There is an array of large foundations and trusts with multi-billions of dollars strategizing and funding “lawsuits and lobbying, appeals, alliances and agitation” to stop oil and natural gas development, thereby undermining the energy base of the United States, author and activist Ron Arnold told members of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) last week.

Activity of the foundations, and the anti-development and anti-fossil energy environmental groups they contribute to, gets input from the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA), founded in 1985, an offshoot of the philanthropy trade group, the Council on Foundations. Arnold claims the EGA meets a number of times a year “to massively orchestrate the opposition” to all kinds of development, including oil and gas.

“They can spend a dollar, and cost you $10 to $20 just to respond,” Arnold said, advising the industry to create a database of opposition groups and their activities, and form alliances with pro-industry non-profit organizations to counter the environmental groups. Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Bellevue, WA, and author of “Undue Influence — Tracking the Environmental Movement’s Money, Power and Harm,” published in 1999.

Arnold suggested to attendees at IPAA’s 74th annual meeting in New Orleans that they contribute to his next book by providing first-hand incidents from their own experience on how development is being stopped. The book will be titled “Freezing in the Dark,” illustrating Arnold’s premise that an elite group of foundations are creating hysteria in the general public over environmental issues, which is undermining development of the energy infrastructure and ultimately the national economy.

While giving the oil and gas industry credit for the technology and grit expended in discovering, producing and delivering energy, the industry — by not going all-out to combat the groups attacking their business — “are committing suicide and they don’t know it. They are the bedrock foundations of the industrial society, the support system for society. If they don’t protect themselves they are doing everyone a disservice,” Arnold said in addressing the meeting and in a phone conversation with NGI.

He hailed the oil and gas industry as “heroes, for keeping everyone else alive,” but their “well-deserved arrogance” and failure to directly combat the environmental excesses will bring them down and society with them. If, for instance, there was a massive failure of a major energy source which couldn’t be quickly fixed, “there would be civil disorder; we’d all be dead in a few weeks. This is not the game you’ve been playing before. There are billions and billions of dollars lined up against you. They are out to destroy you, and they will if you don’t fight back.

“Economics is not about money; it’s about the allocation of resources. Environmentalists want to be the resource allocators for the world.” Arnold maintains that most of the funding for anti-development efforts is coming not from a broad public base, but from key people running huge foundations with “prescriptive grants.”

In one instance the Educational Foundation of America directed a grant for $210,000 “For Western Coalbed Methane Project: collaboration of Citizens Oil and Gas Support Center, Native Action, Northern Plains Resource Council, Wyoming Outdoor Counciol and Powder River Basin Resource Council.”

Arnold’s examination of the 25-year old Wyoming Outdoor Council, which bills itself as saving Wyoming from out-of-state interests, shows “all but one of the council’s 15 major donors are out of state.” And the single in-state donor has two of its three trustees from outside Wyoming. Arnold listed the top five donors as: the Wyss Foundation, Pennsylvania, $50,000; the Turner Foundation, Georgia, $70,000; the Storer Foundation, Florida, $115,000; the Educational Foundation of America, Connecticut, $269,000; and the Opler Foundation, Florida, $500,000.

Arnold has done extensive research on the network of foundations contributing to anti-development efforts and has found that some of the funding even comes from foundations set up with oil industry money. The EGA foundations blend all the necessary tasks, such as scientific research, mobilization and lobbying, molding public opinion and lawsuits, parceling them out to different groups.

Industry trade groups are not equipped for the tough tactics needed, Arnold said, nor are public relations efforts elaborating on corporate good citizenship going to do the trick. “What comes out of a trade group is always the lowest common denominator,” and the industry is not playing on a level playing field. “Industry is not doing anything but defense, and in football, the defensive team doesn’t score any touchdowns. Anything you do that isn’t aimed at putting these groups out of business is a total waste of time. You cannot fight this huge amount of money if you don’t frontally attack.”

While corporations may have trouble banding together to fight the anti-development groups (“It may not even be legal”), companies can team up with non-profits to initiate lawsuits, “launch propeller-blade attacks” and spark investigations. There are existing organizations, such as his own free enterprise group, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, that take these kinds of initiatives, “but they don’t have the huge budgets” the foundations provide for environmental groups.

The most important thing a non-profit group can do, Arnold said, is mobilize a constituency devoted to the principles of free enterprise, getting people behind the organization to invest and actively participate, investing also their time and personality. Developing a membership with a database of email addresses, “an on-call reserve,” who can be messaged and mobilized quickly, is key. “Big ads, saying ‘Ain’t we wonderful’ are worthless if you don’t solicit support and ask for names and addresses.

“This is not a public relations problem, it’s a crisis relations problem. Messages will not destroy the opposition. You have to attack their credibility; do everything you can to shut their doors,” Arnold said, pointing out that few ever question the make-up and motives of the environmental groups. “They never have to defend themselves, so they are constantly attacking. They create crisis after crisis after crisis so the defense will bankrupt you, discourage you and you will go away. It’s not that hard. Their credibility is very high.”

Arnold’s website is https://www.cdfe.org/.

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