Shell''s "Non-Political" US Foundation Shoveled Donations To Climate Deniers, Hillsdale, Claremont, Heritage, Prager

A US foundation associated with the oil company Shell has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to religious right and conservative organizations, many of which deny that climate change is a crisis, tax records reveal. Fourteen of those groups are on the advisory board of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint proposing radical changes to the federal government, including severely limiting the Environment Protection Agency.

Shell USA Company Foundation sent $544,010 between 2013 and 2022 to organizations that broadly share an agenda of building conservative power, including advocating against LGBTQ+ rights, restricting access to abortions, creating school lesson plans that downplay climate change and drafting a suite of policies aimed at overhauling the federal government.

Donees include the Heartland Institute, a longtime purveyor of climate disinformation, which published a video on YouTube in May stating incorrectly that “the scientific data continue to show there is no climate crisis”. Other groups that have received donations include the American Family Association, which claims that the “climate change agenda is an attack on God’s creation”, as well as the Heritage Foundation, the lead organization behind Project 2025.

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Since 2013, the Shell foundation sent $59,264 to the American Family Association, another Project 2025 adviser and an organization designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center due in part to its long history of aggressive anti-gay activism. In a post from 2022, the conservative Christian organization referred to “the unproven hypothesis of man-made, catastrophic climate change”. Shell’s foundation contributed $23,321 to the Heritage Foundation, which published the Project 2025 document known as Mandate for Leadership. The conservative thinktank has deep ties to Donald Trump and a long history of attacking the scientific consensus on climate change. Last year, it published a commentary on its website stating that “climate change models are poor predictors of warming”.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/15/shell-oil-project-2025-climate-crisis