The Real Climategate: How America's Conservationists Have Been Bought

Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests -- and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?

At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted "brands" in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters -- and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.

I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, "Do you see that chimney sticking up? That's where my house was... I had to [abandon it] six months ago." I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, "The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left."

While I witnessed these early stages of ecocide, I imagined that American green groups were on these people's side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path -- one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation.

Environmental groups used to be funded largely by their members and wealthy individual supporters. They had only one goal: to prevent environmental destruction. Their funds were small, but they played a crucial role in saving vast tracts of wilderness and in pushing into law strict rules forbidding air and water pollution. But Jay Hair -- president of the National Wildlife Federation from 1981 to 1995 -- was dissatisfied. He identified a huge new source of revenue: the worst polluters.

Read this article in full over at The Nation.

 

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Comments

[dobermanmacleod]

01:13 AM on 03/23/2010

The dirty truth is that emissions are estimated to grow more than 50% by 2030. In other words, forget about cutting emissions dramatically, because they are predictably going to grow dramatically. Instead, there is a cheap and simple way to immediately cool down the Earth: just add a little (more) sun dimming aerosol to the upper atmosphere. If you care about the environment, try getting more money for a transformational highly disruptive revolutionary clean cheap and abundant new energy technology, and abandon futile attempts at carbon dieting (which are ultimately a waste of time, energy, and money).

[Thermodynamics]

01:07 PM on 03/11/2010

This is interesting. Can you give us more details?

I am suspicious of cap-and-trade, for example . and wonder about groups that support it before the details have been worked out. Maybe there is a lot more going on........

[J A J]

02:38 AM on 03/11/2010

Pay a tax, change the climate??? Are you angry about this obvious RICO Act fraud and the national media's complicity in the cover-up, misinformation, reframing and misdirection of the issue and the related “carbon derivatives” market Obama’s Administration is spinning up? Why pay for propaganda? Take responsibility and take action. STOP all donations to the political party(s) responsible for this fraud. STOP donations to all environmental groups which funded this Global Warming propaganda campaign with our money, especially The World Wildlife Fund. DEMAND they take you off their donors’ mailing list. They have violated the public trust. KEEP donations local, close to home. MAKE donations to Oklahoma’s Senator Inhofe, the only politician to stand firmly against this obvious government/media coordinated information operation (propaganda) targeted at its own people. WRITE your state and federal representatives demanding wall to wall investigations of government sponsored propaganda campaigns and demand indictments of those responsible. WRITE your state and federal Attorneys General demanding Al Gore and others conducting Global Warming/Climate Change racketeering and mail fraud operations be brought to justice, indicted, tried, convicted and jailed. Think of the consequences if you do nothing! Given ClimateGate’s burgeoning revelations of outrageous government misconduct and massive covert misinformation, what are the chances that this Administration’s National Health Care sales campaign is anywhere near the truth?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bdneX1djD

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/81559212.html

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=0b32ab55-8d8a-4d0f-acf2-3aefddf5e261

[HeevenSteven]

07:54 AM on 03/11/2010

You're so far down the rabbit hole you probably eat nothing but carrots.

[The Perceiver]

11:19 AM on 03/12/2010

You really believe all of that? Go and enlighten yourself about reality, not disinformation.

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/02/pat-michaels-climate-skeptic

http://www.youtube.com/user/SuperSparten#p/c/38EA287E56AC3863/65/P_0-gX7aUKk

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=12d547f8-af20-490a-9049-b22c5f2c5df9

Have you checked the military's reports on anthromorphic caused climate change?