As soon as President Donald Trump announced last week that he would pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, a flurry of top executives issued statements criticizing the decision as bad for the planet, business and America’s international standing.
But many of those same CEOs have supported ― through either corporate or personal giving ― Republican candidates who espouse climate-change denial. HuffPost asked 15 high-profile executives who publicly denounced the president’s decision if they would stop funding such Republicans deniers. All 15 either declined to commit, or did not respond to the question.
These executives and their companies have collectively given millions of dollars to support members of the only major political party in world that makes denying the scientific consensus on manmade global warming a platform issue.
For some of the companies, the disparity between public stances on climate and political donations is particularly glaring.
In March, Exxon Mobil urged the White House to stay in the Paris Agreement, two months after adding a climate scientist to its board of directors. But the oil giant for years has been the fourth-biggest corporate donor to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who so vehemently rejects the science behind global warming that he once brought a snowball to the Senate floor to prove a point. The firm ― which for decades funded a Big Tobacco-style disinformation campaign to undermine evidence that burning fossil fuels caused climate change ― continued to pay millions to groups that deny global warming as recently as last year.
Facebook’s political giving tells a
