The Friendly New Face of Dark Money: How Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard Helped Wealthy Donors Pour $171 Million of Dark Money into Project 2025

Since 2020, three major financial services companies — Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Vanguard — have helped affluent philanthropists funnel at least $171 million to the nonprofits behind Project 2025, whose central platform rejects the climate crisis, DeSmog has found. The contributions, which include hundreds of donations to 68 different Project 2025 groups, were distributed on […]

Mapped: How Big Ag, Pharma, Pesticides and Other Industries Hope to Sway the UN Biodiversity Talks

This investigation has been translated into Spanish. You can read it on DeSmog here Under thundery tropical skies, and amid ever more dire warnings on the precarious state of the world’s ecosystems, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference is unfolding in Colombia. This year’s summit, known as COP16, follows on from the last biodiversity conference held in […]

Fracking Pioneer Gwyn Morgan Gave $530K to Anti-Climate Website ‘True North’

A far-right Canadian website whose contributors have disputed the extent to which fossil fuels are warming our atmosphere, attacked the science demonstrating that climate change leads to more destructive wildfires and suggested climate advocates are “the real conspiracy theorists,” is quietly getting large donations from a former oil and gas executive.  Canada Revenue Agency tax […]

Norway’s Equinor Admits It ‘Over-reported’ Amount of Carbon Captured at Flagship Project for Years 

This story is the fifth part of a DeSmog series on carbon capture and was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe. Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor has admitted over-reporting the performance of a flagship carbon capture and storage project by about 28 percent due to defective monitoring equipment, underscoring risks associated with plans to scale the […]

WisdomTree Hit with $4 Million Penalty for Misleading Investors on Fossil Fuel Holdings

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week fired a shot over the bow at Wall Street companies that promise to help investors avoid putting their money into fossil fuels and tobacco — but steer funds towards those companies anyway. In a little-noticed settlement, the SEC fined investment adviser WisdomTree $4 million for claiming that […]

Mapped: How 6 Billionaire Family Fortunes Fund Project 2025

As scrutiny of Project 2025 continues to grow, defenders of the Heritage Foundation-led initiative, which would reshape federal governance and give the next Republican president unprecedented new powers, say it’s the criticism — not the 922-page plan itself — that’s too extreme.  In a piece published last month, Fox News cited prominent conservatives who feel there’s […]

‘Money in Exchange for Silence’: Behind Neom’s Green Image, Western Firms Cash in on Saudi Commitment to Oil

The video opens with the voice of a child. “Since the beginning, we’ve changed things,” she says. “It’s in our genes. It’s what makes us human.” The viewer zooms through stages in human development — agriculture, science, air travel, space flight. A dramatic musical score rises steadily in volume. “Now, we have a chance to change […]

Industrial Fishing Undermines World’s Greatest Carbon Sink, Experts Warn

Fish is often sold as the perfect climate-friendly dinner: highly nutritious and lower carbon than other forms of protein. But new research is increasingly bringing some of these eco marketing claims into question. In part, because industrial fishing – scientists and campaigners say – is weakening the ocean’s ability to act as a carbon sink.  […]

Alberta’s ‘Scrap the Cap’ Attack Part of an ‘Endless Propaganda War,’ Say Critics

The government of Alberta and Canadian newspaper chain Postmedia are being accused of publishing disinformation on the front pages of major Canadian newspapers.  But critics are also pointing out the ad campaign distracts from the bigger issue of whether proposed emissions bans are sufficient given the severity of the climate crisis.  Full front page advertorials […]

Trump Megadonor Tim Dunn Has a Plan More Extreme Than Project 2025

For months top Democrats have fixated on Project 2025, the radical blueprint of policy and personnel recommendations for a Donald Trump administration published by The Heritage Foundation and its allies, with Kamala Harris’ campaign calling it “a sweeping takeover of the federal government.”  But one of Trump’s most prominent donors, the Texas fracking billionaire and […]