Funding for climate change denial is drying up. The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a US climate change denial group that espouses the “free-market,” has lost more than two thirds of its funding in the past two years, according to tax filings reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).
In the most recently available CFACT tax filing for the 2014 financial year – filed in late 2015 – the group reported receiving grant revenue of $1.5m, down from roughly $2m it had received a year earlier, but representing a massive drop off from the $5.5m in revenue it reported for 2012.
CFACT Grant Funding
-
2009: $3.07m
-
2010: $2.85m
-
2011: $2.98m
-
2012: $5.5m
-
2013: $1.97m
-
2014: $1.5m
CFACT co-organized a failed climate-denial conference along with the coal-funded Heartland Institute this week in Paris, coinciding with the UN COP21 climate summit negotiations taking place on the other side of the city. As CMD reported previously, only about 30 people turned up to the event, leaving large numbers of empty seats in the modestly sized room.
Both Heartland Institute and CFACT have received funding from fossil fuel interests for many years, including significant funds from ExxonMobil. That funding has now apparently ceased.
ExxonMobil now faces the prospect of civil lawsuits and possible criminal penalties, for allegedly suppressing its internal awareness about the serious risk to the environment as well as to shareholder value, from climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, has begun an ExxonMobil investigation, issuing the corporation with subpoenas which are still pending.
According to recent parallel investigations published by InsideClimate News and by Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism/LA Times, ExxonMobil executives were informed by their own scientists of the serious threat of climate change as far back as the nineteen seventies, with ExxonMobil using this data to inform its own long term planning. Despite this apparent knowledge, ExxonMobil provided significant funding to groups such as Heartland and CFACT which denied the science.
CMD recently provided the New York Attorney General with detailed information about ExxonMobil’s funding of another climate change denial group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Both CFACT and Heartland participate in ALEC, and have provided state legislators with climate denial briefings at recent ALEC conferences.
ALEC is another climate denial group facing dwindling support. As CMD recently reported, the giant utility American Electric Power this week became the 107th corporation to abandon ALEC since CMD launched the ALEC Exposed project in 2011, joining BP, Shell, Google and others in ceasing financial support.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.