Report Reveals How US Taxpayers Are Unwittingly Subsidizing Climate Lies
"It is high time for the American public to understand just how much charitable money is funding climate change disinformation and to recognize the key individuals behind this effort."
A report published Wednesday identifies nearly 140 "climate disinformation organizations" in the United States financed by wealthy donors who receive massive subsidies from the nation's taxpayers.
The analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Climate Accountability Research Project (CARP) explains that wealthy donors are "pouring billions of dollars" into nonprofit organizations to "advance misleading, self-serving agendas that do irreparable harm to our planet"—all while reaping the benefits of charitable contribution deductions in the U.S. tax code.
"Funds directed to fossil fuel industry-friendly think tanks and policy groups help turn disinformation into accepted truth and sow doubt about science," the analysis notes. "Then, these ideas get turned into action—or, more often, inaction—by the policy brass of lawmakers and presidential administrations."
The new report highlights "two troubling examples of this chain of influence: The Competitive Enterprise Institute, or CEI, received $21 million in charitable contributions from 2020 to 2022; it bills itself as 'instrumental' both in blocking ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and in pressuring former President [Donald] Trump to withdraw from the 2016 Paris agreement."
"And the Heritage Foundation received $236 million in contributions over the same three years; this money allowed Heritage to write Project 2025, a policy blueprint overseen by several former Trump administration appointees, that proposes changes to the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency that would be disastrous for our climate," the report adds.
IPS and CARP estimate that donors to the two right-wing organizations were able to deduct "much of" their $257 million in gifts—effectively receiving major public subsidies.
"We are calling for fundamental transparency reforms so we can assess the total amount of taxpayer-subsidized charitable donations flowing to climate disinformation organizations."
In total, the report counts 137 "climate disinformation" nonprofits that received charitable donations between 2020 and 2022, with six of them focused "largely or entirely" on climate issues. The 137 organizations collectively received $5.8 billion in contributions over the three-year period examined in the analysis, which estimates that the total sum the nonprofits spent on climate disinformation "could range anywhere from a conservative $219 million into the billions of dollars."
The three "climate disinformation charities" that held the most in assets in 2022, according to the new report, were the Charles Koch Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Seminar Network.
Between 2020 and 2022, the climate disinformation groups that received the most in total contributions were the Seminar Network, the Stand Together Foundation, and the 85 Fund—an organization connected to Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo.
Chuck Collins, director of IPS' Program on Inequality and a co-author of the report, said in a statement that the analysis "provides some much-needed transparency so that the American public can understand the deceptive ways in which the rich seek to advance and protect their interests."
"Based on our findings from the data sources available to us, we are calling for fundamental transparency reforms so we can assess the total amount of taxpayer-subsidized charitable donations flowing to climate disinformation organizations," said Collins. "Many of these donors have built their fortunes in energy or the banking, insurance, transportation, and legal businesses that support the carbon-intensive industries, so they have strong personal interests in ensuring the world's dependence on fossil fuels."
The report notes that wealthy donors have recently been funneling billions of dollars into so-called donor-advised funds (DAFs), which IPS and CARP describe as a kind of "charitable bank account: a donor can donate to a personalized fund managed by a sponsoring nonprofit organization, and take a charitable deduction for that donation right away, but the donor then retains advisory privileges that let them recommend grants out of the fund to whichever charities they want, on whatever timeline they want."
IPS and CARP found that the three largest sponsors of DAFs between 2020 and 2022 were the National Philanthropic Trust, the Schwab Charitable Fund, and DonorsTrust.
"Because DAFs have a near-complete lack of donor and grantee reporting requirements, they allow for a high level of secrecy in donating funds," the report observes.
Private foundations are also major funders of climate disinformation, according to the new report, which lists the Sarah Scaife Foundation, Searle Freedom Trust, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, among others.
The report outlines a number of potential policy changes to stem the ability of individuals and organizations with fossil fuel ties to secretively finance climate disinformation with the help of taxpayer subsidies, including barring private foundations from "using grants to donor-advised funds to meet their payout requirements" and requiring DAF sponsors to disclose "the names of all individual donors who have contributed $10,000 or more to each DAF account."
"It is high time for the American public to understand just how much charitable money is funding climate change disinformation and to recognize the key individuals behind this effort," the analysis says.
