A secretive local weather activist group with important monetary backing is quietly taking up a extra distinguished function advocating in opposition to pure, gas-powered home equipment, like stoves.
The Gasoline Leaks Motion Marketing campaign — which seems to have been first established in late 2021 or early 2022 — lately launched a $1 million advert marketing campaign warning of the risks posed by pure gasoline, the largest-ever effort of its variety. The group states on its web site that pure gasoline harms the atmosphere, pollutes the air inside houses and makes stoves “continuously liable to explosion.”
The group has additionally spearheaded a marketing campaign in opposition to the American Gasoline Affiliation (AGA), the nation’s main business group representing pure gasoline suppliers. At a Washington, D.C. occasion earlier this month, Gasoline Leaks hosted Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., together with a number of environmental teams just like the Sierra Membership to blast the AGA’s lobbying actions.
“As an alternative of turning off the faucet on fossil fuels, our nation has been flooding the market with gasoline and, until we do one thing, we’re all going to drown,” mentioned Markey, who’s an unique sponsor of the Inexperienced New Deal.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., speaks throughout an occasion hosted by Gasoline Leaks earlier this month. (Gasoline Leaks/YouTube/Video Screenshot)
AGA President and CEO Karen Harbert mentioned in an announcement that pure gasoline is “elementary to defending America’s vitality safety, reaching our environmental targets, and selling financial prosperity.”
“Regardless of advocacy teams willfully spreading misinformation and selling ill-informed vitality coverage that will drive up costs and sacrifice environmental progress, this business will proceed to implement inclusive options to ship life-essential vitality and scale back emissions for our clients and communities,” she added.
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In the meantime, based on a Fox Information Digital evaluate of job search websites, Gasoline Leaks has posted a number of positions, together with govt director, senior communications director, digital supervisor and digital designer, during the last two years with salaries starting from $65,000 to $160,000. Altogether, the positions point out the group’s yearly wage and wage prices doubtlessly exceed $465,000.
However regardless of Gasoline Leaks’ development and rising affect with Democratic lawmakers and equally climate-focused organizations, the group shares little or no about itself on-line – its founders, funding and historical past are all shielded from public view. A Reuters report final month broadly acknowledged that Gasoline Leaks was “shaped by local weather advocacy veterans.”
Gasoline Leaks has led a number of campaigns focusing on gasoline stoves, labeling them as harmful for the atmosphere and public well being. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto through Getty Photographs)
A LinkedIn search revealed that these “advocacy veterans” embody Caleb Heeringa, a former Sierra Membership communications official who serves as Gasoline Leaks’ marketing campaign director; and Jamie Henn, the founding father of Fossil Free Media, co-founder of 350.org and a board member of Gasoline Leaks.
In response to Gasoline Leaks’ “about web page,” which seems to have been faraway from the group’s web site however stays archived, Gasoline Leaks is supported by the clear vitality advocacy group Local weather Nexus, which is itself fiscally supported by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, a nonprofit that commonly funnels cash from
donors to progressive initiatives.
The association means Gasoline Leaks is not required to file its personal 990 tax ID kind with the Inside Income Service and may, subsequently, function with out publicly sharing info about its inside operations or funds.
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“Senator Whitehouse conveniently abandons his soapbox railing in opposition to darkish cash when it’s time for him to cozy as much as a darkish cash group that’s pushing his most well-liked radical local weather agenda,” mentioned Caitlin Sutherland, Govt Director of Individuals for Public Belief, a nonprofit authorities watchdog group. Sutherland famous the distinction between each Whitehouse’s relationship with Gasoline Leaks and his high-profile push in opposition to darkish cash in politics.
“This newest pop-up inexperienced group is pedaling misinformation in a shadowy try and ban gasoline stoves.”
Local weather activists march on Madison Avenue whereas protesting vitality coverage and using fossil fuels in New York on Sept. 17, 2023. (AP Picture/Bryan Woolston)
A Fox Information Digital evaluation of grants recognized a single Gasoline Leaks donor: the California-based Heising-Simons Basis, which states on its web site that it seeks to advance “sustainable options in local weather and clear vitality, allow groundbreaking analysis in science, improve the schooling of our youngest learners and help human rights for all individuals.”
In 2022 and 2023, the Heising-Simons Basis wired two $150,000 grants to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, earmarking each for the Gasoline Leaks Motion Marketing campaign.
The Heising-Simons Basis has reportedly given greater than $3.3 million lately to the Rocky Mountain Institute, a local weather suppose tank that was concerned within the aggressive push final 12 months focusing on gasoline stoves through regulation. The Heising-Simons Basis was additionally co-founded in 2007 by Mark Heising, who stays its vice chair and is concerned financially in a variety of inexperienced vitality corporations.
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“The one factor inexperienced about at the moment’s environmental motion is the billions in money that stream freely between lefty billionaires, their operatives within the inexperienced motion, and the politicians who do their bidding,” mentioned Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Power Analysis, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.
“Their marketing campaign to ban pure gasoline stoves is one more instance of the nexus between self-dealing rich elites like Mark Heising, inexperienced stress teams just like the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the Democratic Get together machine.”
Richard Trumka Jr., a Biden-appointed member of the Shopper Product Security Fee, repeatedly instructed his company was contemplating a ban on gasoline stoves resulting from their well being and local weather impression. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Name through Getty Photographs)
Whereas environmentalists have for years sought to crack down on pure gasoline and gasoline home equipment over their local weather impacts, the push got here to a head early final 12 months when Richard Trumka Jr., a member of the U.S. Shopper Product Security Fee, mentioned banning gasoline stoves was “on the desk.” The Division of Power then issued laws focusing on gasoline stoves shortly thereafter.
In a social media publish on the time, Power Secretary Jennifer Granh
olm pointed to a Rocky Mountain Institute-funded research and mentioned the federal government “should FIX this” by rising entry to electrical stovetops. The research, which was additionally cited by environmentalists and different officers, tied 12% of childhood bronchial asthma instances to gasoline stoves.
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Gasoline Leaks, Local weather Nexus, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors and the Heising-Simons Basis did not reply to requests for remark for functions of this story. Markey and Whitehouse additionally did not reply to requests for remark.
