New Disclosures Help Pull Back Curtain on Who’s Funding Manufactured Climate Investigation
by Steve Everley
energyindepth.org , Dallas, Tex.
A letter reportedly being circulated among a handful of Democrats this week in the U.S. House of Representatives, calling for an investigation into energy companies’ opinions on climate change, references news reports that the letter’s authors characterize as independent journalism. But according to online records, the reports were actually financed by large foundations that oppose oil and natural gas development.
Fewer than two dozen Democratic members of the U.S. House have signed on to a letter circulated by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), which cites “investigations by the Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News” that accused at least one U.S. oil and natural gas company of “financing efforts to amplify doubt about the state of climate science.” Congressman Lieu’s office says it will send the letter “in a few weeks,” which means it wouldn’t be delivered until after the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris.
Contrary to the letter’s suggestion, the LA Times merely published the investigations that were cited. They were not authored by reporters from the LA Times, but rather by a group of researchers affiliated with the Energy and Environment Reporting Fellowship at the Columbia School of Journalism, which was disclosed at the end of the two reports.
But what was not revealed in the pages of the LA Times is who provided funding for the reports. According to the Fellowship’s website, the program receives funding from a number of anti-fossil fuel foundations:
“The program is supported by the Energy Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Family Fund, Lorana Sullivan Foundation and the Tellus Mater Foundation.” (emphasis added)
As well-documented in a 2014 oversight report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) actively backs campaigns to ban oil and natural gas development, including major financing for the activist group 350.org, which environmental activist Bill McKibben co-founded. RBF’s support for 350.org and its anti-fossil fuel campaigns is significant, as McKibben himself called RBF a “great ally.”
According to RBF’s website, the Fund supports efforts to “reduce reliance on carbon-intensive energy sources.”
As Energy In Depth reported last year, RBF also provides funding for InsideClimate News, an activist organization that shares numerous funding sources with extreme anti-fossil fuel groups, such as Food & Water Watch and Earthworks. David Sassoon, the publisher for InsideClimate News, is a former Rockefeller Brothers Fund employee. According to the New York Times, InsideClimate News is “an outgrowth of Mr. Sassoon’s consulting work for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a philanthropic group that emphasizes climate policy.”
One of the board members at InsideClimate News, Michael Northrup, directs the Sustainable Development grantmaking program at RBF. According to InsideClimate News’ website, Northrup “provided the seed grant that got InsideClimate News started in 2007.”
According to Inside Philanthropy, RBF is “not afraid to get involved in a political fight or take a few risks with its grantmaking.” Inside Philanthropy’s summary of RBF’s climate-related grants previously disclosed the extent of its advocacy against fossil fuels, though the following paragraph has since been scrubbed from its page (accessed via the Internet Archive):
“RBF is not afraid of a fight, and it has been a supporter lately of efforts to block the Keystone XL pipeline. For instance, it gave $50,000 to the League of Conservation Voters in 2013 to educate voters on the issues around Keystone and has addressed the broader threat posed by tar sands oil through a half-million-dollar grant to the Sierra Club Foundation. In the past few years, RBF also has been a major funder of 350.org — a group at the forefront of the Keystone fight and other activist efforts to raise awareness about climate change.” (emphasis added)
The Columbia fellows did not disclose in their two-part report that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund were financial supporters of their work. InsideClimate News lists RBF as one of its financial supporters on its “Our Funders” page.
In a 2014 report, the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online newspaper, detailed how environmental foundations have created their own “echo chamber” by funding advocacy groups and the news outlets to cover those groups’ activities:
“Wealthy foundations fighting oil and gas extraction around the country have incorporated ostensibly dispassionate news outlets into their grant-making portfolios, creating what some describe as a self-sustaining environmentalist echo chamber.
“Observers see a pattern at work: A handful of wealthy foundations fund environmental activist groups, news organizations to report on the activists’ activities, and groups that then push out those news reports.
“The perception of a critical mass of public voices on key environmental issues is frequently picked up by more established news organizations.”
The Free Beacon cited the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as one such foundation, noting its financial support for InsideClimate News, the Center for Public Integrity, and a number of other groups that campaign against oil and natural gas development.
Several RBF-backed groups, including 350.org, have used the reports from InsideClimate News and Columbia fellows to call for government investigations. InsideClimate News has covered those activities extensively.
The financial ties to anti-fossil fuel advocacy raise significant questions about the objectivity of the reports from InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times. Yet the funding of these advocacy pieces may only be the beginning.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Rep. Ted Lieu – the author of the letter calling for an investigation of energy companies’ climate-related activities – has received $1,000 in campaign contributions from the RBF-backed League of Conservation Voters (LCV). Since 2008, Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), the co-author of the letter, has accepted over $3,000 from LCV and the Sierra Club, another group backed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
h/t to WUWT reader Matt Dempsey
You have to work pretty hard to find out who is behind this activity. Ironically, Exxon was happy to show the results of their work to the public.
Who should be investigated?
Yes, any forensic account will tell you that this sort shell game (pardon the pun) is very similar to money laundering of the less than legal kind.
I’m not saying that this is the case, but it does show the rank hypocrisy of the warmists: if their message is so sciency, why all the squink (an old UseNet phrase meaning squid ink)?
Oh the Irony! This from the heirs of the founder of Standard Oil!
What better way to maximize the profita from old oil than to demonize coal, fracking, and shale oil.
Exactly.
They have created a false environmental front, the Rock. Bros Fund, in order to hinder oil and gas development in this country as an attempt to undermine small to medium sized E&P companies. This increases profits for their much larger investments in the Rockefeller Family Fund.
The RBF isn’t just a false environmental front:
http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2014/5/21/is-the-rockefeller-brothers-fund-consciously-funding-delegitimization-of-israel#.U7UFGrEeySE=
Furthermore, it should be noted that the Rockefeller Family was one of, if not the largest, financiers and proponents of the Eugenics Movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States
Unless they have since divested all of their holdings ….. me thinks the Rockefeller Foundation is still rooted in fossil fuel extractions in Appalachia.
And to protect their investments therein ….. me thinks they were instrumental in installing “a fox in the henhouse, ….. to wit:.
They have to buy CO2 for injection into old oil fields for enhanced recovery.
What could be better than forcing the competition, coal, to pay THEM to take it via capture and sequestratoon mandates?
No doubt this conflict of interest will be easily shrugged off and ignored. After all, “deniers” are nothing but conspiracy theorists financed by big Oil.
It would be interesting to get a comprehensive history done on the sources of funding for a wide array of environmentalist groups and precisely the same sort of echo chamber institutions for peddling that nonsense as “settled science” in more than just climate issues. Observe that the absolutely safest form of of electrical energy production on record (nuclear) is, in the popular mind, “dangerous”
Not going to happen here. All research for the wingnuts stops at greenies, i.e., not the money and influence behind them. I just spent about 30 secs on the first name I saw of the RBF “leadership” —guess what? A Goldman Sachs plant. In the text above it says, “As well-documented in a 2014 oversight report.” Laughable. The “minority” Senate report was a wordy tracing of money to the greenies, then stopped tracing the money and influence further, as if it would tear apart their hope-y fantasies about how businesses operate in the real world. They will not follow the money, most of them are just pretending.
The propaganda has traveled around the world and through the halls of Congress before the truth puts on its shoes.
EMBASSY, Nov.20, 2015
‘Senior Liberals shaped 2010 plan for Energy’
“Carr is being called a ‘key player,’ and was author of the final report”
Jim Carr, Manitoba, is now the new, just elected, Minister of Natural Resources Canada.
Marlo Raynolds is now chief of staff to the new Environment Minister Catherine McKenna.
Raynolds met (in Ottawa Sept.2010 at the U.S. Embassy) with Nancy Pelosi and now Senator Ed Markey.
News on what’s taking place prior to COP 21.
http://www.embassynews.ca/news/2015/11/18/senior-liberals-shaped-2010-plan-for-energy-strategy/47873
Parliament of Canada
Debates of the Senate (Hansard)
1st Session, 41st Parliament, Volume 148, Issue 57
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Scroll down to: Orders of the Day
Involvement of Foreign Foundations in Canadian Domestic Affairs > then about 1/2 page down in the Debate.
Hon. Grant Mitchell: “in fact, I have one here. In its annual report, the Pembina Institute already does. It lists who gives it money. One of them is The Natural Resources Defense Council, an American group. It is one of the single biggest contributors.”
http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/sen/chamber/411/debates/057db_2012-03-06-e.htm
The same Rockefeller Brothers Fund, as revealed by Paul Chesser, that financed several US states’ efforts to develop cap-and-trade plans ( http://www.globalwarming.org/2008/06/16/rockefeller-brothers-fund-at-it-again/ ) via an organization called the Center for Climate Strategies. Within agreements set up by CCS, the state agencies were not permitted to debate the science of man-caused global warming, as in the wording out of the Arkansas plan, for example: “Participants will not debate the science of climate change or the directive of the Act, but will instead provide leadership and vision for how Arkansas will rise to the challenges and opportunities of addressing climate change.”
It might be a safe bet that the guys at RBF would not have been pleased to see fair-and-balanced skeptic rebuttal at the Inside Climate News article series….
Is the Tides Foundation involved in any of these groups? How about George Soros?
How…(Jeepers)
No, you were right the first time.
Drummond Pike, founder of Tides Foundation, is now with INET/Institute for New Economic Thinking in NYC co-founded by George Soros, Jim Balsallie (Blackberry fame) and another fellow.
The long term goal is to impoverish americans and enrich the Rockefellers as they pour money into “renewables”.
Don’t renewables just grow on trees ??
Who needs funding, if it grows on trees.
g
IMO, political campaigns to merely vilify producers and impoverish consumers of carbon-intensive energy sources falls way short of any reasonable claim to “support efforts to reduce reliance” on carbon-intensive energy sources. People less wealthy than those funded by the Rockerfellers should be offered a working affordable alternative before you kick away the props that support their modest lifestyles and current life-expectancies. No reasonable person would do it to the food supply for a group of people, and shouldn’t do it to their energy supplies either.
A starvation diet is not a diet. It is starvation.
I find you can usually tell the honest and competent activists by their attitude to nuclear power.
Following recent news reports that Exxon Mobil Corp. knew as early as the 1970s that oil and natural gas cause global warming…..and for the past 4 decades they have been trying to prove it
“A group of House Democrats is investigating whether oil and coal companies have lied to the public regarding what they know about climate change.”
What you know must be the same as knowledge. Ideas based on inductivism isn´t knowledge. Knowledge is the sum of objective statements which has survived when objective falsifiable statements has been exposed to conclusive tests. Ideas are corroborated by the severity of the tests they have been exposed to and survived, and not at all by inductive reasoning in favor of it.
We must object to inductivism and demand critical rationalism. Or – we might have to bend over and welcome idiocracy.
United Nations has created an international problem of a cultural character, an international body pretending to be strictly scientific, while it is obvious from its “Principles governing the work by IPCC” and from “Guidance Note on Consistent Treatment of Uncertainties”, that it is not at all based on robust scientific methods.
More on my argument behind that conclusion here:
https://dhf66.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/united-nations-were-supposed-to-solve-problems-of-an-international-cultural-character/
Both sides have lots of money (from oil sales, ironically).
The funding isn’t relevant. The facts are.
And the facts are that Climategate showed the ‘World’s Greatest Climatologists’ weren’t sure of what warming was natural or anthropogenic.
The whole case is a Travesty.
Actually both sides are the same. I have a feeling that they have been anti-U.S. ever since the feds made the family break the massive company into pieces.
The worst of all is that United Nations initiated and stands behind this travesty.
United Nations was supposed to solve problems of an international character – not to become one!
“The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General from 1953 to 1961
Thanks, the facts ARE the issue. Even so, the funding may well tell us a lot about the Lame Stream Media and their regurgitations of lies.
I think that as an act of penance “Big Oil” should withdraw their product from the market for one month in the states of the senators who sign this document, and at any time in the future when these allegations are raised.
Not from the states, as that will be punishing a lot of innocent folks. Withdraw it from state government.
yes, but unless the VOTERS feel the pain personally for their decisions at the voting booth in sending these anti-science fascists to the congress, they will keep sending them back.
Better yet, require that no government body or agency can purchase any internal combustion engine using product. Nor can any employee who works for any government body or department, and gets paid by the taxpayers.
Nothing but electric for all government vehicles. Military exempted of course.
g
Since I’m not going to get a check from big oil, I might as well find a way to get a check from Rockefeller Brothers Fund. I don’t have to be sincere in asking for the money, just sincere in spending right?
J. Philip Peterson – to answer your question re George Soros, note what Everley wrote:
“The program is supported by the Energy Foundation, OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATIONS, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Family Fund, Lorana Sullivan Foundation and the Tellus Mater Foundation.” (emphasis added)”
Wikipedia: Open Society Foundations
Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is an international grantmaking network founded by progressive-liberal business magnate George Soros…
Since its founding in 1993, OSF has reported expenditures of over $11 billion…
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, while OSF spends much of its resources on democratic causes around the world, it has also contributed to political advocacy groups such as the Tides Foundation…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Society_Foundations
Thanks for doing my “homework”!
22 years.
11 – it says – billion dollars.
And see, pretty soon – a billion here, a billion there – and you’re into real money.
# obviously a bigger sofa to search behind than I have.
Auto
I wish this website (WUWT) would get 1% of a billion dollars = $10,000,000 USD…
What would Anthony do with 10 million dollars? I can only imagine…
How much money does it take to control the weather?
more! (really simple answer, no?)
Not quite the monitor-killer!
Not quite!
But + lots!
So is this part of what they were hiding about the effects of increasing CO2?
That the earth would be greening up? Crop yields and world food production would explode higher?
The number of violent tornadoes in the US would plunge?
There would be no major hurricane strikes in the US for periods of a decade or longer?
It makes sense that they would have known all this, based on meteorology 101 and the fact that when you decrease the meridional temperature gradient by warming the higher latitudes, you reduce the potential energy(and need for the planet to equalize the imbalance).
So if they knew that CO2 was a greenhouse gas and that it would cause these things, that have in fact occurred……….. should hold them accountable?
Maybe we should be thanking them for helping to rescue the planet from dangerously low levels of atmospheric CO2. Imagine if CO2 had dropped 120 ppm, instead of having risen 120ppm?
From an assumed initial state of 280ppm, that would mean atmospheric CO2 levels of 160 ppm. Plants would be shutting down and life on this planet would be suffering catastrophic harm.
Actually, the reality is that at the current 400ppm, the atmospheric level of atmospheric CO2 is still deficient for life, based on the objective/biological science.
The noted exception is a huge group of humans that have defined the ideal level of CO2, as well as global temperatures as being those levels that existed just before humans started burning fossil fuels.
Regarding the “climate change” angle. Climate is just the weather over a long period of time, by some standards, a minimum of 30 years.
As an operational meteorologist for 33 years, who also has weather records that date back to when weather conditions were first recorded, it appears that many measures of weather/climate, during the past 3 decades have featured the best atmospheric conditions for life on this planet since the Medieval Warm Period, around 1,000 years ago…………… that was (likely) warmer than this in many locations.
Why would we be absurdly blaming an entity for knowing that their product would play a role in this outcome.?
Because liberals do not live in the real world !!!
An operational meteorologist ought to know when and why the 30-years reporting of the “normal” weather came about – from the IMO 1934 Wiesbaden meeting. It was not a climate thing. Part of the reasoning was to reference the prior life-span of a young adult. Also, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_meteorology
“They were not authored by reporters from the LA Times”
From the cited article:
“the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, with the Los Angeles Times, has been researching the gap between Exxon Mobil’s public position and its internal planning on the issue of climate change.”
Who is surprised?
What does Rod Adams (and his progressive friends) have to say?
Please tease him…
while others dig into the Rockefeller angle, less known is the heavy involvement of TELLUS MATER FOUNDATION in CAGW advocacy:
Asset Owners Disclosure Project: Our Supporters
THE TELLUS MATER FOUNDATION
Tellus Mater’s mission is to catalyse a shift to sustainable capitalism: to change the operating rules for capitalism so that finance can better fulfill it’s role in directing the flows of Financial Capital to production systems that preserve and enhance Natural Capital…
http://aodproject.net/about/our-supporters/81-the-tellus-mater-foundation.html
(AOD Project Chairman is Dr John Hewson, a former leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. John Connor, CEO of Australia’s climate change research and advocacy group, The Climate Institute, is a director, as is ex-Goldman Sachs’ Chairman of the Quantitative Investment Strategies group, Bob Litterman. Litterman is also a board member of the World Wildlife Fund)
worth reading all of the following because, ultimately, the goal is to have friendly institutional fund managers pump trillions of dollars of pension funds into the CAGW scam:
Feb 2014: Guardian: Craig Scott: A new calling for capitalism
At the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual meeting in Davos last month, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations’ secretary general, called on financial institutions to increase their investments in sustainable energy sources and low-carbon businesses. A day earlier, the UN Environment Programme launched an inquiry into the global financial system and how it could transition to a green economy.
The need for the world’s financial systems to move towards a more sustainable model is clearly attracting high-profile attention. However, such a transition is an enormous task: the WEF estimates that $6 trillion (£3.6tn) will need to be invested globally in infrastructure, every year, up to 2030 to deliver a low-carbon economy…
So how can the general public become more engaged and demand change from the financial institutions that serve them? “Transparency will be the thing that gets the next generation,” said Kelly Clark, director of the Tellus Mater Foundation…
For Litvack and many other contributors, the drive for change has to come from fund managers – in particular, those who control pension funds…
http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/new-calling-for-capitalism
It sounds like they want environmental fascism leading perhaps to de facto totalitarianism. What government or Greenie could resist?
Any lawyers or people with true in depth legal knowledge. If so I have a question. If say for example the NY AG files charges against Exxon. Would they not be civil charges and thus subject to a counter suit like Mark Steyn did to Mann with all the potentially embarrassing and revealing revelations coming out in discovery?
Congrats Steve on the fine sleuthing.
Bring it on. These folks have drunk deeply from their own Kool Aid bucket. This isn’t anything like tobacco but they beleive it can be. They are very wrong. To our advantage.
troe
Also – to the world’s advantage.
We can be inclusive.
Auto
Yes, early papers by Exxon researchers were co-authored by academics in the 70s and 80s. They actually were the first to speculate that all this CO2 from burning their products was going to cause warming. There is no hidden secret here. Indeed, there hasn’t been one new development since then by the proponents of global warming. It can be said unequivocally that Exxon is responsible for today’s hysteria.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/22/what-did-exxonmobil-know-and-when-did-they-know-it-part-1/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/23/what-did-exxonmobil-know-and-when-did-they-know-it-part-deux-same-as-it-ever-was/
There are no smoking guns – the whole thing is a show for Paris.
“A non-profit is trying to get professional science societies to sign a letter condemning a House Republican investigation of the government’s climate agency over a study that drastically rewrote the global temperature record.
The letter may have actually been written by a left-wing environmental activist, and not The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) personnel — undercutting the notion this letter is the work of a disinterested scientific body.
The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained the AAAS letter, and an examination of its metadata shows the document was created by Michael Halperin, who works for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)”.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/20/science-orgs-letter-condemning-gops-noaa-probe-actually-written-by-an-environmental-activist/
So let me get this straight…
These activists are claiming that all skeptics (including scientists) are funded by big oil (when very few skeptic scientists, and only a few prominent politicians actually are), while at the same time, THEY are being funded by “green” companies? Did I get that right?
If by “green” companies you mean people and groups that make lots of money, and intend to make even more, by manipulating social and financial markets, then yes
The solution for the whole mess is to go to a minimal rate flat tax, eliminate tax exemption for foundations, etc.
Exactly! But then how would those rent seekers stack the deck?
The whole thing is just plain silly. We have known CO2 causes a warming forcing since 1996. And by how much, in 1906. And arguably before that, even.
Funded by Exxon, do you think?
A warming forcing ?? Really ?
Yes. But it is not a particularly large forcing. And with no positive net feedback, it doesn’t stack up to much. That is the basic lukewarmer position.
It has been reported that Will Rogers, an American political funny guy, said that money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.
Trickle-down economics …
is going on here. Notice the names of the rich and famous that trickle the money out to poster designers, banner makers, all the staff, and all the expenses for paper, ink, paint – oh, and gasoline – needed to keep weepy Bill and others in the news.
Our local ribbon makers and marchers (for the party in Paris) will experience below freezing temperatures this Sunday so will need gloves, hats, and hot chocolate or coffee. Then they will have to go trickle, or whatever the PC term is. A few may injure themselves and need emergency medical treatment or just a cough suppressant. See how it works? – watch the money flow.
The problem being that when we “distributed to the top” by cutting the top rates, we got the Reagan effect. There was a short, sharp recession to cramp out inflation and interest rates. Not only were 20 million jobs added, but federal revenue was up 18% factoring in both inflation and population growth by the end of it. (And, yes, there is more to it than that, but that’s the basic picture.) And the richest 10% were paying a higher percentage of federal taxes than they had before.
When we distributed it to the poor, we got Carter effect. And there were many unfortunate social effects as well as economic effects. (There was growth, it was not all bad.)
Every job I got, I was desperate to get. And I somehow never did manage to get a job until I was desperate. It’s a pity that I had to be desperate, but I would not trade my working life for the same money while not working. I think it would have had a bad effect on me. It’s the human condition.
And every penny I’ve made in my life was “trickled down” to me by someone who had more money than me.
And I want to know howcome so many people are able to set the tax rate perfectly, not too high, not too low in every computer game they played that included a tax rate or made you manage an economy, yet in real life they expound on the subject like, well, braindead, kneejerk chickens.
Every mayor of New York should be denied office until he can cope passably with Sim City. Or Caesar III (a/k/a, Sim City with Funky Helmets). Results to be utubed.
No, I am not singling you out, John. Would that I were. #B^) I agree with a lot of what you say.
another well-funded bunch which get tons of MSM coverage.
TELLUS MATER FOUNDATION among the funders:
Carbon Tracker: Our Funders
The work of Carbon Tracker has been made possible by the vision and openness to innovation shown by organisations such as the following:
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund
The Growald Family Fund
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust
The Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation
THE TELLUS MATER FOUNDATION
The Ashden Trust
Zennstrom Philanthropies
Wallace Global Fund
The European Climate Foundation
Generation Foundation
MAVA Foundation
The Velux Foundation
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Oak Foundation
The Grantham Foundation
http://www.carbontracker.org/about/
Carbon Tracker: Jeremy Leggett / Non-executive Chairman
Jeremy is non-executive Chairman of the Carbon Tracker Initiative, Founder and a director of Solarcentury, an international solar solutions company, and Founder and Chairman of SolarAid, a solar lighting charity working in Africa.
An Entrepreneur of the Year at the New Energy Awards and a CNN Principal Voice, Jeremy convened the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security and was a Founding Director of the world¹s first private equity fund for renewable energy, Bank Sarasin’s New Energies Invest, where he served as a non-executive board member for twelve years.
As a former geologist, whose research on shale were funded by both BP and Shell, he has authored several books on fossil-fuel dependency, including Half Gone, the Carbon War and most recently The Energy of Nations. He is now publishing his latest work, a free-download, live series The Winning of the Carbon War. At the Business Green Leaders Awards 2014, he was recognised as Champion of the Year. Jeremy is a contributor to Guardian and the Financial Times, and is a visiting lecturer at the universities of Cambridge and St Gallen.
Carbon Tracker:
Our Advisory Board includes ***Ben Caldecott, Programme Director, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford (see author below):
pdf: 62 pages: Aug 2015: Oxford Uni: Investment consultants and green investment: Risking stranded advice?
Working Paper
The Programme is currently supported by grants from: Craigmore Sustainables, European Climate Foundation, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Generation Foundation, Growald Family Fund, HSBC Holdings plc, KR Foundation, Lloyd’s of London, ***TELLUS MATER FOUNDATION, The Luc Hoffmann Institute, The Rothschild Foundation, The Woodchester Trust, and WWF-UK. Past grant-makers include: Ashden Trust, Aviva Investors, and Bunge Ltd. Our research partners include: Standard & Poor’s, Carbon Disclosure Project, TruCost, Ceres, Carbon Tracker Initiative, Asset Owners Disclosure Project, 2° Investing
Initiative, Global Footprint Network, RISKERGY, and Corporate Knights.
About the Authors
***Ben Caldecott is the Founder and Director of the Stranded Assets Programme. He is concurrently an Adviser to The Prince of Wales’ International Sustainability Unit and an Academic Visitor at the Bank of England…ETC
Acknowledgements
This research project would not have been possible without grants from the Growald Family Fund, the ***KR Foundation (Chair, former UN climate chief, Connie Hedegaard), and the ***TELLUS MATER FOUNDATION.
We would also like to thank the following organisations for providing in-kind support to the project: The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S), Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC), Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), Ceres, and ShareAction.
http://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/research-programmes/stranded-assets/Investment%20Consultants%20and%20Green %20Investment.pdf
Rockefellers has been funding eco-transformers since 1974 http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED107165.pdf
The relevant question to ask at this point is “Where’s the money for financial backers of said foundations in this scheme?”
The answer is simple. Any substantial distortion of the market can be exploited, be it by mass misperception or flawed legislation following such madness. The exact way to do that may vary by case, but there is a way for sure and those fellows will find it. Once found, big money can be ripped off with no actual contribution to public good whatsoever, so there’s ample profit to be made on investment. And that’s the point.
more Tellus Mater:
Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU)
http://eciu.net/
check the homepage, to see the agenda.
ECIU Who We Are
The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit is a non-profit organisation that supports informed debate on energy and climate change issues in the UK…
All of our funding comes from philanthropic foundations. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the European Climate Foundation, the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, the TELLUS MATER FOUNDATION, and, from financial year 2015-16, the Climate Change Collaboration (group of four Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts – Ashden Trust, JJ Charitable Trust, Mark Leonard Trust and Tedworth Trust)
Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) – The Team
Richard Black, Director
Richard Black studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University before joining BBC World Service in 1985 as a studio manager. He subsequently worked there as producer and presenter on a wide range of programming including current affairs, science, health and sport, and as Science Correspondent…
As BBC Environment Correspondent, his reporting assignments included many UN summits including five UNFCCC meetings and Rio+20…
From 2012 Richard was Director of Communications for the Global Ocean Commission prior to ***SETTING UP ECIU…
READ THE REST OF THE TEAMS’ BIOS WHICH INCLUDES:
Germana Canzi, Senior International Analyst, who spent three years working on energy issues for the WWF European Policy Office before joining Friends of the Earth in London as head of energy policy; and George Smeeton, Head of Communications, who previously worked as a media relations manager for WWF-UK, was also seconded to WWF’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative (GCEI), and was media lead for their global campaign, Seize Your Power.
ECIU’s Advisory Board includes: Sir Crispin Tickell, BBC’s Robin Lustig , ***Lord Oxburgh, Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti (former UK climate envoy), etc.
***Lord Oxburgh:
April 2010: WUWT: Global warming: The Oxburgh Inquiry was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Guest post by Thomas Fuller, San Francisco Environmental Examiner
5. East Anglia University commissioned an investigation into the practices of its research unit and asked Lord Oxburgh to chair the panel.
6. Lord Oxburgh is chairman of Falck Renewables, a manufacturer of windfarms and the UK subsidiary of The Falck Group, a Milan-based manufacturer.
7. A sister company of Oxburgh’s Falck Renewables, Actelios, is publicly traded and had suffered serious falls in its stock price during the period of Climategate, etc.
8. Lord Oxburgh’s company, its parent and more than one of its sister companies have had organised crime activities surrounding their acquisition of property and installation of green energy systems.
9. The green energy industry, organised crime investors, Falck Renewables and its parent and sister companies stood to benefit from an investigation the results of which did not overturn the science findings of CRU…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/25/global-warming-the-oxburgh-inquiry-was-an-offer-he-couldnt-refuse/
The New York Ag has made a huge strategic and tactical blunder. By bringing this issue into the courts XOM now has the legal right to subpoena each and every document pertaining to “Climate Change” that for years has been withheld from view by various universities and government agencies. Let the fun and whining begin.
Is that a paper shredder I hear? And did you hear about that most unfortunate system crash that happened next Tuesday?
Nobody said nothin’. That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Move along.
While it is interesting, and maybe important, that the anti-Exxon movement is a circular entity — one organization directly funds biased reporting, which the same organization then uses as independently verified information to further its campaign, the last paragraph is a joke:
“According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Rep. Ted Lieu – the author of the letter calling for an investigation of energy companies’ climate-related activities – has received $1,000 in campaign contributions from the RBF-backed League of Conservation Voters (LCV). Since 2008, Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), the co-author of the letter, has accepted over $3,000 from LCV and the Sierra Club, another group backed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.”
So what? The amounts stated are incredibly small for a member of the House of Representatives — the equivalent of a single plate at a $1000/plate fundraising dinner and that from a vaguely associated group, already known for advocacy in conservation politics.
Pointing out these small contributions makes the author look silly and extremely naive about American politics.
It’s the connections that matter in this situation! Shows spheres of influence.
Reply to Barbara ==> There is no connection here….only very small political campaign donations. “Shows spheres of influence” reeks of conspiracy theories.
These types of idiotic “connections” are used to try to tar less-convinced climate scientists with “connections to Big Oil” — it is nonsensical.
It is even more nonsensical when we see less-convinced climate scientists use the same illegitimate trick against “the other side” .
It’s not always the case, but in general, I find that corporate political contributions tend to go to the candidate who supports them already. They don’t have to buy him. (But obviously they want him to win because he supports their position.) Heck, sometimes propaganda is actually true and sometimes lobbyists have very valid points. And not.
But in the not-too-distant past, moneyed interests did not “influence” American politics. They owned it. They didn’t need no stinkin’ lobbyists. You weren’t the Senator from Delaware, you were DuPont’s man. It was on a whole grander scale than today. There is a huge amount of political money sloshing around, these days, but that’s only because there is so much more wealth. Yeah, you can buy a certain amount of influence. But it’s lower-grade influence, and the cost is disproportionate.
Also, as a historian I acknowledge that our past and present contain conspiracies. But except on the rarest occasion (only one I can think of) do the wacky-sounding ones even turn out vaguely to be true. (Yes, the CIA really, truly did try to assassinate Castro’s beard. It’s a fact, Jack.) However, I find conspiracies to be far less common, far more limited, and far more prosaic than is popularly entertained.
Take World War I. The Black Hand got in with Serbian intel, with maybe a little more than a nod from the Russkies (or not). A few things go wrong, they get off a lucky shot, and like that. Pretty good conspiracy, I think, as far as these thing go.
But not good enough for the conspiracy theorists, oh, no. How could a lone gunman who was not a crack shot eliminate the target? Who changed the Archduke’s route? Who arranged for the president of France to be at sea when the crisis occurred? Answer: Those dratted Rothschilds and other fellow-traveling International Bankers and Arms Dealers knew it would be a long destructive war and planned to make a killing while killing Europe. They arranged it all. Down to the last detail. Nevermind that no one in their wildest dreams envisioned trench warfare at the outset. Nevermind that long, destructive wars do not generally result in International Bankers, Arms Dealers, and even those Dratted Rothschilds actually getting paid.
My father wanted to go back to the UK and do a slow train tour like they did before. That didn’t suit my mother, who acerbically commented, “The sheep always face in the same direction.” But that doesn’t mean the sheep were party to a conspiracy. (I think.)
A “Conspiracy Theory” is a conclusion in search of a hypothesis. A destination in search of a path. And oh, the paths they weave.
This looks very similar to a trend I’ve seen in the anti-GMO and similar “control-what everyone-eats” organizations: find or create scientific-sounding studies (which can be thoroughly discredited, it is merely their existence that is important), report the results of the study without any linking or appropriate accreditation, then another site, blog, or news outlet will report on the report, then a bunch more will report on the report about the report – and pretty soon you have hundreds of sites (and thus Google hits) all reporting that eating hot dogs increases your risk of cancer 600% or some such nonsense … and it all appears very scientific – “… the science is settled …” – to the lay person.
Of course it is all just smoke and mirrors – within a day or two nobody actually remembers what the original study was, or who did it, or whether it was actually ever a well-regarded study (much less peer-reviewed) …