From: covici@ccs.covici.com (John Covici)
Reply-To: covici@ccs.covici.com
Newsgroups: alt.activism
Subject: Who Owns The Environtalist Movement?
Date: 12 Dec 92 19:39:56 GMT
Organization: Covici Computer Systems



            - Chapter 10 -



- Who Owns the Environmental Movement? -

What follows are excerpts
from Chapter 10 of {The Holes
in the Ozone Scare,} published
in late summer 1992 by 21st Century
Associates.

The close collaboration of the
environmental movement with the giant
chemical cartels in their drive to ban
CFCs poses the fundamental issue that
will be raised in this chapter. It will
be a great shock to many readers, but
the fact is that the environmental
movement was created and is to this day
financed and directed by the leading
aristocratic families of the United
States and Europe, especially Great
Britain. 
     This is one of the most
controversial assertions of this book,
but ironically, it is one of the
easiest to prove. All one has to do is
trace the origin of the money that
finances the environmental movement.
The more difficult concept to convey is
the nature of environmentalism itself.
The basic problem is that
environmentalism is not a rigorous
definition of anything. Recent polls
indicate that more than 90 percent of
the American public consider themselves
``environmentalists.'' Yet every
environmental proposal submitted to
popular vote over the past four years
has been soundly defeated. 
   Why the contradiction? The answer
lies in the questions asked by the
polls--questions that are not usually
reported in the press. For example,
when asked if they like trees, open
spaces, mountains, and wildlife and are
opposed to toxic chemical waste dumps,
more than 90 percent of those polled
answer affirmatively. Why not? Only a
deranged person would be opposed to the
beauty of nature. Only those who
actually enjoy those wastelands known
as parking lots, shopping centers,
malls, and their equally ugly modern
architecture would answer in the
negative. 
     However, when those being polled
are asked if they believe that man is
the source of all evil and if, to
preserve nature, they support forced
abortion and sterilization to control
world population along with the
elimination of automobiles,
electricity, hot showers, flushing
toilets, refrigeration, beef,
fertilizers, pesticides, and
insecticides, the answer is a solid
kick in the rear. Therein lies the
inherent contradiction in the term
``environmentalism.'' 
     This problem is exacerbated by the
fact that the majority of the members
of mainstream environmental groups
supports the first set of beliefs but
is decidedly against the second set of
beliefs. At the same time, the leaders
of the majority of the environmental
groups are fanatical advocates of the
second set of beliefs (as long as it is
not they who have to give up their
cars). The fact is that most
environmentalists are moral and loving
human beings who would be shocked to
learn what they are really supporting. 
     We intend to expose the nature of
this deceit. Lacking any other term, we
mean by environmentalism the set of
beliefs that considers that people are
the problem, that animals and insects
are more important than human beings,
that modern science and technology are
evil, and that the world's
population--especially darker-skinned
people--must be dramatically reduced to
what are euphemistically called
``sustainable'' levels. 

   Back to Nature

   Twenty-five years ago, those who
believed that Mother Nature comes first
and humankind second were part of an
insignificant fringe, considered
radical by most Americans. These
environmentalists were visible mostly
at the level of the antinuclear street
demonstration, where marijuana smoke
wafted around ``Back to Nature''
posters on display. Today, however,
what used to be extremist
``environmentalist '' ideology has
become mainstream, permeating American
institutions at every level, from
corporate boardrooms to the Federal
Reserve, the Congress, the White House,
the churches, homes, and schools. 
   Official lore from the
environmental movement's publications
asserts that the movement emerged from
the grass roots. The truth, however, is
that funding and policy lines come from
the most prestigious institutions of
the Eastern Liberal Establishment,
centered around the New York Council on
Foreign Relations, and including the
Trilateral Commission, the Aspen
Institute, and a host of private family
foundations. These foundations and
institutes are the policy-making and
implementation arms of what is known as
the Eastern Establishment. They are run
largely by leading members of the
Anglo-American blueblood elites. Over
the past 25 years, these foundations
have poured hundreds of millions of
dollars every year into the
anti-industry, environmentalist, and
population-control campaigns of
hundreds of ``public interest'' groups.
Additional billions have been poured
into sponsoring university departments
of ``environmental studies,'' which now
turn out thousands of professional
environmentalists every year. Many of
these professional environmentalists
act on the basis of political ideology,
not hard science. 
   This network of foundations
created environmentalism, moving it
from a radical fringe movement into a
mass movement to support the
institutionalization of antiscience,
no-growth policies at all levels of
government and public life. As
prescribed in the Council on Foreign
Relations {1980s Project} book series,
environmentalism has been used against
America's economy, against such targets
as high-technology agriculture and the
nuclear power industry. This movement
is fundamentally a green pagan religion
in its outlook. Unless defeated, it
will destroy not only the economy, but
also the Judeo-Christian culture of the
United States, and has in fact come
perilously close to accomplishing this
objective already. 
     The vast wealth of the
environmentalist groups may come as a
shock to most readers who believe that
these groups are made up of ``public
interest,'' ``nonprofit'' organizations
that are making great sacrifices to
save the Earth from a looming doomsday
caused by man's activities. In fact,
the environmental movement is one of
the most powerful and lucrative
businesses in the world today. 

   Foundation Funding

     There are several thousand groups
in the United States today involved in
``saving the Earth.'' Although all
share a common philosophy, these groups
are of four general types: those
concerned, respectively, with
environmental problems, population
control, animal rights, and land
trusts. Most of these groups are very
secretive about their finances, but
there is enough evidence on the public
record to determine what they are up
to. 
     Table 10.1 lists the annual
revenues of a sampling of 30
environmental groups. These few groups
alone had revenues of more than $830
million in 1990. This list, it must be
emphasized, by no means includes all of
these envirobusinesses. It is estimated
that there are more than 3,000
so-called nonprofit environmental
groups in the United States today, and
most of them take in more than a
million dollars a year. The Global
Tomorrow Coalition, for example, is
made up of 110 environmental and
population-control groups, few of which
have revenues less than $3 million per
year. The Nature Conservancy, with
revenues of $254 million per year and
land holdings of more than 6 million
acres worth billions of dollars, is
just the best known of more than 900
land trusts now operating in the United
States. 

tables for chapter 10

                      - Table 10.1 -

                  - ANNUAL REVENUES OF -

          - SELECTED ENVIRONMENTALIST GROUPS - -

                   - (dollars, 1990,1991) -
  Organization Revenues
     African Wildlife Foundation 4,676,000
     American Humane Association 3,000,000
     Center for Marine Conservation 3,600,000
     Clean Water Action 9,000,000
     Conservation International 8,288,216
     The Cousteau Society 14,576,328
     Defenders of Wildlife 6,454,240
     Earth Island Institute 1,300,000
     Environmental Defense Fund 16,900,000
     Greenpeace International 100,000,000
     Humane Society 19,237,791 
     Inform 1,500,000
     International Fund for Animal Welfare 4,916,491
     National Arbor Day Foundation 14,700,000
     National Audubon Society 37,000,000
     National Parks Conservation Association 8,717,104
     National Wildlife Federation 77,180,104
     Natural Resources Defense Council 16,000,000
     Nature Conservancy 254,2511,717
     North Shore Animal League 26,125,383
     Population Crisis Committee 4,000,000
     Rails-to-Trails Conservancy 1,544,293
     Sierra Club 40,659,100
     Student Conservation Association, Inc. 3,800,000
     Trust for Public Land 23,516,506
     Wilderness Society 17.903,091 
     Wildlife Conservation International 4,500,000
     WWF/Conservation Foundation 51,555,823
     Zero Population Growth 1,300,000
     {Total} 830,367,693

Sources: {Buzzworm,} Sept/Oct 1991; {The Chronicle of
Philanthropy,} March 23, 1992.<pa






                       - Table 10.2 -
          - WHO OWNS THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT? -
          - - FOUNDATION GRANTS TO EDF AND NRDC* -
                    - (dollars, 1988) -

     Foundation EDF NRDC

     Beinecke Foundation, Inc.  850,000
     Carnegie Corporation of New York 25,000 
     Clark Foundation  150,000
     Columbia Foundation  30,000
     Cox Charitable Trust  38,000
     Diamond Foundation  50,000
     Dodge Foundation, Geraldine 75,000 10,000
     Educational Foundation of America 30,000 75,000
     Ford Foundation 500,000 
     Gerbode Foundation 50,000 40,000
     Gund Foundation 85,000 40,000
     Harder Foundation 200,000 
     Joyce Foundation 75,000 30,000
     MacArthur Foundation  600,000
     Mertz-Gilmore Foundation 75,000 80,000
     Milbank Memorial Fund  50,000
     Morgan Guaranty Charitable Trust 5,000 6,000
     Mott Foundation, Charles Stewart 150,000 40,000
     New Hope Foundation, Inc.  45,000
     New York Community Trust 35,000 
     Noble Foundation, Inc. 20,000 35,000
     Northwest Area Foundation  100,000
     Packard Foundation 50,000 37,000
     Prospect Hill Foundation  45,000
     Public Welfare Foundation 150,000 
     Robert Sterling Clark Foundation 50,000 40,000
     Rockefeller Brothers Fund  75,000
     San Francisco Foundation  50,000
     Scherman Foundation 40,000 50,000
     Schumann Foundation  50,000
     Steele-Reese Foundation  100,000
     Victoria Foundation, Inc. 35,000 35,000
     Virginia Environmental Endowment  25,000
     W. Alton Jones Foundation 100,000 165,000
     Wallace Genetic Foundation, Inc. 80,000 65,000
     William Bingham Foundation 1,000,000 150,000

               @s*TOTAL 2,885,000 3,236,000

@s*Includes smaller foundation grants not listed here.

Source: {The Foundation Grants Index,} 18th edition,
1989.   
                       - Table 10.3 -
           - TOP 15 RECIPIENTS IN ENVIRONMENTAL -
             - LAW, PROTECTION, AND EDUCATION -
   - (by single highest grant amount, dollars, 1987) -

     Recipient Foundation<Grant in $
  
     1. World Resources Institute MacArthur Foundation 15,000,000
     2. World Resources Institute MacArthur Foundation 10,000,000
     3. Nature Conservancy R.K. Mellon Foundation 4,050,000
     4. Nature Conservancy Champlin Foundations 2,000,000
     5. Oregon Coast Aquarium Fred Meyer Charitable Trust 1,500,000
     6. International Irrigation  
   Management Institute Ford Foundation 1,500,000
     7. Open Space Institute R.K. Mellon Foundation 1,400,000
     8. International Irrigation<pa  
     Management Institute Rockefeller Foundation 1,200,000
     9. Chicago Zoological Society MacArthur Foundation 1,000,000
     10. Native American Rights Fund Ford Foundation 1,000,000
     11. Wilderness Society R.K. Mellon Foundation <800,000
     12. World Resources Institute A.W. Mellon Foundation 800,000
     13. University of Arkansas W.K. Kellogg Foundation 764,060
     14. National Park Service Pillsbury Co. Foundation 750,000
     15. National Audubon Society A.W. Mellon Foundation 750,000

Source: {Environmental Grant Association Directory,}
1989.

                              - Table 10. 4 -
            - GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT OF LESS DEVELOPED NATIONS -
           - COMPARED TO REVENUES OF U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS -
                                  - 1990 -

     Country GNP (billions $) Population (millions)

     Bhutan 0.25 1.4
     Laos 0.70 3.9
     Lesotho 0.71 1.7
     Chad 0.86 5.4
     Mauritania 0.91 1.9
     Somalia 1.00 5.9
     Yemen 1.03 2.4
     Central African Rep. 1.10 2.9
     Botswana 1.21 1.2
     Burundi 1.22 5.1
     Togo 1.26 3.4
     Malawi 1.36 8.0
     Mozambique 1.49 14.9
     Benin 1.72 4.4
     Burkina Faso 1.79 8.5
     Mali 1.84 8.0
     Congo 1.91 2.1
     Madagascar 1.96 10.9
     Mauritius 1.98 1.1
     Rwanda 2.14 6.7
     Niger 2.19 7.3
     Zambia 2.20 7.6
     Guinea 2.32 5.4
     Haiti 2.39 6.3
     Jamaica 2.57  2.4
     Papua New Guinea 3.00  3.7
     Nepal 3.24 18.0
     Gabon 3.27  1.1
     Bolivia 3.93  6.9
     Tanzania 3.95 24.7
     Trinidad and Tobago 4.02 1.2
     Honduras 4.13 4.8
     Uganda 4.54 16.2
     Senegal 4.55 7.0
     Costa Rica 4.56 2.7
     El Salvador 4.70 5.0
     Paraguay 4.72 4.0
     Panama 4.88 2.3
     Dominican Rep. 4.97 6.9
     Ghana 5.60 14.0
     Ethiopia 5.69 47.4
     Jordan 5.85  3.9
     Sri Lanka 6.97 16.6
     Oman 7.00 1.4
     Uruguay 7.66 3.1
     Guatemala 7.83  8.7
     Kenya 8.29 22.4
     Ivory Coast 8.62 11.2
  TOTAL 362.0

   Figures were not available for Afghnistan, Kampuchea, Liberia
Sierra Leone, Angola, Lebanon, Nicaragua and Vietnam
   Source: {World Development Report 1990:
Poverty,} The World Bank (New York, London: Oxford
University Press, 1990) 
   Table 10.2 lists the grants of 35
foundations to two heavily funded and
powerful environmentalist groups--the
Environmental Defense Fund and the
Natural Resources Defense Council--for
the year 1988. 
     The data available from public
sources show that the total revenues of
the environmentalist movement are more
than $8.5 billion per year. If the
revenues of law firms involved in
environmental litigation and of
university environmental programs were
added on, this figure would easily
double to more than $16 billion a year.
This point is emphasized in Table 10.3,
which lists the 15 environmental groups
receiving grants for environmental law
suits and protection and education
programs. 
   To get an idea of how much money
this is, the reader should consider
that this income is larger than the
Gross National Product (GNP) of 56
underdeveloped nations. The 48 nations
for which the latest GNP figures were
available have a total population of
more than 360 million human beings.
Ethiopia, for example, with a
population of 47.4 million human
beings, many starving, has a GNP of
only $5.7 billion per year. Chad, with
5.4 million inhabitants, has a GNP that
is barely higher than the revenues of
those groups listed in Table 10.1. Not
a single nation in Central America or
the Caribbean has a GNP greater than
the revenues of the U.S. environmental
movement. 
     With these massive resources under
its control, it is no surprise that the
environmentalist movement has been able
to set the national policy agenda.
There is no trade association in the
world with the financial resources and
power to match the vast resources of
the environmental lobby. In addition,
it has the support of most of the news
media. Opposing views and scientific
refutations of environmental scares are
most often simply blacked out. 
     Where do the environmental groups
get their money? Dues from members
represent an average of 50 percent of
the income of most groups; most of the
rest of the income comes from
foundation grants, corporate
contributions, and U.S. government
funds. Almost every one of today's
land-trust, environmental,
animal-rights, and population-control
groups was created with grants from one
of the elite foundations, like the Ford
Foundation and the Rockefeller
Foundation. These ``seed grants''
enable the radical groups to become
established and start their own
fundraising operations. These grants
are also a seal-of-approval for the
other foundations. 
     The foundations also provide
funding for special projects. For
example, the Worldwatch Institute
received $825,000 in foundation grants
in 1988. Almost all of that money was
earmarked specifically for the
launching of a magazine, {World Watch,}
which has become influential among
policy-makers, promoting the group's
antiscience and antipopulation views.
The Worldwatch Institute's brochures
report that it was created by the
Rockefeller Brothers Fund to ``alert
policy makers and the general public to
emerging global trends in the
availability and management of
resources--both human and natural.'' 
     Foundation grants in the range of
$20 to $50 million for the
environmental cause are no longer a
novelty.  In July 1990, the Rockefeller
Foundation announced a $50 million
global environmental program. The
specific purpose of the program is to
create an elite group of individuals in
each country whose role is to implement
and enforce the international
environmental treaties now being
negotiated. Kathleen Teltsch reported
in {The New York Times} (July 24,
1990): ``As an initial step, the
five-year program will assist hundreds
of young scientists and policy makers
in developing countries to create a
worldwide network of trained
environmental leaders, who will meet
regularly at workshops, sharing
information and discussing strategy.
Through the international network, the
foundation wants to encourage efforts
to build environmental protection into
governments' long-range economic
planning. Other major elements would
promote the drafting of international
treaties to deal with forest, land, and
water preservation, and hazardous waste
disposal.'' 
     The foundations are run by
America's top patrician families. These
families channel billions of dollars
into the organizations and causes they
wish to support every year, and thereby
exert enormous political clout. By
deciding who and what gets funded, they
determine the political issues up front
in Washington, which are then voted on
by Congress. It is all tax free, since
the foundations are tax-exempt. The
boards of directors of the large
foundations are made up of some of the
most powerful individuals in this
country, and they always overlap with
power brokers in government and
industry. 
     One such individual was Thornton
F. Bradshaw, who, until his recent
death, was chairman and program
director of the MacArthur Foundation
and a trustee of the Rockefeller
Brothers Fund and the Conservation
Foundation. At the same time, Bradshaw
was chairman of the RCA Corporation.
and a director of NBC, the Atlantic
Richfield Corp., Champion
International, and First Boston, Inc.
Bradshaw was also a member of the
Malthusian Club of Rome and director of
the Aspen Institute of Humanistic
Studies, organizations that have played
a critical role in spreading the
``limits to growth'' ideology of the
environmental movement. 
     Another individual perhaps better
known to readers is Henry A. Kissinger,
former U.S. secretary of state and a
trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers
Fund. For years Kissinger was the
director of the fund's Special Studies
Project, which was in charge of special
operations. 

   Corporate Contributions

   Another huge source of
contributions to the environmental
movement is private corporations.
Unlike tax-exempt foundations, however,
corporations are not required by law to
report what they do with their money,
so it is difficult for an independent
researcher to estimate the level of
funding for the environmentalist
movement from business and industry.
There are watchdog groups, however,
that have investigated these money
flows and come up with startlingly
large figures. 
     For example, the April 1991
newsletter of the Capital Research
Center in Washington, D.C., which
monitors trends in corporate giving,
scathingly denounces those corporations
it has discovered financing the
environmentalists. The newsletter
states that oil companies ``are heavy
financial supporters of the very
advocacy groups which oppose activities
essential to their ability to meet
consumer needs.'' Further, it reports,
``The Nature Conservancy's 1990 report
reflects contributions of over
$1,000,000 from Amoco, over $135,000
from Arco, over $100,000 from BP
Exploration and BP Oil, more than
$3,700,000 (in real estate) from
Chevron, over $10,000 from Conoco and
Phillips Petroleum and over $260,000
from Exxon.'' 
     From the scant information
publicly available (largely annual
reports from the major environmental
groups), one can conservatively
estimate that corporations contribute
more than $200 million a year to the
environmentalist movement. 
     This should come as no surprise.
Over the past 20 years, giant
corporations have discovered that by
using environmental regulations they
can bankrupt their competition, the
small- and medium-sized firms that are
the most active and technologically
innovative part of the U.S. economy. 
     Compliance with environmental
regulations is also big business.
According to official figures from the
federal government's Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), it costs the
U.S. economy $131 billion today to
comply with environmental regulations.
That figure will have risen to more
than $300 billion a year by the year
2000. The expenditures are a net drain
on the economy, but while the nation is
bankrupted, someone is profiting from
the services and equipment sold. A look
at classified advertisements in the
papers today reveals that companies
involved in environmental compliance
are growing fast. Many of these
corporations are contributing to the
environmental movement. 

   Government Funding

     There is a third area of funding
for the environmental movement: the
U.S. government itself. As reported in
detail by Peter Metzger, former science
editor of the {Rocky Mountain News,}
there are now thousands of professional
environmentalists ensconced in the U.S.
government. These environmentalists
channel hundreds of millions of dollars
in grants and favors to
environmentalists and environmental
groups under all kinds of guises. In a
1991 newspaper series, columnist Warren
Brookes exposed how the federal Bureau
of Land Management used the Nature
Conservancy as a land broker, giving
the antigrowth organization handsome
profits. 
    The EPA doles out huge amounts of
money to environmental groups to
conduct ``studies'' of the impact of
global warming and ozone depletion.
President Bush has made the Global
Climate Change program a priority, so
while the Space Station, vaccinations
for children, and other scientific
projects have been virtually eliminated
from the budget, $1.3 billion is
available for studies of how man is
fouling the Earth. Similarly,
scientists who challenge global warming
and ozone depletion as hoaxes do not
receive a penny in funding, while those
who scream doomsday receive tens of
millions in research grants from the
``climate change'' program. 
     How much funding do the
environmentalists receive from the
federal government? Officially, the
U.S. government gives away more than $3
billion a year in grants to support
environmental groups and projects. The
actual total, however, is impossible to
estimate. A top-ranking official of the
Department of Energy who spent two
years attempting to cut off tens of
millions of dollars in ``pork-barrel''
grants going to environmentalist
groups, discovered that for each grant
she was eliminating, environmentalist
moles in the department added several
new ones. The official resigned in
disgust. 
   The environmentalist capture
of Washington, which was consolidated
during the Carter administration,
produced radical changes in the
Washington, D.C. establishment. This
process of subversion was described by
Metzger in a speech given in 1980,
titled ``Government-Funded Activism:
Hiding Behind the Public Interest.'' 
``For the first time in
history, a presidential administration
is funding a political movement
dedicated to destroying many of the
institutions and principles of American
society. Activist organizations,
created, trained, and funded at
taxpayers' expense, and claiming to
represent the public interest, are
attacking our economic system and
advocating its replacement by a new
form of government. Not only is this
being done by means already adjudicated
as being unconstitutional, but it is
being done without the consent of
Congress, the knowledge of the public,
or the attention of the press. 
   ``It all began when President Carter
hired individuals prominently
identified with the protest or
adversary culture ... the appointment
[by the Carter administration] of
several hundred leading activists to
key regulatory and policy-making
positions in Washington resulted in
their use of the federal regulatory
bureaucracy in order to achieve their
personal and ideological goals. Already
accomplished is the virtual paralysis
of new federal coal leasing,
conventional electric generating plant
licensing in many areas, federal
minerals land leasing and water
development, industrial exporting
without complex environmental hearings,
and the halting of new nuclear power
plant construction.... 
   ``The consequences of those
sub-cabinet appointees having then made
their own appointments, and those
having then made theirs, so that now,
there are thousands of
[environmentalist] representatives in
government....'' 
   {To purchase a copy of The Holes
in the Ozone Scare, write 21st Century
Science Associates, P.O. Box 16285,
Washington, D.C., 20041. The cost
of the book is $15, plus $3 for
shipping and handling.

From New Federalist, V6, #45.

----
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com

Newsgroups: alt.activism,alt.current-events.somalia