Dear John:

As the climate crisis accelerates and millions face climate-linked disasters, the right wing in America has doubled down on its support for fossil fuels. Front groups backed by Big Oil and Charles Koch—like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Heritage, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation—are actively sabotaging climate progress and digging in to protect dirty power.

And—since climate denial clearly doesn’t pass the straight-face test anymore—they are doing it in the name of fighting “woke” capitalism.

As dystopian as it may seem, Big Oil and the groups that do their dirty work have decided to make fighting climate progress the new front in the Right’s culture wars.

CMD is working hard to shine a light on the dark money groups carrying Big Oil’s water.

• Last winter, CMD was the first to break the story that ALEC was pushing a radical new model bill to bar states from conducting any business with banks and financial firms that divest from fossil fuels—perversely named the “Energy Discrimination Act.”
   
• And just this month, CMD revealed that ALEC’s energy task force—made up of industry lobbyists and GOP legislators—voted to adopt an even more radical model bill calling for states to blacklist any business that considers any “social, political, or ideological” factors to limit their commercial relations with fossil fuel, logging, mining, or agricultural industries.

ALEC’s radical measure would authorize state governments to scrutinize corporate speech for any “evidence” that a company is taking into account environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors—along with issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)—in its business practices. It would prohibit state contracts based on a company’s “branding, advertising, statements, explanations, reports, letters to clients, communications with portfolio companies, statements of principles,” and so forth, or even a company’s association with “any coalition, initiative, joint statement of principles, or agreement” that the government deems unacceptably “woke.”

Meanwhile, CMD has exposed how the State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF)—which is basically ALEC for Republican state treasurers—is plotting to push similar bills in more than 20 states next year.

Big Oil and the Right want to make ESG the next cultural battleground—like last year’s fake critical race theory crisis—to divide and distract us from the growing climate emergency.

So CMD will be working overtime in the coming year to expose the latest assaults on climate progress, but we can’t do it without you!

Your generous tax-deductible donation to CMD will allow us to scour through thousands of pages of documents and shine a light on industry influence and deception in 2023! AND...

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Together, let’s fight to protect our planet and give future generations a chance to thrive. Thank you for your support of CMD and all that you do,

Arn Pearson 
Executive Director