Google and the other big tech companies are some of the most lavish
funders of climate denial “think tanks” and lobbying groups, something
they’ve been at continuously for more than six years, without interruption.
Google doesn’t fund these lobbyists because they’re climate deniers, nor
because they’re indifferent to climate change and its human costs.
Google funds these lobbyists and astroturf operations because they also
lobby for lax tax enforcement, lax labor laws, lax privacy laws, and so
on. The fact that these groups also lobby for the right of corporations
to render our planet uninhabitable (as well as against the rights of
LGBTQ people, against reproductive freedom for women, etc) is merely an
acceptable cost of greasing the skids to allow Big Tech to seek profits
at the expense of their workers, suppliers, customers and society.
The latest round of revelations about Google’s contribution to climate deniers comes from Google’s list
of “politically-engaged trade associations, independent third-party
organizations and other tax-exempt groups that receive the most
substantial contributions from Google’sU.S. Government Affairs and
Public Policy team.”
It includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who claimed
responsibility for getting Trump to pull out of the Paris Accord (CEI is
also pro-monopoly, anti-Net Neutrality, pro-binding arbitration,
anti-Obamacare, anti-Consumer Financial Protection Board, and fronts for
the monopolists who dominate oil, tobacco, and alcohol).
Other recipients of “substantial contributions” from Google include the
State Policy Network, who front for The Heartland Institute, a radical
climate-science denial thinktank with major Koch funding. SPN’s actively
solicits signatures for a “climate pledge” that holds that “our natural environment is getting better…there is no climate crisis.”
Google “substantially contributes” to the American Conservative Union
(led by a Koch operative who takes credit for the climate gridlock in
DC), the American Enterprise Institute (another prominent, lavish
climate denial spender) and the Americans for Tax Reform whose radical
anti-taxation agenda also includes condemnation of climate action as
“corporate welfare.”
Google funds the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Mercatus
Center, and Heritage Action, all of whom have led on climate denial.
Google defends itself by saying that it only supports the CEI and SPN
work that enriches Google’s shareholders, and not the policies that doom
us all to a horrible death when the only known planet capable of
sustaining human life is rendered uninhabitable.
A Google spokesman also pointed out that other Big Tech companies send
millions to these organizations, so when your house burns down in a
wildfire or you die in a pandemic, the blame will not be Google’s alone.
Amazon will also be at fault, as will Microsoft and the other tech
monopolists.
