The Rockefeller family’s crusade against Exxon Mobil is part of a “covert” campaign to give the oil rich family a leg up in emerging markets, according to a report from an environmental legal group.
The Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal) published a report Tuesday suggesting that the Rockefeller family has pumped millions of dollars into fringe movements meant to place climate policies at the forefront of nearly every aspect of American politics.
E&E Legal’s report, titled The Rockefeller Way: The Family’s Covert “Climate Change” Plan, highlights years of the philanthropic efforts by the family to direct policy objectives meant to pad its already bloated wallet.
The group’s report includes a video running down John D. Rockefeller’s history of dumping money on fledgling charity groups to rebuild his public image.
Their opposition to the very fossil fuel industry that helped them become the wealthiest oil families in U.S. history suggests their inquisition is not what it seems, Craig Richardson, E&E Legal President, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in a press statement.
They are “merely opportunists,” he said, who use various social causes to gain “leverage in the economic and public policy arenas” all around the world. It’s the “Rockefeller way.”
The family uses various funds – including the Rockefeller Family Fund, Rockefeller Brother Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation – to direct tens of millions of dollars to major green foundations since the 1980s.
Most of their efforts are directed toward creating public policy, the report stated, but they’ve also been at the forefront of the campaign against Exxon, a descendant of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company.
The Rockefellers were initially cagey about whether they specifically targeted Exxon but later admitted to going after the company.
Kaiser and Lee Wasserman, the head of RFF, admitted several months ago in The New York Review of Books that the family intended all along to bring down Exxon because of its supposed anti-global warming positions.
They hashed out their campaign against Exxon during two closed door meetings with climate scientists in 2012 and 2016, while floating the idea of using New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as a possible weapon against the company. The New York Democrat began investigating Exxon in November 205, three years after the first meeting.
The Columbia School of Journalism, which published reports alleging the oil company buried internal reports on climate change, insists the contributions it received from the RFF, as well as the RBF, are independent from its research on climate change.
At least one Rockefeller has come out against her family’s Exxon obsession.
Ariana Rockefeller, one of the wealthy scions of the billionaire Rockefeller family, told reporters in early December that she disapproves of her family members’ tiff with Exxon, as well as other anti-fossil fuel efforts.
“These family funds do not speak on behalf of all 200 family members,” Ariana said about the myriad Rockefeller funds targeting Exxon. “I don’t think denouncing a family legacy is the best way to go about,” about protecting the environment.
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