By Tyler O’Neil
On Saturday, thousands will take to the streets of the nation’s capital to fight climate change — in the name of equality. The “People’s Climate March” has quite a few non-climate related political goals (like a $15 minimum wage). The explanation? As always on the Left, it traces back to George Soros.
About one-third of the steering committee organizations have received rather hefty donations from George Soros. The liberal billionaire gave them all more than $36 million combined, according to Newsbusters’ calculations.
Between 2000 and 2014, Soros gave a whopping $36,018,461 to 18 of the 55 members of the People’s Climate March steering committee. Soros gave six of these groups more than $1 million: the Center for Community Change ($15.1 million), the NAACP ($7.4 million), the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC — $4.4 million), People’s Action ($2.6 million), the Public Citizen Foundation ($1.9 million), and the Union of Concerned Scientists ($1 million).
As Newsbusters pointed out, only three of these six oragnizations — NRDC, Public Citizen, and Union of Concerned Scientists — actually have climate-related language in their mission statements.
Other notable recipients included Color of Change ($720,000), Earthjustice ($555,000), the League of Conservation Voters ($500,000), Sojourners ($475,000), the Center for Popular Democracy ($389,000), Green for All ($250,000), Hip Hop Caucus ($225,000), the American Federation of Teachers Educational Foundation ($141,526), and the Climate Reality Project ($134,000).
While more of these groups have directly climate-related missions, they received markedly less money from Soros.
The presence of many non-climate organizations leading the march suggests that the People’s Climate March (like the March for Science and the Women’s March before it) is more about opposing President Donald Trump than about supporting a single issue.
The march’s site includes a “People’s Climate Platform,” which does include two directly climate-related goals, but seven goals not directly related to the climate issue.
Here are the climate goals:
- Directly and rapidly reduce greenhouse gas and toxic pollution to successfully combat climate change and improve public health
- Mandate a transition to an equitable and sustainable New Energy and Economic Future that limits the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels
Here are the “social justice” spin-offs:
- Provide a Just Transition for communities and workers negatively impacted by the shift to a New Energy and Economic Future that includes targeted economic opportunity and provides stable income, health care, and education
- Demand that every job pays a wage of at least $15 an hour, protects workers, and provides a good standard of living, pathways out of poverty, and a right to organize
- Ensure that in the New Energy and Economic Future, investments are targeted to create pathways for low-income people and people of color to access good jobs and improve the lives of communities of color, indigenous peoples, low-income people, small farmers, women, and workers.
- Make bold investments in the resilience of states, cities, tribes, and communities that are threatened by climate change; including massive investments in infrastructure systems from water, transportation, and solid waste to the electrical grid and safe, green building and increasing energy efficiency that will also create millions of jobs in the public and private sector
- Reinvest in a domestic industrial base that drives towards an equitable and sustainable New Energy and Economic Future, and fight back against the corporate trade-induced global race to the bottom
- Market and policy based mechanisms must protect human rights and critical, native ecosystems and reduce pollution at source
Many of these may be laudable goals, but they certainly suggest the People’s Climate March is about much more than just climate — even more than just the environment or conservation — and the Soros funding suggests a reason why.