IMG: via Shutterstock.
Late last month, the Republican members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a 92-page report that alleges a “far-left environmental machine” that “exerts tremendous sway” over policies that hurt the economy.
The Republicans involved in the report claim that there is an “elite group of liberal millionaires and billionaires” pumping funds into an elaborate network of environmental groups to influence EPA policies. They say the networks have groups like the Sierra Club as the face to the movement but those clubs are just cover for “secretive foundations” that provide the money. Essentially, the Republicans are working to expose illicit funding of liberal environmental causes.
“There is an unbelievable amount of money behind the environmental movement and far too much collusion between far-left environmental groups and the Obama EPA. This report really gets to the core of tracking the money and exposing the collusion,” Sen. David Vitter, R-La., top Republican on the committee, said in a statement.
The report directly cites several families and clubs involved in the action: “Between 2010 and 2012, both [the Hewlett Foundation and the Packard Foundation] donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the ClimateWorks Foundation, a 501(c) (3) foundation. ClimateWorks then gave nearly $170 million to the Energy Foundation. Hewlett and Packard gave directly to the Energy Foundation. The Energy Foundation then gave $5,676,000 to Green Tech, and ClimateWorks gave it $1,520,000. The Energy Foundation was incredibly brief, broad and vague in describing the purpose of its 2011 and 2012 grants of $1 million, respectively, to Green Tech.”
The supposed loopholes utilized by this group have enabled donors to give large sums of money and mask the vast scale of money donated into hard-left environmental activist causes. It also helps with the illusion that these secretive organizations are just innocent mom-and-pop grass roots organizations. It’s interesting that politics play such a massive part in environmental issues, but hopefully these allegations will lend more transparency to EPA policies and decisions.