Big Government, Big Business, Big Green!
Secret Meeting of Environmental Grantmakers Association Not So
Secret
The Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA), an umbrella of several hundred foundation and corporate givers to the green movement, held a closed-door meeting in Washington, DC on February 3rd and 4th. Through these meetings, environmental grantmakers help set the agenda of the green movement. As Mother Jones noted: "By deciding which organizations get money, the grantmakers help set the agenda of the environmental movement and influence the programs and strategies that activists carry out."
Though these meetings are normally held under a cloak of secrecy, ALRA obtained a copy of the EGA’s agenda. ALRA faxed copies of the agenda to hundreds of our allied organizations in Washington, DC as well as to the Washington press corps.
The EGA is a cartel of eco-money. There is nothing else like it. The EGA itself does not give money to green groups. It does not receive money from corporations and foundations except to pay for its own annual meetings. It is not a pass-through that funnels money from corporations and foundations to green groups.
Yet EGA is the most important money and power center in the entire environmental movement, with 180 member corporations and foundations and their hundreds of green group grant recipients. With its CLOSED MEETINGS such as the one in Washington, it is the planning, coordination and monitoring center for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of environmental grant money that flow from the grantmakers themselves directly to the recipients.
EGA resembles nothing so much as John D. Rockefeller’s original Standard Oil Trust. In the words of journalist Ida Tarbell, "this shrewd and slippery device for evading responsibility had no legal existence. It was a force as powerful as gravitation and as intangible. You could argue its existence from its effects, but you could never prove it. You could no more grasp it than you could an eel."
Speakers included Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), EPA Administrator Carol Browner, Michael Bean of the Environmental Defense Fund and Deb Callahan of the League of Conservation Voters. No one representing property rights, sound science or free market environmental views was on the agenda. There were presentations on how the green movement can expand among the African American and evangelical communities.
ALRA joined Frontiers of Freedom, the National Center for Public Policy Research, and other allied groups to demonstrate against this secret society and call attention to it in the press. For more information call ALRA, Frontiers at (703) 527-8282 or the National Center at (202) 543-1286.
Below are listed some of the more prominent members of EGA. You might ask WHY SO MANY LARGE CORPORATIONS? Large, well-capitalized companies attempt to destroy their smaller competition by systematically supporting enviro groups which conceive, draft, lobby, and test in the courts outrageous new environmental laws so stringent that only large, well-capitalized companies can afford to comply. In addition, new eco-businesses created by the enacting of more laws require ever-spreading regulation in order to increase their market size.
Some prominent EGA members are:
Atlantic Richfield Oil Company
Alaska Conservation Foundation
American Express Company
Apple Computer
Chevron Oil & Chemical Company
Ford Foundation
General Electric Foundation
Heinz Endowments
IBM Corporation
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Massachusetts Enviro Trust
Pew Charitable Trusts
Philip Morris Companies
Procter & Gamble Corporation
Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Rockefeller Family Fund
Rockefeller Foundation
San Francisco Foundation
Sequoia Foundation
Turner Broadcasting
Waste Management Inc.
EGA consists of approximately 180 corporations and foundations. Its address is:
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10104
Phone (212) 373-4260,4252
Fax (212) 315-0996