An environmental foundation founded by a wealthy British investment guru has pumped another $1.5 million into the news outlet leading the attacks on oil giant ExxonMobil’s global warming stance.
The Grantham Foundation (TGF) awarded InsideClimate News the single largest award in the left-leaning news group’s history. The award comes after InsideClimate News released a series alleging Exxon knew the harmful impacts of global warming for decades, but funded groups opposed to climate regulations.
TGF wants to double the size of InsideClimate and expand the group’s coverage of energy and environment issues. Increased support from Grantham could mean more Exxon-type investigations — that’s bad news for companies looking to avoid political troubles.
“For as long as we’ve known them, InsideClimate News has consistently produced groundbreaking environmental journalism,” Ramsay Ravenel, TGF’s executive director, said in a statement in May. “We believe the best way to support ICN’s work now is with a longer term commitment to its independent journalism.”
TGF first donated to InsideClimate in 2012. That year, TGF gave the news group $100,000.
TGF was founded by Jeremy Grantham, a wealthy British asset manager who co-founded the firm Grantham, Mayo, & van Otterloo. Grantham’s foundation focuses specifically on environmental issues and has given millions to eco-activists at the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the Environmental Defense Fund — both groups lobby the government for stricter energy regulations.
TGF’s funding of InsideClimate shouldn’t come as a surprise, especially after the group published its Exxon series.
Grantham himself is an ardent environmentalist who attended an anti-Keystone XL pipeline rally at the White House in 2013. The Brit stood with the crowd as activists were arrested for chaining themselves to the White House fence.
He founded TGF in 1997, and the group boasted nearly $400 million in assets in 2011. It may not be a group many Americans have heard of, but TGF has big coffers and is willing to use them to push environmental activism.
Grantham’s not been shy in expressing his opinion about the state of the planet either. He’s warned the Earth is overpopulated and won’t be able to sustain this many people much longer.
Grantham’s been quoted saying the “threat to the long-term viability of our species when we reach a population level of 10 billion” as it will be “impossible to feed the 10 billion people.” He argued writer Thomas Malthus got it right when he said humanity will eventually outstrip its ability to feed itself — Grantham just thinks he got the timing wrong. “The faster China grows, the higher grain prices go, the more people in China or India who upgrade to meat, the higher the tendency for Africa to starve,” he told The New York Times in 2011.
InsideClimate News President David Sassoon did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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