Who’s funding the pro-carbon propaganda?

Brian Dooling in One Green Planet: Even after recent reports from the IPCC stating that climate change is human’s fault, the debate continues to rage on in the U.S. resulting in public confusion. But why? The constant mixed messages in U.S. media and the adamant refusal at national legislative levels to even consider science has pretty much thrown any conversation over the damage we have done to the Earth into a tailspin of conspiracy theories and falsehoods.

A new study titled “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations” by R. J. Brulle, professor of Sociology and Environmental Science at Drexel University, sheds some light on the outrageous amount of money that backs anti-climate change foundations.

The study examines the funding of organizations that make up the Climate Change Counter-Movement (CCCM), a term created by Brulle to collectively address the organizations that take on anti-climate change positions.

In his research he looked at the funding patterns of the CCCM from 2003 to 2010. Using IRS data, he followed the money trail for funding and pieces together the social network of anti-climate change social networking. In total, he examined the income of 91 organizations that are funded by 140 different foundations that oppose climate change.

These 91 organizations received on average $900 million per year. That’s almost a billion dollars a year in funding from mostly conservative donors. Brulle states that not all this money goes to anti-climate change funding, but it still illustrates the amount of wealth that is available to cloud the water of climate science....

Orson Welles in a publicity photo for Citizen Kane