U.S. companies are saying one thing on climate policy and funding quite another, according to a new Reuters investigation.
The news agency reviewed donations made during the 2016 election cycle by the political action committees (PACs) of 30 of the biggest publicly traded U.S. companies that signed President Barack Obama’s “American Business Act on Climate Change Pledge” in 2015—and in doing so, signaled an “ongoing commitment to climate action.”
But Reuters found that 25 of those 30 companies—including DuPont, PepsiCo, AT&T, and Google—”are funding the campaigns of lawmakers featured on a ‘climate deniers’ list that was put together by Organizing For Action, a non-profit created by former Obama campaign aides to advocate his agenda.”
Reuters reports:
This “disconnect between how these companies present themselves to the public on environmental issues, and how they manage their political contributions to support business-friendly policy” would likely not go over well with investors, one asset manager told Reuters.
“No company should want to be perceived as espousing progressive climate policies on the one hand,” said Lauren Compere, managing director at sustainable investment manager Boston Common Asset Management, “while funding climate deniers on the other.”
Research from the Center for American Progress Action Fund earlier this year found that more than six in 10 Americans are represented by a climate denier in Congress—thanks in part, it seems, to the country’s biggest corporations.