14 DAY TRIAL // A paper published in the journal Climatic Change this past December 2013 documents where groups that are in the business of denying climate change and opposing action on this phenomenon get their money from.
The paper is authored by Robert J. Brulle, PhD, a sociology and environmental science professor now working with Pennsylvania-based Drexel University.
As detailed on the official website for said university, the professor's investigation boiled down to his analyzing the income of 91 organizations whose members and supporters claim that climate change and global warming are not real, and try to prevent action on said phenomena.
78% of these groups were listed as charitable organizations, and benefited from noteworthy tax breaks.
Robert J. Brulle says that, according to his findings, these 91 organizations had an annual income of little over $900 million (roughly €658 million) each between the years 2003 – 2010, and that most of this money was provided by conservative groups.
“These 91 CCCM [climate change counter-movement] organizations have an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million [about €46.8 million] in identifiable foundation support,” the researcher writes in his paper.
“The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations,” Robert J. Brulle further explains.
The professor details that many of the organizations that received these donations are multi-purpose ones, which means that not all of this money went into climate change and global warming opposition.
Still, there is little denying that conservative groups seem to like them quite a lot.
“Like a play on Broadway, the counter-movement has stars in the spotlight – often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians – but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers, in the form of conservative foundations,” Robert J. Brulle comments on his findings.
The researcher also says that, for the time being, conservative groups such as the Searle Freedom Trust, the John William Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation are the largest contributors to climate change denial, and also the ones that give money to such initiatives on a regular basis.
Interestingly enough, it appears that, since the year 2008, both the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation have stopped making publicly traceable donations to climate change counter-movement organizations.
In fact, Robert J. Brulle says that 75% of the income of these climate denial groups currently comes from unidentifiable sources. The remaining 25% reaches the organizations via the Donors Trust.
As detailed on the official website for Drexel University, “This one foundation now provides about 25% of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systematic denial of climate change.”
Furthermore, “Despite extensive data compilation and analyses, only a fraction of the hundreds of millions in contributions to climate change denying organizations can be specifically accounted for from public records. Approximately 75% of the income of these organizations comes from unidentifiable sources.”
In the future, Robert J. Brulle wishes to look into the funding that pro-climate change action organizations receive, and compare the amount of money that these two movements have at their disposal on a yearly basis.