Civilization

Suspicious ties with Russia. Eco-activists must explain themselves

According to the experts on the subject, the procedure is quite complex. Russian money is to go to companies in one of the tax havens (for example, to Klein Ltd. in Bermuda), these transfer the money to an American organization such as the Sea Change, which in turn distributes it to end recipients who know very well what they ought to continue doing.

"When we get the majority next January, I hope that we call these groups - force these groups to testify before Congress” announced Jim Banks, Congressman for the Republican Party. He is one of the three MPs who sent a letter to Treasury Minister Janet Yellen in early March, demanding that her ministry looks into the concerns that several US environmental organizations are financed by Russia.

The organizations in question are the League of Conservation Voters, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for American Progress, and the Sea Change Foundation. The latter may be a kind of an umbrella organization over the other four because it was supposed to receive money from dubious sources and then distribute it among the aforementioned groups. All of the organizations strongly deny these allegations, saying that they have fallen victim to slander and that they receive all funds legally. The founders and directors of the Sea Change, Nat Simons and Laura Baxter-Simons, say that funding for their foundation - a considerable amount of USD 500 million - comes only from the family money (which, we should add, is among the top 100 richest in the world).    

The authors of the letter to Janet Yellen, however, do not believe these claims, especially since the allegations are nothing new. Jim Banks, the head of the Republican Study Committee in the House of Representatives, in an interview with Mail Online, the Daily Mail’s website openly said that these groups are a threat to the US national security. - “We need to force these groups and their leaders to come before these committees and testify and explain their entanglements with our adversaries like Russia, and the money that they've received ... that puts Russia first and America last”

Like British trade unionists

The fact is that the suspicions and straightforward accusations did not come out of the blue. They have been going on since at least 2014, from around the time when great hopes for acquiring new energy sources in the USA began to be associated with the extraction of shale gas. Environmental activists, who vigorously protested against this, argued that mining would be damaging to the environment, and especially to the quality of the waters. And although many people believed that their intentions were pure, dictated solely by concern for the state of the natural environment, there were already suspicions that Russia and its interests were behind the protests.

The war in Ukraine has made it all come back. It is no coincidence that the last few weeks have brought a whole series of articles and programs devoted to Russia's goals and covert activities in this domain. Their authors have no doubts that Moscow has made every effort to make and keep Western countries dependent on Russian energy resources.
Great miners' strikes paralyzed Great Britain in the early 1980s. Pictured: clashes with police in Sheffield, Yorkshire. Photo Phil Spencer & Gerry Crowther / Mirrorpix / Getty Images
“Putin expanded nuclear power at home so that he could export more natural gas abroad rather than use it for electricity production. Meanwhile, Europe shut down its nuclear plants and declined to build new ones. That has proven to be catastrophic as the continent became increasingly dependent on Russia for energy imports" – said Michael Schellenberger, the author of “Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All " in his recent interview on Fox News. He has published a few other books on ecology, yet due to his unorthodox views, Shellenberger is considered a black sheep among the ecology mainstream.

In recent years, more than once suspicions surfaced that some environmental organizations may be financed by Russia and therefore be used as a tool in its hands. The question of whether the environmentalists were aware and agreed to such a role, or whether they simply acted as useful idiots, remains an open one; anyway, in a broader sense, it does not matter. They were not the only ones.

Putin’s network of agents of influence in Europe

How the Kremlin’s lobbyists are steering European politics.

see more
Suffice it to recall the massive miners' strikes that paralyzed Great Britain in the early 1980s. Only in the ’90s, it was revealed that Arthur Scargill, the influential leader of the miners' union, was paid by the Soviet Union.

Protests against shale gas exploration turned out to be effective, although it should not be forgotten that, according to experts, the feasibility and profitability of shale gas and oil extraction largely depend on geological conditions, so this kind of factor was also important. In Europe, the initial euphoria faded quickly and the plans were abandoned. Not so much in the case of America, where it happened in some states only. Authorities of California, Maryland, Washington, and New York - have banned shale gas extraction. Even then, there were voices that there may be something more to the matter. And these were the voices of the top-level people.

Bear in sheep's clothing

In recent years a lot of initiatives have appeared which called for examining the ties of environmental organizations with Russia, but even now, years later, two statements are quoted on every occasion as evidence that suspicious things have been happening here for a long time. Their authors did not support their remarks with any concrete evidence, but the very fact that they are more than prominent people, well-versed in what is happening in the world, also behind the scenes, is treated as proof of their credibility.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary-General and former Prime Minister of Denmark, during a meeting organized in 2014 at Chatham House in London, said: “ “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations, environmental organizations working against shale gas, obviously to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.”
2017. Protest against Quadrilla, which intended to mine shale gas in Lancashire, UK. Photo Kristian Buus / In Pictures via Getty Images
That same year in a private meeting, Hillary Clinton, the US former Secretary of State, criticized what she called "false environmental organizations" that protested against shale gas extraction. "I am a huge supporter of the idea of ​​environmental protection," she said, "but the Russians financed these bogus groups so that they could say, 'Ah, these pipelines, this fracking, it will all just cause you trouble.' This message was backed by large sums of Russian money. The public got to know the contents of Hillary Clinton's speech thanks to WikiLeaks.

Two years later, a group of scientists from the Brussels institute Wilfried Martens Center for European Studies (Wilfried Martens was the prime minister of Belgium in the 1980s and 1990s and for many years the head of the European People's Party - editor's note) prepared a report, the title of which does not leaves room for doubt: “The Bear in Sheep’s Clothing. Russia’s Government-funded Organisations in the EU”.

“This paper – the authors write – sheds light on organizations operating in Europe that are funded by the Russian government, whether officially or unofficially. Their number and activities have been growing, but their financing is often complex and hidden from the public eye.”

According to the authors, these are various groups: non-governmental organizations and think tanks, which are united by the fact that they are instruments of Putin's "soft power". In the period covered by the study, the issue attracting the most intense activity was shale gas extraction.

World sport lives off the money of aggressors, oligarchs and satrapies. Such as Russia, China, Qatar or Saudi Arabia

The FIFA boss is in a panic because he could lose an invaluable sponsor like Gazprom.

see more
Conclusion? "According to one of our interviewees," the report said, "if the European Union started to extract shale gas, Russia would suffer great losses, as it is financially dependent on the EU imports of Russian gas. That is why the Russian government has invested 82 million euros in various NGOs which were meant to convince EU governments to stop working on extracting shale gas. "

Bell alarm. A little too late

The Martens Center report is perhaps the loudest voice from Europe. Much more has happened and is happening in this field in the United States. As early as 2017, Lamar Smith and Randy Weber, two Republican congressmen, asked then-Treasury Minister Steven Mnuchin to investigate Russia's ties to the anti-fracking groups. A year later, the Congress report spoke of the efforts made by European environmental organizations to maintain Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas. Most recently, Republicans from the House of Representatives energy and trade committee (more than 20 MPs in total) demanded that the environmental organizations mentioned earlier in the article explain the nature of their ties to the Sea Change.

"For our national security, and this is a vital issue, we need to know if Vladimir Putin, the Russian government, and Putin's allies are meddling in America's energy security," said Cathy McMorris Rodgers, committee chairman, Fox News. The Martens Center report, and probably the only source which mentions the amount for which Russia bought European eco-activists, but in general it is the financing mechanism that has not been fully traced - although it is clear to everyone that Russia spares no money for such strategic goals.

According to the experts, such as the aforementioned Michael Shellenberger or Merrill Matthews from the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, it is a complicated matter (on purpose of course). Russian money is to go to companies in one of the tax havens (for example to Klein Ltd. in Bermuda, which congressmen Smith and Weber write about in their letter to Minister Mnuchin), then they donate it to an American organization such as Sea Change, and it, in turn, distributes the funds to end-users, who know very well what to do next.

According to Michael Shellenberger, the rising costs of energy resources, coupled with the dependence on external factors - that is, Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas - constitute the largest energy crisis since 1973. And yet everything that happened was easy to predict. "For rational people," he told Fox News, "it was plain to see." After all, prosperity, sovereignty, and independence in the field of energy are closely related. I just hope that what we are dealing with now becomes a wake-up call. "

Congressman Jim Banks said it straight: Moscow-funded eco-activists are responsible for the fact that the West today is not able to respond to Russia's attack on Ukraine as it should. "Organizations such as the Sierra Club which took millions of dollars from Russian oligarchs," he said, "have undermined our strength and our capabilities."

– Teresa Stylińska
– Translated by Sally Jastrzębska


TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

Main photo: Ocean Rebellion activists protest ahead of the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow in October 2021. Photo Ian Forsyth / Getty Images
See more
Civilization wydanie 22.12.2023 – 29.12.2023
To Siberia and Ukraine
Zaporizhzhia. A soldier in a bunker asked the priest for a rosary and to teach him how to make use of it.
Civilization wydanie 15.12.2023 – 22.12.2023
Climate sheikhs. Activists as window dressing
They can shout, for which they will be rewarded with applause
Civilization wydanie 15.12.2023 – 22.12.2023
The plane broke into four million pieces
Americans have been investigating the Lockerbie bombing for 35 years.
Civilization wydanie 15.12.2023 – 22.12.2023
German experiment: a paedophile is a child's best friend
Paedophiles received subsidies from the Berlin authorities for "taking care" of the boys.
Civilization wydanie 8.12.2023 – 15.12.2023
The mastery gene
The kid is not a racehorse.