Dozens of US lobbyists represent both climate-focused charities and fossil fuels – report | US news

Dozens of US charities, including those that prioritize climate action, use lobbying firms that also work for fossil fuel companies, new data shows.

Pew Charitable Trusts work on environmental issues while sharing a lobbying firm with Chevron. New Venture Fund’s priorities include a “range of conservation, climate and energy issues,” but since the start of 2022 it has employed lobbying firms representing oil and gas companies in six states. And Ballmer Giving funds climate and indigenous rights programs, but represents a company that builds fossil fuel infrastructure on tribal land.

The data comes from a new report from F Minus, a lobby watchdog and database project launched earlier this year.

“These foundations help lobbyists greenwash their image,” says James Browning, executive director of F Minus.

Browning, a former lobbyist for Common Cause, identified 86 U.S. foundations that have shared lobbying firms with fossil fuel companies since the start of 2022, 19 of which cite environmental issues as top grantmaking priorities.

For Pew Charitable Trusts, for example, a major focus is preserving marine environments from plastic and fossil fuel pollution. It recognizes that oil and gas production is a threat to ocean health, and in 2020 it released a report with recommendations for reducing plastic pollution

But in 2022 and 2023, Pew employed a Colorado lobbying firm, Politicalworks, which also represents Chevron, which is one of the world’s largest carbon emitters and whose subsidiary Chevron Phillips Chemical Company one of the world’s leading plastic producers. The company has a record of oil spillsand in August, it joined the state of Louisiana suing the Biden administration for limiting oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Politicalworks may be Exhibit A when it comes to US lobbying firms playing both sides of the climate crisis,” the report said.

Last year, Browning notes, the firm lobbied for Pew in support of a bill to create safe road crossings for wildlife amid climate-driven habitat degradation. But it also opposed legislation to reduce Colorado’s greenhouse gas emissions on behalf of the Colorado Competitiveness Council, which the report refers to as a “fossil fuel front group.”

When reached for comment, Felisa Neuringer Klubes, communications director for the Pew Charitable Trusts, said: “When the facts lead to policy recommendations, we sometimes work with consultants to disseminate our research and seek common ground with policymakers from both parties.” Politicalworks is just one of the Colorado organizations the group has partnered with to support wildlife migration corridors, she said.

In another example, the fiscal sponsorship nonprofit New Venture Fund (NVF) spent more than $183 million in grants for environmental programs from 2017 to 2021, including for marine and terrestrial conservation, renewable energy expansion, sustainable agriculture and environmental justice in the abroad. But it has also used fossil fuel lobbying firms in six states since the start of 2022.

“All of those environmental issues that it’s working on, whether it’s habitat restoration or renewable energy, are antithetical to the goals of the fossil fuel industry,” Browning said.

In one particularly “horrific” example, he found that although New Venture Fund provided resources to Earth Island Institute, which advocates for communities living near oil wells in California, it used a lobbying firm that also included the Berry Corporation, a oil drilling company helped fight a account required the plugging of abandoned oil wells.

A spokesperson for Earth Island said the report did not provide “enough detail about how things happened” for them to comment on New Venture Fund’s relationship with the lobbyist, but said “we encourage anyone who in the climate space is working to adopt a conflict of interest policy that prohibits working with fossil fuel lobbyists.”

Lee Bodner, president of New Venture Fund, noted that his organization works on a “diverse variety” of issues, including the climate crisis, education, health and criminal justice. Each project’s leader is “empowered to direct their own resources and strategies,” he said, but noted that none of the lobbyists named in the report work on NVF environmental projects.

“However, NVF does not have a formal policy that prevents projects from using the lobbyists they see fit to promote a cause, because it is impossible to make progress in our democratic system if you only engage in conversation with people who you agree on 100% of the issues,” he said.

But the use of such lobbying firms still gives fossil fuel companies “social license” to keep polluting, despite scientific consensus that the world must phase out coal, oil and gas to prevent climate catastrophe, Browning said.

The report also spotlights Ballmer Giving, which funds climate and indigenous rights programs but shares a Washington state lobbying firm with a company that come under fire of Native activists for building a liquefied natural gas terminal on land controlled by the Puyallup people. Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh Foundation, which funds environmental justice organizations, employs a lobbying firm that also represents a poor of the Koch Industries network.

F Minus is now calling on foundations to “cut ties” with all lobbying firms representing fossil fuels.

“Foundations need to vet their lobbyists and make sure they’re not promoting fossil fuels or causing the climate problems their own beneficiaries are trying to solve,” Browning said.