’s impending sale of 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to the fossil fuel industry.
Groups including the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Earthjustice, and Friends of the Earth (FOE) filed the lawsuit saying that in moving forward with Lease Sale 261—the last of three offshore lease sales mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act—the Interior Department did not sufficiently consider the environmental impacts on people and wildlife across Gulf communities.
“As steward of the country’s public lands and waters, Interior has a duty to fully consider the harms offshore leasing can cause, from air pollution to oil spills, and beyond,” said Julia Forgie, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the plaintiffs. “This vast lease sale—for millions of acres—poses threats to Gulf communities and endangered species while contributing to the climate crisis this region knows far too well. We are holding the agency to its obligation to carefully assess these risks and the climate fallout of this giveaway to Big Oil.”
“If we are going to make a dent in the climate crisis, business as usual must stop.”
A study published in May in Environmental Research showed that people living near offshore drilling rigs are at heightened risk for respiratory and cardiovascular issues as well as other serious illnesses, along with facing the rising threat of extreme weather due to fossil fuel emissions from such projects.
Lease Sale 261 could result in the production of more than 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of fossil gas over the next 50 years, noted the groups, leading to more than 370 tons of greenhouse gases at a time when scientists and energy experts are warning that continued fossil fuel extraction is threatening the planet.
The sale is scheduled to be held on September 27, around the same time that the Interior Department is expected to release its proposal for a five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program.
That proposal could include as many as 11 new offshore lease sales “with the potential to emit up to 3.5 billion tons of carbon pollution,” said the groups.
The lawsuit filed on Friday accused the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) of presenting “an incomplete and misleading picture of oil spill impacts and risks based on flawed modeling that failed to properly consider reasonably foreseeable accidents” in its analysis of environmental impacts that could be caused by Lease Sale 261.
“The final SEIS [supplemental environmental impact statement] failed to take the required ‘hard look’ at the significant impacts of this action,” reads the lawsuit. “For example, the bureau did not rationally evaluate the impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, relying instead on problematic modeling and assumptions to conclude that these massive lease sales will result in only slightly higher emissions than not leasing at all, and further failed to consider the impacts of such fossil fuel development on climate goals and commitments. With regard to environmental justice, the final SEIS arbitrarily dismissed the impacts of onshore oil and gas infrastructure—refineries, petrochemical plants, and other industrial sources that process fossil fuels and related products from these lease sales—on Gulf communities.”
The lawsuit was filed as thousands of people in Louisiana’s so-called “Cancer Alley” were ordered to evacuate due to a chemical leak and fire at a petroleum refinery.
Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth, said the group will “keep fighting until the Gulf of Mexico is off the table for good.”
“Unfortunately, given BOEM’s history of sacrificing the Gulf of Mexico to Big Oil, this lease sale decision comes as no surprise,” said Templeton. “Our lawsuit should also come as no surprise, since BOEM continues to rely on the same outdated, broken environmental analysis. If we are going to make a dent in the climate crisis, business as usual must stop.”
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
UK academics urge Royal Society to condemn fossil fuel industry
Guardian Exclusive: Letter signed by more than 1,200 leading figures calls for ‘unambiguous statement’ about climate crisis
The Royal Society is under pressure from more than 1,200 leading academics to issue a clear condemnation of the fossil fuel industry.
The academics have written to the association of the world’s most eminent scientists calling for an “unambiguous statement about the culpability of the fossil fuel industry in driving the climate crisis”.
The society has agreed to meet representatives of the academics to discuss their demands. Most of those who signed the letter to the society’s president and council are based in the UK.
The letter says: “The Royal Society has thus far failed to condemn fossil fuel companies that are building new infrastructure that will carry the world far beyond 1.5 degrees of warming and that are lobbying across the world to dictate the pace and terms of an energy transition that will protect their profits at the planet’s expense.”
The companies were “committing an unprecedented act of violence against humanity”, the letter said, referring to a statement from the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
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‘Climate Scam’: 180+ Groups Tell Biden to Drop Support for Hydrogen
Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“Calling hydrogen clean energy is a scam to prop up the oil and gas industry,” said one campaigner.
More than 95% of hydrogen produced in the United States is made using fossil fuels, but that hasn’t stopped its backers—including industry groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—from touting the energy source as critical to the fight against climate change.
A diverse coalition of advocacy organizations on Tuesday implored the Biden administration to stop buying into the hype.
In a letter to officials at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), more than 180 groups called on the administration to abandon plans to invest in hydrogen projects, warning that “a large-scale buildout of hydrogen infrastructure will further exacerbate the climate crisis and disproportionately harm people of color, low-income communities, and Indigenous peoples.”
Two recently enacted pieces of legislation—the Inflation Reduction Act and a bipartisan infrastructure measure championed by oil industry ally Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—include benefits for the hydrogen industry.
The latter bill authorized the Department of Energy to spend roughly $8 billion on developing Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs (H2Hubs), drawing outrage from community organizers in Colorado, New Mexico, and other states behind the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub, a project aimed at expanding U.S. hydrogen production.
“We recognize that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directs DOE to fund these hubs, but we ask DOE to find a different path and reject this false solution. It’s time for DOE to do the right thing,” the groups wrote in their letter on Tuesday.
The groups behind the letter—including the Center for Biological Diversity and Food & Water Watch—note that hydrogen production generates significant planet-warming emissions.
“Hydrogen lifecycle emissions which use carbon capture and storage are 20% greater than directly burning natural gas or coal, and 60% greater than burning diesel oil, because of the increased fossil fuels required to power it,” the letter states. “The process of producing gray and blue hydrogen is a major source of fugitive methane emissions from flaring, transportation, and other upstream processes—releasing even more potent greenhouse gases and exacerbating atmospheric warming over the next two decades.”
“President Biden can’t claim to be a climate leader while his administration continues to embrace the hydrogen climate scam and other policies that continue to perpetuate fossil fuel production and infrastructure.”
As Nature explained in an editorial warning against “overhyping” hydrogen, “Most hydrogen is currently made by processes—such as steam reformation of natural gas (methane)—that produce large amounts of CO2 as a by-product.”
“Although ‘green’ hydrogen can be made by using electricity from renewable sources to split water molecules,” the outlet added, “this process is costly compared with more conventional production methods.”
Silas Grant, a campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity, said Tuesday that “calling hydrogen clean energy is a scam to prop up the oil and gas industry.”
“The Biden administration’s plans to expand this dirty energy will only increase oil and gas extraction at a time when the climate emergency demands the opposite,” said Grant. “We need investment in affordable, reliable, community-supported renewable energy like wind and solar.”
The coalition’s letter comes two months after New Mexico-based advocacy organizations urged the Biden administration to reject funding for the Western Interstate Hydrogen Hub, arguing the initiative would “devastate public health, clean air, Indigenous sacred places, and the climate.”
“The climate crisis poses a grave threat to all life on Earth,” the groups wrote in a letter to the U.S. Energy Department. “DOE has the power to help lead a transformation to a more sustainable future. To do so, you must help phase out fossil fuels and reject false solutions like hydrogen.”
But the Biden White House has yet to waver in its support for hydrogen, claiming in a brief last month that “clean hydrogen has the potential to play an important role in decarbonizing the U.S. economy.”
Jim Walsh, policy director at Food & Water Watch, countered Tuesday that investments in hydrogen are “a distraction from real climate action that will cause more pollution, more strain on water resources, and more extraction of climate warming fossil fuels.”
“President Biden can’t claim to be a climate leader while his administration continues to embrace the hydrogen climate scam and other policies that continue to perpetuate fossil fuel production and infrastructure,” Walsh added.
Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).