Democrat calls on Google to stop funding climate crisis deniers

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/16/democrat-letter-google-stop-funding-climate-change-deniers

Democrat calls on Google to stop funding climate crisis deniers

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington

Wed 16 Oct 2019 22.35 BST Last modified on Wed 16 Oct 2019 22.36 BST

A Democratic lawmaker has called on Google CEO Sundar Pichai to stop investing in organizations that deny the existence of the climate crisis, saying it was hard to overstate how detrimental the impact of such groups had been on the US climate debate.

Kathy Castor’s letter to Pichai followed a report in the Guardian last week that revealed Google had made “substantial” contributions to some of the most notorious climate deniers in Washington, despite the internet giant’s insistence it supports political action to combat the crisis.

The groups included the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has actively sought to roll back Obama-era environmental protections and helped convince Donald Trump, the US president, to abandon the Paris Agreement.
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“It is hard to overstate the detrimental impact groups like CEI have had on the climate debate in the United States since the early days of the Kyoto Protocol,” Castor, a Democratic representative from Florida, said. “Because of their public and behind-the-scenes efforts to obfuscate and obstruct, we have lost critical time to cut greenhouse gas pollution and now face a shrinking window of opportunity to avert the worst impacts of climate change.”
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But in her letter to Pichai, Castor, who is chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, said there was no way to distinguish their support from other issues.

“It is impossible to separate your support for one sliver of CEI from the whole. Your financial contributions support the organization’s infrastructure, augment its political influence, and, in turn, legitimize all of its activities – not just the ones you like,” she wrote.
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