Why are Google and Facebook financing climate skeptics?

Hard to grasp, but true: Google and other large firms are donating large sums of money to the climate skeptic scene. How does that square with an otherwise meticulously managed image as an ecological innovator?

Deutsche Welle, 2 May 2017

Google logo as seen on a TV behind a smartphone (Imago/Zumapress)

For many years, there's been an overwhelming consensus among scientists that human activity is influencing the climate. But there is a group that vehemently challenges this - so-called climate skeptics. Among their claims: Global warming is not definitively caused by humans.

Think tanks play a pivotal role in this scene - they present themselves as scientific organizations with unbiased experts. In reality, however, many are pursuing a clear agenda. In the United States, they have an especially large influence on popular opinion and politics.

What's behind it all? Energy companies, car manufacturers and the tobacco industry in particular have a vested interest in portraying climate change as an invention of eco-hysterics. ExxonMobil, Volkswagen and Monsanto all back of climate-skeptic think tanks, as do billionaire oil magnates the Koch brothers.

And although it may seem hard to believe, Google, Facebook and Microsoft are also among the ranks of companies investing in climate denial.

Climate protector Google?

Solar-cell roofs and wind
energy at Google - all just PR?

That fossil fuel, automobile manufacturing and chemical companies may seek to undermine efforts to protect the climate could be seen as acting out of self-interest - so, not surprising. But why would ostensibly "green" companies like Microsoft, Facebook and Google support climate skeptics?

This is the same Google that touts itself as soon being able to cover its own energy needs using only renewables. And, which states on its website that ecological sustainability is an important issue for the company, and that more measures against climate change worldwide are long overdue - yes, that Google.

Who exactly Google is sponsoring is easy enough to see on its homepage. Google backs not only the hyper-conservative Cato Institute, but also the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which are among the most influential players of the organized climate skeptic scene. At a CEI fundraising event in 2013, Google was even its largest single sponsor, according to the "The Washington Post."

The internet firm is also a member of the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest economically orientated lobby group worldwide. It supports mostly Republican politicians who deny climate change, is firmly against emissions trading, and recently praised US President Donald Trump's plan to ease climate protection.

A few companies like Apple have already left the Chamber of Commerce in protest over its approach to climate change.

Money is power

The climate skeptics among them:
former Czech Republic President
Vaclav Klaus visits the Cato Institute

Daniel Dudis of Public Citizen has a simple explanation as to why Google, despite its carefully-managed reputation as a climate protector, supports the Chamber of Commerce and climate skeptic think tanks: "As a big firm, you give these groups money in order to exert influence through them." With Trump as president, Google through the think tanks now has better access to politicians with decision-making powers.

Furthermore, the Cato Institute and the CEI address a relatively wide array of issues. So although Google may perhaps not agree with their views on the climate, it could align with their positions on tax and state regulations.

When contacted, Google's only response was to refer to a statement from one of its spokespeople: "We work with dozens of lobby groups from across the whole political spectrum. We can't always agree 100 percent with every organization on every topic. Regarding ecological sustainability and renewable energy we've shown that are involved long-term with it."

The question remains: how can Google pump so much money into think tanks with ostensibly opposite views to its on climate protection, and which try with all their might to undermine it?

"All these activities suggest that much of Google's committment is just greenwashing: Public relations to get an environmentally friendly image," said Dudis.

In the US political system, money plays a much larger role than in many European countries, meaning companies have a huge influence there on politics. Google is among them - if need be, even at the cost of the environment.

Net neutrality activists score landmark victory in fight to govern the internet

FCC says ‘we listened and we learned’, and passes strict broadband rules that represent ‘a red-letter day for internet freedom’

The Guardian, Dominic Rushe in Washington, 26 February 2015

Protesters hold a rally at the FCC headquarters in Washington to
support net neutrality. Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

Internet activists scored a landmark victory on Thursday as the top US telecommunications regulator approved a plan to govern broadband internet like a public utility.

Following one of the most intense – and bizarre – lobbying battles in the history of modern Washington politics, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed strict new rules that give the body its greatest power over the cable industry since the internet went mainstream.

FCC chairman Tom Wheeler – a former telecom lobbyist turned surprise hero of net neutrality supporters – thanked the 4 million people who submitted comments on the new rules. “Your participation has made this the most open process in FCC history,” he said. “We listened and we learned.”

Wheeler said that while other countries were trying to control the internet, the sweeping new US protections on net neutrality – the concept that all information and services should have equal access online – represented “a red-letter day for internet freedom”.

“The internet is simply too important to be left without rules and without a referee on the field,” said Wheeler. “Today’s order is more powerful and more expansive than any previously suggested.”

Barack Obama – who had pushed for the regulations – praised the decision and thanked the people who had protested for tighter rules. “I ran for office because I believed that nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change. That’s the backbone of our democracy–and you’ve proven that this timeless principle is alive and well in our digital age.So to all the people who participated in this conversation, I have a simple message: thank you,” the president wrote.

But Republicans and cable companies were quick to attack the move. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association said the rules would hurt “everyday broadband users” by raising costs and reducing investment.

Broadband providers will be banned from creating so-called “fast lanes” blocking or slowing traffic online, and the regulator will oversee mobile broadband as well as cable. The FCC would also have the authority to challenge unforeseen barriers broadband providers might create as the internet develops.

Activists and tech companies argue the new rules are vital to protect net neutrality – the concept that all information and services should have equal access to the internet. The FCC’s two Republican commissioners, Ajit Pai and Michael O’Rielly, voted against the plan but were overruled at a much anticipated meeting by three Democratic members on the panel.

Republicans have long fought the FCC’s net neutrality protections, arguing the rules will create an unnecessary burden on business. They have accused Obama of bullying the regulator into the move in order to score political points, with conservative lawmakers and potential 2016 presidential candidates expected to keep the fight going well into that election campaign.

Pai said the FCC was flip-flopping for “one reason and one reason only: president Obama told us to do so”.

Wheeler dismissed accusations of a “secret” plan as “nonsense”. “This is no more a plan to regulate the internet than the first amendment is a plan to regulate free speech,” Wheeler said.

“This is the FCC using all the tools in our toolbox to protect innovators and consumers.”

Obama offered his support to the rules late last year, following an online activism campaign that pitched internet organisers and companies from Netflix and Reddit to the online craft market Etsy and I Can Has Cheezburger? – web blog home of the Lolcats meme – against Republican leaders and the cable and telecom lobbies.

Broadband will now be regulated under Title II of the Communications Act – the strongest legal authority the FCC has available. Obama called on the independent regulator to implement Title II last year, leading to charges that he unduly influenced Wheeler’s decision that are now being investigated in Congress.

Broadband providers hit back immediately. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association said the rules would hurt “everyday broadband users” by raising costs and reducing investment.

“Today’s decision by the FCC to encumber broadband Internet services

with badly antiquated regulations is a radical step that presages a time

of uncertainty for consumers, innovators and investors,” said Michael Glover, Verizon’s senior vice-president for public policy and government affairs.

To illustrate what Verizon saw as the FCC’s old-fashioned thinking, the company put out its news release in typewriter font and dated it 1934. The release also went out in Morse code.

.@Verizon doesn't give a font. #NetNeutrality #FCClive http://t.co/Nu08lnMf6T pic.twitter.com/IrJYXV0d8T
— dominic rushe (@dominicru) February 26, 2015

Before the meeting on Thursday, a small band of protesters gathered in the snow outside the FCC’s Washington headquarters, in celebration of their success in lobbying for a dramatic U-turn in regulation. Wheeler and his Democratic colleagues, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, were cheered as they sat down for the meeting.

Joining the activists outside was Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who said the FCC also needed more power to prevent future attacks on the open internet.

“We have won on net neutrality,” Wozniak told the Guardian. “This is important because they don’t want the FCC to have oversight over other bad stuff.”

What a legend. RT @dominicru: @stevewoz outside #NetNeutrality vote. @FCC needs power to stop "bad stuff". pic.twitter.com/qxz1j2NOwR
— Craig Hitchings (@craighitchings) February 26, 2015

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, addressed the meeting via video, saying he applauded the FCC’s decision to protect net neutrality: “More than anything else, the action you take today will preserve the reality of a permission-less innovation that is the heart of the internet.”

“It’s about consumer rights, it’s about free speech, it’s about democracy,” Berners-Lee said.

Clyburn compared the new rules to the Bill of Rights. “We are here to ensure that there is only one internet,” she said. “We want to ensure that those with deep pockets have the same opportunity as those with empty pockets too succeed.”

The fight for net neutrality has been largely fought online. The millions of messages were sent to the FCC during its comment period on the rules before Thursday’s landmark series of votes.

Last year the FCC looked set to approve rules that would have allowed internet service providers to create “fast lanes” on the internet. Critics charged such a move would create a two-tiered internet and stifle competition.

Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder of internet advocacy group Fight for the Future, said: “This is our free speech struggle in the digital age. Institutions of power should know by now: internet users will not stand idly by while anyone tries to take their freedom away.”

The FCC passed two new orders on Thursday. The first, equally controversial but eclipsed by the net neutrality debate, overturned bans on municipal broadband companies competing with private cable firms.

Municipal broadband companies in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, pushed for the expansion plans, against which private cable and telecom rivals have been lobbied intensely. Twenty US states currently have limits or bans on local governments building, owning or partnering with others to give local businesses and residents a choice in high-speed internet access. That vote, too, fell along party lines, potentially opening many US cities to wider competition.

Voting for the municipality change, Clyburn said millions of people had been left in “digital darkness” because cable companies did not want to expand in their areas. The Republican commissioners, O’Rielly and Pai, called the change “appalling” and “un-constitutional”.

“Unfortunately for the Commission, all the lipstick in the world cannot disguise this pig,” said Pai.

Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said Thursday’s vote could set “an historic precedent” that could “profoundly impact the lives of three-quarters of Americans who are without broadband or a choice in their service because of big cable underinvestment in their towns”.

The FCC was forced to rewrite its broadband rules after Verizon successfully challenged its authority to stop it creating fast lanes or to more broadly regulate the industry under its last set of regulations, the Open Internet Order of 2010. Legal challenges for the new rules are also inevitable.

“When internet users come together to fight for something they believe in,” said Fight for the Future’s Cheng, “nothing can stop them.”

Obama: ‘We cannot allow ISPs to restrict the best
access.’ Photograph: Reuters

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Facebook and Microsoft help fund rightwing lobby network, report finds

State Policy Network rejects climate change, opposes workers' rights – and is backed by some top US tech and telecoms firms

theguardian.com, Ed Pilkington in New York, Thursday 14 November 2013

Microsoft, Facebook and Time Warner each sponsored SPN’s most recent
annual meeting in Oklahoma City. Photograph: Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Some of America’s largest technology and telecoms companies, including Facebook, Microsoft and AT&T, are backing a network of self-styled “free-market thinktanks” promoting a radical rightwing agenda in states across the nation, according to a new report by a lobbying watchdog.

The Center for Media and Democracy asserts that the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 thinktanks based in each of the 50 states, is acting as a largely beneath-the-radar lobbying machine for major corporations and rightwing donors.

Its policies include cutting taxes, opposing climate change regulations, advocating reductions in labour protections and the minimum wage, privatising education, restricting voter rights and lobbying for the tobacco industry.

The network’s $83.2m annual warchest comes from major donors. These include the Koch brothers, the energy tycoons who are a mainstay of Tea Party groups and climate change sceptics; the tobacco company Philip Morris and its parent company Altria Group; the food giant Kraft; and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline.

More surprisingly, backers also include Facebook and Microsoft, as well as the telecoms giants AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Verizon.

The CMD study uncovered a public document that listed SPN’s funders in 2010. They included: AT&T and Microsoft, which each donated up to $99,000; and Time Warner Cable and Verizon, which each contributed up to $24,000. In addition, Facebook, Microsoft and Time Warner each sponsored SPN’s most recent annual meeting in Oklahoma City in September.

Lisa Graves, the director of the Center for Media and Democracy, said it was “disappointing” that Facebook and the other technology and telecoms companies had “put their hat in the ring, given SPN’s extreme agenda that includes climate change denial, making it harder for Americans to vote, and attacking workers’ rights.” She called on the firms to “reconsider their support, as it is at odds with science and common sense.”

Tracie Sharp, the president of SPN, rebutted the charge that it operates as a rightwing lobbying network. In a statement, she said that the network was dedicated to providing “state-based, free-market thinktanks with the academic and management resources required to run a non-profit institution”. Each of its 64 member thinktanks were “fiercely independent, choosing to manage their staff, pick their own research topics and educate the public on those issues they deem most appropriate for their state.”

But she added that “every thinktank, however, rallies around a common belief: the power of free markets and free people to create a healthy, prosperous society.”

The State Policy Network operates a tech/telecom policy exchange in which it campaigns against taxes on internet shopping and against the regulatory activities of the Federal Communications Commission. Though much of that thinking could not reasonably be characterised as what the CMD report calls an “extreme rightwing agenda”, the tech and telecoms companies' inclusion on the list of funders puts them alongside some strange bedfellows.

The Guardian invited the technology and telecoms companies to respond to the allegation that they have sponsored a network devoted to “extreme” rightwing causes, but most either declined to comment or had not responded by the time of publication.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Microsoft said: “As a large company, Microsoft has great interest in the many policy issues discussed across the country. We have a longstanding record of engaging with a broad assortment of groups on a bipartisan basis, both at the national and local level. In regard to State Policy Network, Microsoft has focused our participation on their technology policy work group because it is valuable forum to hear various perspectives about technology challenges and to share potential solutions.”

SPN works in parallel with the American Legislative Exchange Council, Alec, a forum that brings together largely Republican legislators and corporations to devise model bills that are used to attack workers’ rights in various US states.

The Koch brothers have donated directly to the network either personally or through corporate funds from Koch Industries and from family foundations. Two closely-related funds, the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, described by Mother Jones as the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement”, give at least $1.5m a year – channeling money to the network from individual donors whose identity the funds obscure.

Several prominent rightwing billionaire donors are also involved, including Art Pope, an ally of the Koch brothers; the Walton family of Walmart, which funds SPN members in Arkansas, California, Massachusetts and Washington state; the foundation of billionaire Republican donor Richard Mellon Scaife; and the Searle Freedom Trust, created out of the fortune of the creator of NutraSweet, which funds a number of conservative causes.

Graves said that the individual thinktanks who make up SPN present themselves as “neutral, non-partisan groups, but are in fact part of a national network to project the voices and interests of some of the most powerful corporations and families in the country”.

Gordon Lafer, a professor at the University of Oregon, said that SPN groups were actively targeting the rights of often non-unionised employees. His research had uncovered attempts to expand the use of child labour, cut the minimum wage, reduce unemployment benefit, make it harder to sue employers for sex or race discrimination, or even to police wage theft where companies refused to pay workers over-time or any wages at all.

“These are a very dramatic package of proposals at a time of economic hardship, and they are being rolled out in a cookie-cutter fashion from state to state, and affecting the lives of working people across the country.”

Lafer added: “This looks like scholarship from local organisations, but in fact it is neither – neither scholarship, nor local.”

David Koch, chairman of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, funds
some of the largest dark money networks. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File) | AP

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