German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, U.S. President Donald Trump, and French President Emmanuel Macron. DeSmog collage. Credit: Faces of the World / Flickr (Macron), Steffen Prößdorf (Merz), Gage Skidmore / Flickr (Trump)
European leaders are bending to the demands of U.S. climate science deniers.
“The CSDDD is the greatest threat to America’s sovereignty since the fall of the Soviet Union,” the Heartland Institute, a pro-Trump U.S. think tank, tweeted on 31 March.
The Heartland Institute is one of the world’s leading climate science denial groups. It has helped to draft Donald Trump’s anti-climate policies, which have seen the president pledge to “drill baby drill” for more fossil fuels and once again pull the U.S. out of the flagship 2015 Paris Agreement.
Over recent months – along with a host of other Trump allies – the Heartland Institute has set its sights on a new target: the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
This vague acronym belies the potentially transformative impact of the new law. In its original form, the CSDDD sought to require large companies – and those in “high risk” sectors – trading in the EU to address human rights and environmental issues in their own operations and in their supply chains. High turnover companies would also have been forced to adopt a plan to align with the Paris Agreement, including setting emissions reduction targets.
The Heartland Institute and its anti-climate, anti-regulation peers are vocal opponents of the law – and launched an aggressive campaign to water it down, or even to see it scrapped entirely.
These groups, which are all part of the ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) ecosystem, view the CSDDD as symbolic of the way in which “woke” governments are attempting to force citizens and global corporations to conform to a pro-diversity, pro-environment agenda.
Following Trump’s election in November, these MAGA groups wasted no time in formulating their plans to oppose this perceived agenda.
They focused in particular on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which attempt to create workplaces free from bias – and environmental, social and governance (ESG) schemes, which try to ensure that organisations are guided by responsible and sustainable practices, not just profit.
In December, barely a month after Trump’s victory, the Heritage Foundation – the group that wrote the key ‘Project 2025’ blueprint for the president’s second term – published a report entitled: “ESG, DEI, and What to Do About Them”.
In the report, the Heritage Foundation described ESG and DEI as “pernicious”, and called the CSDDD “a serious problem”.
Two months later, the State Financial Officers Foundation – an influential network of Republican finance officials – wrote an open letter calling on the new administration to “investigate” the CSDDD, claiming that the EU’s directives are based on “unscientific assumptions about the nature of climate change impacts” and “will force companies to incriminate themselves”.
This quickly filtered through to Trump’s Cabinet. On 12 February, Howard Lutnick, the president’s pick for commerce secretary, told a Senate committee that the CSDDD threatened to place “significant burdens” on U.S. companies, and that the Trump administration was exploring the use of “commercial tools” to mount a counter-attack against the EU’s environmental regulations.
Soon this rhetoric made its way to the White House. In March, as part of the worldwide tariffs implemented by the Trump administration, the president called the EU “one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the world”.
But the EU hasn’t stood firm in the face of Trump’s war of words.
The EU has already announced that it will be scaling back the CSDDD and delaying its implementation. The number of companies within scope has been reduced by 80 percent. The firms in question will only be required to file due diligence reports every five years, and won’t be required to investigate the ESG operations of their indirect business partners. The implementation of the law has also been postponed until 2028.
But Trump’s MAGA hardliners are still not satisfied. In April, the Heartland Institute released an open letter signed by 31 other groups, calling for Congress and the Trump administration to “take immediate steps to counter the CSDDD’s implementation”, including “if necessary, imposing retaliatory trade policies that punish EU nations for eroding America’s sovereignty, freedoms, and prosperity.”
This backlash is now influencing European leaders. In late May, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for the CSDDD to be scrapped entirely. They claim it must be abandoned in order to defend the “competitiveness” of European corporations, with Macron stating that Europe must “synchronise with the U.S. and the rest of the world.”
This judgement signifies the appeasement of anti-climate pressure groups that are ideologically opposed to clean energy and climate science.
The Heartland Institute has denied that humans are driving climate change, which it has called a “delusion”, while the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document urged Trump to “dismantle the administrative state”, reverse policies on climate action, slash restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrap state investment in renewable energy, and gut the Environmental Protection Agency.
If the EU waters down its climate policies in response to Trump’s pressure, it will have helped to send Project 2025 global.
The ‘Climate Cartel’
It’s unclear whether these MAGA groups – and the Trump administration – will ease up on the EU if the CSDDD is ditched entirely. They may simply use it as evidence that European lawmakers will buckle under enough pressure.
Indeed, MAGA’s opposition to the CSDDD is part of a multi-pronged campaign that seeks to dismantle global climate initiatives pioneered by both governments and corporations.
Much of the original groundwork for this campaign was undertaken by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and its chair Jim Jordan, a leading Trump supporter.
Last year, Jordan’s committee produced reports – and demanded evidence from major corporations – on a supposed “climate cartel” of “left-wing activists and major financial institutions”.
The committee alleged that some of the world’s biggest asset managers – that have questionable climate commitments – are conspiring to force American companies to decarbonise against their wishes.
As part of its “investigation”, the committee demanded information from more than 130 U.S.-based companies, retirement and pension programmes, as well as 60 U.S.-based asset managers.
In November, 11 Republican-led states sued BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street – three of the world’s biggest asset managers – over their ESG policies. In West Virginia and Oklahoma, nearly two dozen banks have been barred from public contracts for trying to divest from fossil fuels.
These actions, along with the anti-climate rhetoric of Donald Trump, have had a chilling effect. In February last year, BlackRock, State Street, and JP Morgan Asset Management withdrew from Climate Action 100+, an investor-led initiative that works to ensure the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters take action on climate change.
Fast forward a year, and a growing list of major U.S. corporations are either cancelling or delaying their sustainability reports – designed to show how they are meeting their climate commitments.
And a new story from the investigative outlet CORRECTIV today reports that German insurance giants and investment firms are withdrawing from climate agreements, while companies are quietly shelving their sustainability policies, amid the anti-ESG backlash orchestrated by Trump and his acolytes.
As one sustainability expert at a financial firm told CORRECTIV: “We have to be careful not to harm the cause by sticking our necks out and becoming a target in the U.S.”
This article was produced with support from the European Media and Information Fund, managed by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The sole responsibility for any content supported by the European Media and Information Fund lies with the author(s) and it may not necessarily reflect the positions of the EMIF and the Fund Partners, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the European University Institute.
A firefighter works to extinguish a wildfire in the village of Vilaza in northwestern Spain on August 12, 2025. (Photo: Miguel Riopa/AFP via Getty Images)
Fire-related deaths were reported in Turkey, Spain, Montenegro, and Albania.
With firefighters in southern Europe battling blazes that have killed people in multiple countries and forced thousands to evacuate, Spain’s environment minister on Wednesday called the wildfires a “clear warning” of the climate emergency driven by the fossil fuel industry.
While authorities have cited a variety of causes for current fires across the continent, from arson to “careless farming practices, improperly maintained power cables, and summer lightning storms,” scientists have long stressed that wildfires are getting worse as humanity heats the planet with fossil fuels.
The Spanish minister, Sara Aagesen, told the radio network Cadena SER that “the fires are one of the parts of the impact of that climate change, which is why we have to do all we can when it comes to prevention.”
“Our country is especially vulnerable to climate change. We have resources now but, given that the scientific evidence and the general expectation point to it having an ever greater impact, we need to work to reinforce and professionalize those resources,” Aagesen added in remarks translated by The Guardian.
Firefighters are struggling to control wildfires blazing across Europe during a severe heatwave. pic.twitter.com/ndHTbNx6RM
The Spanish meteorological agency, AEMET, said on social media Wednesday that “the danger of wildfires continues at very high or extreme levels in most of Spain, despite the likelihood of showers in many areas,” and urged residents to “take extreme precautions!”
The heatwave impacting Spain “peaked on Tuesday with temperatures as high as 45°C (113°F),” according to Reuters. AEMET warned that “starting Thursday, the heat will intensify again,” and is likely to continue through Monday.
The heatwave is also a sign of climate change, Akshay Deoras, a research scientist in the Meteorology Department at the U.K.’s University of Reading, toldAgence France-Presse this week.
“Thanks to climate change, we now live in a significantly warmer world,” Deoras said, adding that “many still underestimate the danger.”
Parts of Europe are once again facing intense heatwaves, with destructive wildfires affecting France, Portugal and Spain.
There have been at least two fire-related deaths in Spain this week: a man working at a horse stable on the outskirts of the Spanish capital Madrid, and a 35-year-old volunteer firefighter trying to make firebreaks near the town of Nogarejas, in the Castile and León region.
Acknowledging the firefighter’s death on social media Tuesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez sent his “deepest condolences to their family, friends, and colleagues,” and wished “much strength and a speedy recovery to the people injured in that same fire.”
According toThe New York Times, deaths tied to the fires were also reported in Turkey, Montenegro, and Albania. Additionally, The Guardiannoted, “a 4-year-old boy who was found unconscious in his family’s car in Sardinia died in Rome on Monday after suffering irreversible brain damage caused by heatstroke.”
There are also fires in Greece, France, and Portugal, where the mayor of Vila Real, Alexandre Favaios, declared that “we are being cooked alive, this cannot continue.”
🔥Fire danger forecast for 11–17 Aug shows extreme to very extreme FWI anomalies across Europe.
Reuters on Wednesday highlightedGreenpeace estimates that investing €1 billion, or $1.17 billion, annually in forest management could save 9.9 million hectares or 24.5 million acres—an area bigger than Portugal—and tens of billions of euros spent on firefighting and restoration work.
The European fires are raging roughly three months out from the next United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, which is scheduled to begin on November 10 in Belém, Brazil.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsGreenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Despite claiming a commitment to sustainability, the world’s largest investment fund continues to invest heavily in fossil fuels through its “green” funds — prompting accusations of greenwashing.
In the first quarter of 2025, BlackRock invested $3 billion in fossil-fuel companies through its funds that are defined as sustainable. Credit: Christopher Michel/Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Claim to be verified: BlackRock offers its global clients sustainable investment products, which allegedly exclude fossil fuels.
Context: In the first quarter of 2025 only, the world’s largest asset manager invested US$3 billion in fossil-fuel companies through its funds defined as sustainable. BlackRock promotes them with language that is potentially misleading and likely to leave unwary investors believing that such products exclude fossil fuels.
In 2016, Larry Fink, CEO of investment firm BlackRock, had no doubts about the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG): “Over the long term, ESG issues – ranging from climate change to diversity to board effectiveness – have real and quantifiable financial impacts”, he wrote in a letter on corporate governance in 2016.
The CEO of the world’s largest asset-management company has since changed his mind: “The reason I backed away from using the term ESG is that it means something different to everyone. It’s so undefined that it’s become unmentionable”, Fink said in 2023, as a guest on the Wall Street Journal podcast “Free Expression”. In the same podcast, he added: “If you want to invest in hydrocarbons, we will select the best hydrocarbon companies in the world for you. If you want to invest in a more decarbonized portfolio, we’re going to try to find the best economic portfolio that will achieve your financial goal.”
BlackRock manages US$11.6 trillion of investments. The firm has drastically changed its ESG and sustainable-investing policies in recent years. In its 2020 letter to clients, BlackRock used the term “ESG” 26 times and made a bold assertion: “We believe that sustainability must become our new standard for investing.” It also pledged to launch a product “that allows clients to invest in companies with the highest ESG scores, using our most extensive exclusion criteria, including one for fossil fuels.”
These commitments were widely covered in the international media. In January 2020, the specialist magazine UK Investor headlined: “BlackRock to focus on ESG and climate change in 2020”. CNBC wrote: “BlackRock, a $7 trillion asset manager, puts climate change at the heart of its investment strategy for 2021.” The specialist publication ESG Today asked: “BlackRock is betting everything on sustainability: Why is this important?”
Glossary
The European Regulation on sustainability-related disclosures in the financial services sector (known as SFDR) introduces two categories of green investments: those that merely promote “environmental and/or social characteristics” (Article 8), known in the jargon as “light green”, and those that must be properly “sustainable” (Article 9), known as “dark green”. In both cases, certain additional details must be provided to the consumer/investor, namely: (1) information about how these characteristics are met and (2) if a benchmark is indicated, an explanation of how that benchmark is consistent with the advertised characteristics.
While asset managers can independently define the criteria by which they consider a fund to promote “environmental and/or social characteristics”, “Article 9” funds must meet more stringent criteria regarding renewable energy, greenhouse gas emissions, etc. However, by exploiting semantic ambiguities, some managers still choose to sell funds that do not fall under Article 9 but rather under Article 8, while nonetheless labelling them as “sustainable and responsible” (i.e. dark green) investments.
To stay with the gambling theme, was BlackRock bluffing? In its 2025 letter, there is no reference to sustainability, ESG, or the Paris Climate Agreement. The company has left Net Zero Asset Managers, a global initiative launched in 2020 to promote net-zero 2050 projects. Following the departure of other major players such as JP Morgan, Net Zero Asset Managers has suspended its activities.
Yet, notwithstanding the ESG labels, the climate promises, and the pledges of “sustainability”, BlackRock continues to offer products that funnel money to the hydrocarbons giants.
BlackRock’s “sustainable” investments in fossil fuels
From 2023 to 2025, BlackRock invested an annual average of US$2.3 billion in the fossil-fuel majors through its ESG funds. The supposedly “green” funds we initially identified are those that make reference to the EU Sustainable Finance Regulation (SFDR), which came into force in 2021. Articles 8 and 9 of the SFDR concern the promotion of “environmental or social” objectives and “sustainable investments”, respectively.https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/zNmlR/2/
In markets where sustainable finance is not regulated, BlackRock promotes funds that are entirely outside the SFDR definitions as “ESG”, “sustainable” and (energy) “transition”. These amounted to US$1.8 billion in the first quarter of 2025. The fact that sustainable finance is almost wholly unregulated in countries such as the United States allows BlackRock to use notably audacious names for products which continue to channel money to Big Oil. Examples include “iShares ESG Aware”, “iShares Global Clean Energy”, and “BlackRock Sustainable Advantage”.https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/02UAz/4/
A US investor might thus be sold a BlackRock “Carbon Transition Readiness” fund that has funnelled more than ten million dollars to fossil giants including BP, Equinor, Shell, Eni, and TotalEnergies. The “Climate Conscious and Transition” fund, meanwhile, has pumped US$65 million into Chevron, ConocoPhillips, EOG, Exxon, and Occidental Petroleum.
Among the so-called “carbon majors” in which BlackRock invests through its supposedly green funds are many of the same names: TotalEnergies, Shell, Equinor, Chevron, Eni, and Repsol. All are heavy emitters of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. None, as we showed in the previous article in this series, is currently on track with its Paris Agreement targets.https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/lRahP/4/
BlackRock appears to be disrespecting its own criteria
Contrary to Larry Fink’s statements in the Wall Street Journal podcast, our fact-checking reveals that over 20 funds classified as Article 8 or 9 (the “green” fund categories under EU regulations) have stakes in the oil giants. This despite the fact that their prospectuses contain commitments on ESG or decarbonisations, and may even openly renounce fossil-fuel investments.
For example, the iShares MSCI Europe Screened UCITS ETF (exchange-traded fund) explicitly states in the first lines of its description that it excludes exposure to “fossil-fuel extraction”. A BlackRock client who is not sufficiently versed in interpreting such claims might therefore reasonably expect companies such as Shell, TotalEnergies, and Eni to be excluded.
Screenshot of the prospectus for the iShares MSCI Europe Screened UCITS ETF: BlackRock states that it excludes “fossil-fuel extraction” from its investments. | Source: iShares.com
A closer look at the fund’s sustainability information shows that it is passively managed and follows the MSCI Europe Screened Index, aiming to promote environmental and social standards. This means the fund uses MSCI’s own rules for excluding certain companies — MSCI being one of the largest global financial firms.
To understand what these exclusion rules are, investors must go to MSCI’s website and read the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) methodology behind the index. While it initially appears that oil and gas are excluded, the detailed rules reveal otherwise. The index doesn’t exclude all fossil fuel companies. Instead, it only leaves out those earning more than 5% of their revenue from specific controversial sources: coal, unconventional oil and gas (like fracking or tar sands), palm oil, Arctic drilling, or companies that violate the UN Global Compact’s voluntary sustainability principles.
In short, the index allows most fossil fuel companies unless they cross certain thresholds. That’s why BlackRock, which uses this index, can claim in its prospectus to exclude fossil fuel extraction — but then clarify in other documents that it relies on MSCI’s criteria. In fact, BlackRock refers readers to MSCI’s methodology page for details — but that page leads to a 404 error.
This index, like many others we examined, claims to exclude companies involved in hydrocarbon extraction. However, it later clarifies that the exclusion applies only to “unconventional” projects, such as tar sands and Arctic drilling.
Despite this, many of the companies the funds invest in are still involved in these very activities. A detailed look at the rules and factsheets shows that there is often flexibility under vague categories like “other investments.” This loophole allows the funds to legally maintain their “sustainable” label, even while investing in companies that contradict it.
In its sustainability report, meanwhile, BlackRock makes a confusing claim that might raise eyebrows among the more attentive clients: “This Fund promotes environmental or social characteristics, but does not aim to invest sustainably.” The statement seems to conflict with the very description of the investment, which talks of “a meaningful approach” to sustainable investing.
To further protect itself, BlackRock makes clear that any sustainability conditions “do not change a fund’s investment objective or limit its investment universe, and there is no indication that a fund will adopt investment strategies focused on ESG factors, impact, or exclusion criteria”. BlackRock thus effectively contradicts its own promise to exclude fossil fuels.
In the first quarter of 2025, such nominally “green” funds held fossil-fuel assets worth more than US$1 billion.
Screenshot: MSCI Europe Screened Index fossil-fuel exclusion criteria. | Source: MSCI
Reviewing our findings, Nicolas Koch, from the NGO Sustainable Finance Observatory, comments: “We cannot expect customers to read all the information, and it is likely that most of them will be easily misled by statements that certain activities are completely excluded, when in fact they are not. However, the SFDR represents a major victory in terms of transparency in this regard. It should provide the necessary information to intermediaries, such as financial advisors, who could easily exclude this fund thanks to the SFDR.”https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/F5AuF/5/
In its “green” funds that specifically claim to exclude hydrocarbons from their portfolios, BlackRock holds fossil-fuel investments worth a total of US$850 million. The first lines of their prospectuses, in addition to mentioning the exclusion criteria, state that the investments are designed to reduce carbon impacts.
In August 2024, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) introduced stricter rules on the use of sustainability-related terms in fund names. These rules prohibit funds with significant fossil fuel holdings from using labels like “green,” “ESG,” or “sustainable.” The regulation took effect on 21 May 2025.
Before that date, the iShares MSCI Europe Screened UCITS ETF included “ESG” in its name, despite holding US$177 million in fossil fuel companies. As of now, it still holds around US$156 million in firms like Shell, TotalEnergies, Eni, Equinor, EQT, Aker, and OMV. Yet, the fund claims it is designed for investors who want to “exclude controversial sectors and reduce carbon intensity.”
In the first quarter of 2025, the iShares MSCI EMU ESG Enhanced CTB UCITS ETF fund invested US$160 million in fossil-fuel assets. It carries the CTB label, referring to the Carbon Transition Benchmark, meaning that it should promote decarbonisation standards. According to the new guidelines of the ESMA, BlackRock is required to demonstrate in its sustainability reporting how its investments are “on a clear and measurable path towards social or environmental transition”.
In its sustainability disclosures, BlackRock states that it doesn’t practise “engagement” with companies. The term refers to the interaction between asset managers and companies in which they hold equity stakes through “green” funds, where the aim is to positively influence their ESG and climate policies. According to a report by the European Commission’s sustainable-finance platform, such engagement can have positive impacts on companies, and this should be measured and shared with clients. BlackRock has chosen a different path. According to its disclosures, it “does not directly engage with companies, focusing instead on the quality of ESG data (it is committed to engaging directly with data and index providers to ensure better analysis and stability of ESG metrics)”.
“This is not a good way to generate impact and offer a more decarbonised investment portfolio”, says Sustainable Finance Observatory’s Nicolas Koch. NGO ShareAction’s latest report reveals that BlackRock has reduced its support for ESG resolutions at shareholder meetings to almost zero percent, and its commitment to sustainability is not sufficient to be considered credible. “Therefore, for any impact-oriented retail investor who has purchased iShares ESG ETFs in the past or is considering purchasing them in the future, there is a clear recommendation: avoid these products and move toward funds that engage in credible dialogue with companies”, concludes Koch.
To date, none of the carbon majors, including those in which BlackRock’s green funds invest, appear to have energy-transition plans consistent with international climate goals
Robert Clarke, an expert at Client Earth, a nonprofit legal and environmental organisation, makes a similar point:
“There is a huge question mark over impact claims. This is another category of potential ‘transition-washing’. Many funds have been rebranded from ‘ESG’ or ‘sustainable’ to ‘transition funds’, highlighting a subset of them that focus on transition strategies. But the problem here is: what happens if a fund is labeled a transition fund but the investments are not consistent? An example of this, in our view, is continued investment in the expansion of fossil fuels, which is simply incompatible with the transition.”
To date, none of the carbon majors, including those in which BlackRock’s green funds invest, appear to have energy-transition plans consistent with international climate goals. In fact, many seem to have watered down their climate strategies over the past year, as reported in a Carbon Tracker report published in April 2025.
Specialists agree that engagement with companies and voting at shareholder meetings are the most effective mechanisms for ensuring that “sustainable” investments have an impact. A recent report by the Sustainable Finance Observatory shows that 51 percent of European investors want their investments to have an impact.
We asked ESMA whether it considers BlackRock’s statements on sustainability to be contradictory. “The supervisory authority of the related fund will have to determine whether it intends to investigate whether the disclosure may be unclear, incorrect, or misleading to investors”, a spokesperson said.
“BlackRock operates in one of the most highly regulated industries in the world, and our funds, their prospectuses, and their supporting documents, adhere to all applicable regulations,” a spokesperson for the bank told Voxeurop. He added: “For our sustainable range, this includes those governing sustainable investing. iShares ETF holdings are published daily to provide investors with full transparency into where their investments go, and our leading sustainable fund range offers a spectrum of exposures allowing our clients to choose how to meet their own individual investment goals.”
BlackRock accused of greenwashing by Client Earth
The obvious incompatibility between the names of “sustainable” funds and their Big Carbon investments was tackled head on by the environmental group Client Earth in October 2024.
The organisation filed a legal complaint with the French financial supervisory authority, the AMF, challenging BlackRock’s labelling of certain consumer-oriented funds as “sustainable”. It singled out products such as the BSF Systematic Sustainable Global Equity Fund, pointing out that such funds had channelled €1 billion to the fossil-fuel sector.
In its action, Client Earth argued that such labels mislead consumers and may violate EU regulations. “There are rules that require communications to be fair, clear, and not misleading”, said Robert Clarke. “It should be the responsibility of the regulatory authorities [of the country] where the funds are marketed to take action to combat greenwashing, not only in fund names but also in prospectuses, in order to protect their investment sector. At present, national authorities are failing to take action.” In the wake of the complaint, BlackRock has changed the names or exclusion criteria of several of its funds.
The U.S. Department of Energy shared an image of coal with the message, “She is the moment,” on social media on July 31, 2025. (Image: U.S. Department of Energy/X)
“The Trump administration wants us all choking, sick, misinformed, and working ourselves to death so that a few from the luxury class can be ever more wealthy,” said one science communicator.
The U.S. Department of Energy came under fire from scientists and other climate action advocates on Thursday for a social media post celebrating coal, as President Donald Trump works to boost the fossil fuel, despite its devastating impacts on public health and the planet.
On X—the platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who left the Trump administration earlier this year—the department shared an image of coal with the message, “She’s an icon. She’s a legend. And she is the moment.”
The audio of television host Wendy Williams saying that, while speaking about rapper Lil’ Kim, often has been repurposed by social media users. However, the DOE’s use of the phrase to glamorize coal sparked swift and intense backlash.
“POV: It’s 1885 and you work for the Department of Energy,” wrote Jonas Nahm, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who served on the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Joe Biden.
Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources replied: “She is inefficient. She is dirtier air. She is higher energy bills.”
Multiple X users pointed to coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, a condition that occurs when coal dust is inhaled—including California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office, which wrote, “She’s black lung.”
The national Democratic Party account said, “In April, Trump cut a program that gave free black lung screenings to coal miners.”
After U.S. District Judge Irene Berger—appointed by former President Barack Obama in West Virginia—issued a preliminary injunction against firings at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Coal Workers Health Surveillance Program, nearly 200 workers who screen coal miners for black lung were reinstated.
Since returning to office in January, Trump has taken various steps to attack the climate and benefit the fossil fuel industry, such as picking fracking CEO Chris Wright to lead DOE, signing coal-friendly executive orders in April and issuing proclamations that provide what the White House called “regulatory relief” for a range of facilities, including coal plants, earlier this month.
“Hard to fathom this coming from the DOE if there were any sane, reasonable, rational, or thoughtful government in control,” Graham Lau, an astrobiologist and science communicator, said of the department’s pro-coal X post. “The Trump administration wants us all choking, sick, misinformed, and working ourselves to death so that a few from the luxury class can be ever more wealthy. Coal is not the moment. Coal is not going to meet U.S. energy needs. Coal is not the way forward.”
Climate and clean energy investor Ramez Naam wrote, “She is the past,” and shared the graph below, which features data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration about coal consumption since 1960.
Ryan Katz-Rosene, an associate professor at Canada’s University of Ottawa studying contentious climate debates, quipped, “Just the U.S. Department of Energy shilling for one of the most destructive industries known to humanity cool cool cool.”
In the early 1900s, coal mining in the United States often killed more than 2,000 workers per year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration. Over the past decade, it has killed roughly 10 people annually.
It’s not just coal miners who are at risk. Research published in the journal Science two years ago found that “from 1999-2020, approximately 460,000 deaths in the Medicare population were attributable to coal electricity-generating emissions.”
Genevieve Guenther, founding director of End Climate Silence, said Thursday: “The fact that they’re coding coal as female is right in line with the fact that Trump is a rapist. They take everything they want, they think the planet is like a woman they can just exploit, and fuck whomever they hurt in the process.”
Several women have accused the president of sexual assault, including journalist E. Jean Carroll, who said he raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the 1990s. Although Trump has denied the allegations, in 2023, a New York City jury found him civilly liable for sexually abusing and defaming Carroll.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Nigel Farage speaks during a press conference on May 27, 2025 in London, England. | Dan Kitwood / Getty Images
Nigel Farage says his party is a break from the political establishment. That claim doesn’t match up with its donors
Reform has received almost £5m from wealthy donors since 2023, including those with links to fossil fuels, the financial services industry and tax havens, openDemocracy can reveal.
Nigel Farage’s party received around £1.5m in large donations in the first quarter of this year – far less than the £3.3m given to the Conservatives and £2.3m to Labour – according to our analysis of Electoral Commission data published this week.
The figures are likely particularly disappointing for Reform’s leadership, which has boasted of a major fundraising drive this year, as they don’t include a further £1m that the Tories reportedly received in recent weeks from software and gaming entrepreneur Jeremy San.
But what does the £4.8m of donations tell us about Reform’s aims, especially if it were to win office at the next general election? openDemocracy analysed the past 18 months of donations data to shed light on who is donating to the party – and where their interests lie.
Our findings reveal that, despite claiming to represent a break with the current political establishment, Reform is largely funded by ex-Tory donors, who account for around a quarter of the £4.8m it has received in large donations (only those who give £11,180 or more in a year need to be declared to the Electoral Commission) since 2023.
We also found that Reform has an unusually high number of overseas backers with links to tax havens, which the party has publicly stated is part of its fundraising strategy.
While the party previously criticised Labour’s £4m donation from a Cayman Islands-controlled hedge fund, which openDemocracy revealed last year, more than 10% of its total donations are from sources with strong offshore ties.
How much has Reform raised?
Reform looks set to receive more money in large donations in 2025 than it did last year. The party took £1.5m in Q1, compared to £3m in all of 2024. (The latter figure has been misreported as £4.75m, due to double-counting of donations made during the election period, which are listed twice on the Electoral Commission’s website.)
Farage’s party has sought to frame itself as an alternative to the political status quo of the Conservatives and Labour, yet this is at odds with its wealthy funders, many of whom are longtime political donors and paid-up members of the elite.
Commercial interests in regulated sectors such as energy and financial services are overrepresented among both the established political donors and the first-time donors that Reform has attracted.
As well as this cash from rich donors, Reform has likely raised a significant amount of money through its membership, which party figures say has been the main source of funding over the last year or so.
While Reform declined to provide details of its funding through membership and small donations, its own website says it has more than 233,000 members at the time of writing. If accurate, this would generate between £2.3m and £5.8m a year for the party, whose annual membership costs £25 or £10 for under-25s.
It is important in understanding Reform to note this element of its support, particularly at a time when Labour and the Conservative memberships are thought to be dropping significantly.
The estimated figures suggest that Reform’s claims of being driven by a grassroots movement are true, though so are claims from the party’s opponents that it is taking millions of pounds from the ultra-rich.
Who has donated to Reform?
More than half the £4.8m given to Reform since 2023 comes from people in its inner circle.
The party’s biggest donor is Richard Tice MP, its deputy leader, who has put more than £1m into its coffers, while Zia Yusuf, who spectacularly quit as party chair last week in a row over a burqa ban only to rejoin two days later in a similar role, has chipped in £206,000.
Holly Vukadinovic, better known as Holly Valance, who is married to the party’s main fundraiser, Nick Candy, has also given £50,000.
After Tice, the party’s top donor is Fiona Cottrell, an aristocratic socialite who once reportedly dated the King, who has given £750,000. Though she isn’t directly tied to the party, her son George Cottrell – nicknamed ‘Posh George’ – is a longtime associate of Farage and ran fundraising for his previous political party, UKIP, as a teenager.
George is today understood to be a close aide to Farage and, despite having no official role in the party, was last spotted alongside the Reform leader at a press conference this week. He is believed to live between the UK and Montenegro, where he has a number of business interests, including in cryptoassets.
Following Sarah Pochin’s election in May, Reform now has five sitting MPs again. Rupert Lowe, originally elected as a Reform MP, now sits as an independent having lost the party whip | Carl Court / Getty Images
As openDemocracy has reported, George recently set up opaque corporate entities in the UK and the US, which his lawyers told us will be political consulting firms.
Although George has not given money directly to Reform, he has funded trips for Farage to Belgium and the US worth around £25,000. Electoral rules state that an individual must be registered to vote in the UK – including as an overseas voter – in order to donate directly to political parties, but anyone can pay the “reasonable costs of a visit outside the UK”.
As the party has grown in influence, it has attracted the backing of many donors with a history of financially backing right-wing political projects. The majority previously gave money to the Conservative Party, but some have funded Farage’s former parties and the hard-right Reclaim Party, which is fronted by actor Laurence Fox.
David Lilley, who gave £274,000 to Reform, is a veteran hedge fund boss who co-founded Redwood Kite Capital alongside Tory peer Lord Michael Farmer. Both Red Kite and his current firm, Drakewood Capital Management, focus on mining and metals trading.
First Corporate Consultants, a think tank that has given Reform £200,000, is owned by Terence Mordaunt, former chair of the opaque think tank Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) which campaigns as Net Zero Watch. openDemocracy revealed in 2022 that the GWFP has been funded by an oil-rich foundation with huge investments in energy firms.
We have also previously uncovered significant interests in fossil fuels held by Jeremy Hosking, who has given Reform £140,000 and whose fund, Hosking Partners, has tens of millions invested in oil firms and the wider fossil fuel sector. Hosking has poured millions into the UK right in the last decade, including backing Vote Leave to the tune of millions and more recently funding the Reclaim Party and The Critic, a conservative political and cultural magazine.
Nick Candy, a property mogul and former Tory donor who is now in charge of leading Reform’s fundraising efforts, has publicly stated that his strategy is to court ultra-wealthy donors in low-tax jurisdictions around the world with ties to the UK.
This plan only got underway in earnest toward the start of this year and any donations made in recent months are yet to be published. But Reform already has several confirmed donors resident in Monaco, according to corporate filings.
All in all, around £600,000 came from individuals and organisations either resident in perceived tax havens, or controlled via them. They include Roger Nagioff (£100,000), a former Lehman Bros executive now resident in Monaco according to corporate filings, and Luxembourg-based brokerage firm JB Drax Honore (£50,000), which donated through its UK subsidiary.
Some of Reform’s biggest donors, including Malcolm Robinson (£160,000) and Duncan Mackay (£100,000), have not yet been publicly identified.
Political parties have no obligation to publish any information about their donors other than names and details of the donation, and an unavoidable quirk of these donor transparency rules is that individuals with uncommon names are subject to greater scrutiny than those with common names, because they are easier to identify.
Jeremy Hosking was a major funder of the Brexit campaign and has backed a number of right-wing causes in the years since | Jack Taylor / Getty Images
openDemocracy asked Reform to provide a brief biography for several donors who have given more than £50,000 but are yet to be publicly identified, including Robinson and Mackay, but the party did not respond.
However, openDemocracy can reveal that Simon William Smith, who has given the party £58,000, is an ‘angel investor’ with significant interests in cryptocurrency and related technologies. Reform has pledged to deregulate crypto and reduce tax on capital gains made on it.
Reform has also attracted many first-time donors to its cause, with around a quarter of large donations during this period coming from people or organisations with no apparent history of donating to political parties.
Among them are people with a varied range of commercial interests and professional backgrounds. They range from a former BlackRock executive to a company specialising in stage lighting electronics. Some of these donors control companies providing services to local authorities, including in the social care sector, while another donor has previously spoken out about the impact of small boat crossings on his haulage firm.
Overall, though the interests of the party’s wealthy backers are varied, there are common themes and a clear relationship between their political and commercial interests and Reform’s platform. Many stand to benefit significantly from an anti-net zero push, cutting back regulation in finance or energy, lower taxes on wealth and the liberalisation of cryptoassets.
Billionaire backing
While some of the funders from the UKIP and Brexit Party phases of Farage’s political life are now Reform donors, there is currently one notable absentee.
Christopher Harborne is a British billionaire with interests primarily in the fuel and aviation sectors and cryptocurrency. Though much was made of a potential massive donation from Elon Musk to Reform, in Harborne, the party already seemingly has the support of an eccentric tech billionaire who has form for seriously altering the course of British politics with huge donations.
Over a couple of years, Harborne gave Farage’s Brexit Party millions, becoming one of the largest British political donors in the modern era. He also gave Boris Johnson £1m around the time his government started talking up the crypto industry.
While Harborne has yet to put money directly into Reform in its current form, he has funded trips to the US for Farage. As he has active links to both the UK and Thailand (where he has adopted the name Chakrit Sakunkrit), it is not clear whether he is eligible to donate directly to the party, though he does control trading UK companies, which would be able to donate.
Reform also arguably receives significant backing from another major backer of right-wing UK causes: GB News. If payments that the television channel made to Reform MPs for TV gigs were classed as political donations rather than individual earnings, GB News would have been Reform’s second-largest external donor since the start of 2023, giving around £490k. Most of that cash went to Farage, but another of the party’s MPs, former Tory Lee Anderson, is paid £100,000 per year to host a regular show on the channel.
Nigel Farage reminds you that he’s the man that brought you Brexit and asks what could possibly go wrong.Nigel Farage explains the politics of Reform UK: Racism, Fake anti-establishmentism, Deregulation, Corporatism, Climate Change Denial, Mysogyny and Transphobia.
