Google made “substantial” contributions towards climate change deniers

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Google has been making significant contributions towards climate change deniers, the Guardian reports. The world’s leading search engine has been outed for backing “more than a dozen” companies which have campaigned against climate legislation or called for a withdrawal of environmental protections implemented by the American government.

 

 

In defence of its investment policy, Google claims it donates to many organisations from across the political spectrum, all of which advocate “strong technology policies”. However, over 12 of these companies have been shown to question the need for environmental reform in the US. One notable organisation is the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) which is thought to have influenced Donald Trump’s decision to abandon the UN Paris Agreement on mitigating climate change.

 

“We’re hardly alone among companies that contribute to organisations while strongly disagreeing with them on climate policy,” maintains a spokesperson from Google.

 

Google's website does state that sponsorship does not necessarily mean it endorses an organisation's “entire agenda, its events or advocacy positions nor the views of its leaders or members.” However, the tech giant refused to tell The Guardian how much it has given to the organisations in question.

 

The news comes despite Google’s continued assertion that it supports political action against the climate crisis. It publicised its “biggest corporate purchase of renewable energy in history” in mid-September, claiming that “sustainability has been one of Google’s core values from our earliest days.”

 

But questions have been raised about the search engine’s willingness to act, with hundreds of Google and Amazon employees joining climate-change marches in San Francisco and Seattle just last month. They claimed their employers had been too slow to address global warming and drastic action was necessary.

 

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Google Is Funding Climate Change Denialism

 

 

Despite all it’s evidently performative public-facing climate change initiatives, Google is forking over “substantial” contributions to denier organizations and events.

 

A report from the Guardian published Friday revealed that the tech company is contributing to more than a dozen organizations that have questioned the need for action or pushed back against climate regulations and legislation.

 

As the Guardian noted, one of the groups listed as receiving significant contributions from Google is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an organization that describes itself as baselessly questioning “global warming alarmism” and opposing “energy-rationing policies, including the Paris Climate Treaty, Kyoto Protocol, cap-and-trade legislation, and EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.” They were also influential in the Trump administration’s transition, including having one of their fellows lead drawing up plans to gut the Environmental Protection Agency.

 

Reached for comment by email, Google defended its sponsorship of such groups to Earther by stating that it funds entities with varying political agendas based on their tech policies.

 

“We sponsor organizations from across the political spectrum that advocate for strong technology policies,” the Google spokesperson told Earther. “We’ve been extremely clear that Google’s sponsorship doesn’t mean that we endorse that organization’s entire agenda—we may disagree strongly on some issues. Our position on climate change is similarly clear. Since 2007, we have operated as a carbon neutral company and for the second year in a row, we reached 100% renewable energy for our global operations.”

 

Earther asked Google which part of each climate-denying organization’s agenda it does support, but we did not receive an immediate reply.

 

In a strange defense for Google’s contributions to organizations that seemingly undermine its own public-facing policies—including its commitment to renewable energy and its sponsorship of climate action-focused events—the spokesperson added that Google is “hardly alone among companies that contribute to organizations while strongly disagreeing with them on climate policy.” While we can’t vouch for every claim that Google makes in its statement, it is a fact that other companies do indeed regularly contribute to organizations that hope to advance humanity’s extinction.

 

As limp a defense for Google’s agenda as that rationale is, it is also sadly true. The Guardian noted in its report that Google is listed as a sponsor for the State Policy Network’s (SPN) Annual Meeting, an event for which social media giant Facebook is also listed as a sponsor, as is Altria, which owns a minority stake in e-cigarette company and market titan Juul.

 

As the Guardian noted, SPN supports right-wing think tanks like the Heartland Institute, one of the most infamous sources of climate denial. The group includes the bald-faced lie on its climate change webpage that “[m]ost scientists do not believe human greenhouse gas emissions are a proven threat to the environment or to human well-being.” In addition, Heartland Institute has trashed teen activist Greta Thunberg following her speech before the United Nations last month, and it hosts a number of climate denial confabs, including one last year in New Orleans that drew members of Congress and White House staffers as speakers.

 

Google said it’s transparent about its sponsorships and pointed to its contributions to progressive organizations like the Center for American Progress. (Reminder: The Center for American Progress is a disgrace.) It also claimed that sponsorship of the SPN event was an initiative led by its civics team to help people from varying political affiliations use its tools and products.

 

Still, the SPN event would not be the first it’s sponsored with denier ties. Google was also a platinum sponsor—meaning it donated $25,000—at LibertyCon, which featured an event that undermined climate science. (Microsoft and Facebook were also sponsors of the event.) And wouldn’t you believe it, the Heartland Institute was a gold sponsor of the very same conference.

 

However Google attempts to fit the square peg of its political agenda into the round hole of reality, the bottom line is that all of that public-facing rhetoric about climate action is essentially meaningless if one of the most powerful companies in the world are actively contributing to the misinformation that continues to undermine the future and health of our planet. So much for that whole “don’t be evil” thing.

 

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