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Conservative groups spend $1bn a year to fight action on climate change
Conservative groups spend $1bn a year to fight action on climate change
• Author: 'I call it the climate-change counter movement'
• Study focuses on groups opposing US political action
Suzanne Goldenberg US environment correspondent
theguardian.com, Friday 20 December 2013 14.58 EST
.... “It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this. This is a large-scale political effort.”
Brulle's study, published on Friday in the journal Climatic Change, offers the most definitive exposure to date of the political and financial forces blocking American action on climate change. But as he acknowledged, there are still big gaps.
It was not always possible to separate funds designated strictly for climate-change work from overall budgets, Brulle said. “Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.”
Some of the think tanks on Brulle's list – such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) – said they had no institutional position on climate change and did not control the output of their scholars. In addition, Brulle acknowledged that he was unable to uncover the full extent of funding sources to the effort to oppose action on climate change. About three-quarters of the funds were routed through trusts or other mechanisms that assure anonymity to donors – a trend Brulle described as disturbing and a threat to democracy.
“This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power,” he said. “They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hear people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don't have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy.
“That is the bottom line here. These are unaccountable organisations...
• Author: 'I call it the climate-change counter movement'
• Study focuses on groups opposing US political action
Suzanne Goldenberg US environment correspondent
theguardian.com, Friday 20 December 2013 14.58 EST
.... “It is not just a couple of rogue individuals doing this. This is a large-scale political effort.”
Brulle's study, published on Friday in the journal Climatic Change, offers the most definitive exposure to date of the political and financial forces blocking American action on climate change. But as he acknowledged, there are still big gaps.
It was not always possible to separate funds designated strictly for climate-change work from overall budgets, Brulle said. “Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.”
Some of the think tanks on Brulle's list – such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) – said they had no institutional position on climate change and did not control the output of their scholars. In addition, Brulle acknowledged that he was unable to uncover the full extent of funding sources to the effort to oppose action on climate change. About three-quarters of the funds were routed through trusts or other mechanisms that assure anonymity to donors – a trend Brulle described as disturbing and a threat to democracy.
“This is how wealthy individuals or corporations translate their economic power into political and cultural power,” he said. “They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hear people to go on TV and say climate change is not real. It ends up that people without economic power don't have the same size voice as the people who have economic power, and so it ends up distorting democracy.
“That is the bottom line here. These are unaccountable organisations...
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/conservative-groups-1bn-against-climate-change
1 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
imo, a threat to mankind. 