When NPR’s Rockefeller-funded Climate Desk article “broke” the news on a new report this week, it took absolutely no time at all to connect the dots to the usual anti-fossil fuel crew behind the effort.
A closer look at the report – and reporting – reveals a classic “who’s who” of the funders, activists, and journalists that have desperately tried to make #InsertCompanyNameHereKnew a thing and are now honing in on gas stoves and indoor air quality. Newsflash: it’s not a thing.
This time the target is the American Gas Association (AGA), a trade group representing natural gas utilties, claiming they “knew” for decades about health impacts associated with gas stoves. The report, however, reads more like a flimsy, worn out book report, as it relies on old information that has been debunked time and time again.
Without NPR carrying the water in support of this report, the group behind it would have little to show for their efforts. But when you know that the editor of this story previously worked for organizations that crank out anti-oil and gas “journalism” then it’s easy to understand how this whole story came together.
The new report was released by Climate Investigations Center (CIC), a shadowy organization dedicated to rounding up internal documents to “expose” energy companies and founded by central #ExxonKnew player Kert Davies. From his early days at Greenpeace to his current role at the Center for Climate Integrity, Davies has spent nearly his whole career working for the most unscrupulous players behind the climate litigation campaign.
Unsurprisingly, CIC is also funded by the same billionaires who fund the barrage of lawsuits against American oil producers. According to reporting by Washington Free Beacon, CIC isn’t an independent entity, but instead operates as a project of Our Next Economy LLC, an climate consulting firm founded by Davies’s old Greenpeace colleague, John Passacantando. Our Next Economy, in turn, is backed by the Sustainable Markets Foundation (SMF), a pass through grantmaking organization funded by the Tides Foundation and Rockefeller Family Fund.
These convoluted relationships prompted conservative advocacy group Freedom Works to file a complaint with the Department of Justice against CIC in 2019 alleging that CIC misrepresented its nonprofit status in order to file Freedom of Information Act requests at no charge.
While these layers are nominally separate, the groups are unified in their goal – to take down the energy industry. All the core players were present at a January 2016 closed-door meeting at the Rockefeller Family Fund offices where Davies, Passacantando, and a coalition of activists discussed ways to “delegitimize [Exxon Mobil] as a political actor,” and “drive divestment from Exxon” using litigation, public relations, and other tactics.
Later, in 2019, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund held a closed-door meeting – this time, at the Fund’s Pocantico Estate in New York – where environmentalists and state government officials discussed strategies to phase out the use of natural gas in the grid, infrastructure, and consumers’ appliances. Now, years after the #ExxonKnew campaign decisively failed, CIC appears to be following its funders’ direction and has deployed its playbook on natural gas utilities.
NPR’s reporting doesn’t mention that CIC’s report is actually repackaging of a narrative pushed out nearly six months ago by DeSmog, a foreign-funded anti-fossil fuel outlet that operates as a sponsored project of the Sustainable Markets Foundation.
After the DeSmog article fell like a tree in a forest with no one around, it appears that CIC saw a missed opportunity. The two organizations have partnered up previously to shop around stale information in an effort to get several bites of the same apple. This time around, the author of the DeSmog article took off her DeSmog hat, put on a CIC hat, repackaged the information and six months later called it a CIC report.
That plan would only work, however, with buy in from someone from the so-called “impartial” media. The story and investigation from NPR “breaking” the latest CIC report was overseen by Supervising Climate Editor Neela Banerjee who previously wrote for InsideClimate News and led the activist outlet’s 2015 Rockefeller-funded investigation into ExxonMobil that kicked off the “ExxonKnew” campaign.
Even reporting from NPR – National Public Radio – has been bought and paid for by activists dedicated to taking down energy companies. In September 2022, the Rockefeller Foundation issued a press release announcing, “The Rockefeller Foundation Funds NPR’s New Climate Desk,” and named Banerjee as one of the reporting desk’s inaugural members.
The Rockefellers’ agenda is evident in NPR’s coverage of the CIC report. NPR’s article includes research from anti-natural gas group Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) which Energy In Depth has previously debunked, along with multiple other claims alleging a negative relationship between gas stoves and health outcomes, most of which were eagerly covered in the media without a critical eye to flawed research or questionable transparency issues.
EID Climate has delved into the tenuous relationship between academics fueling the climate litigation campaign and their biases that often don’t get disclosed in the media, giving the impression of a much larger organic campaign. But in reality, many of the voices researching “climate accountability” are also the ones reporting on and amplifying anti-energy research.
Bottom Line: This is yet another example of activists grasping at straws to wage a politically motivated litigation campaign against the American energy industry, no matter the evidence showing that natural gas plays a key role in helping the United States reduce emissions and improve overall air quality. The rollout of CIC’s report should raise big questions about the activist groups’ hypocritical lack of transparency and the high degree of donor influence in purportedly “fair” media reporting.
