Skip to main content

Following Greenpeace, Follow the Money

Plenty of our friends in the anti-nuclear movement often go to great pains to detail many of the PR activities that groups like NEI engage in -- Sourcewatch, being just one example.

But all too often, many of those same groups won't reveal the sources of their funding. Which is why this exchange between Rod Adams and one of his readers -- who isn't a native speaker of English -- caught my eye:
I have a friend whose girlfriend was a speaker of Greenpeace for antinuclear matters in the Czech republic, now she does the same ... for Calla (a similar organization), that is a long story, but anyways my friend, boyfriend of this lady, told me once with a surprised face: "all this environmentalists movements in Czechia are financed from Austria, you didn't know that? I thought everybody knows that."
Sounds like something somebody ought to look into.

Comments

Anonymous said…
And all of BNFL's activities are funded from the UK, and Areva's from France, etc. So what's your point? One can only support activism within one's own nation?
Well, if you wanted to look into it, there's circumstantial evidence of correspondence or perhaps a meeting in December 1963 in which coal industry representatives asked the Atomic Industrial Forum to not talk about the health hazards of coal in exchange for the coal industry not discussing the hazards of radiation.

If there's any written evidence of such an offer, it would be in your files, and would be extremely useful if you could find it.
giona79 said…
I can't understand what is the problem. It's true, Greenpeace Austria is financing Greenpeace Czech. Actually Greenpeace Austria, Czech, Poland and Slovakia (probably I missing some one else) are part of the same office: Greenpeace CEE (central East Europe).

And it's not secret, it's written in their website (German): http://www.greenpeace.at/

As you can immagine, mostly of their supporters in the that area are from Austria, so the Vienna's office helps the others smaller offices.

Where is the scandal!?
Anonymous said…
If Greenpeace supports it, I am usually against it. They may not be bad people, but so often, they tend to be wrong, offering criticisms without solutions.

I would consider it a privilege if you would add my mainly political blog "The Tygrrrr Express" www.blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com to your list of linked sites if you feel the quality is high.

Happy June.

eric
GRLCowan said…
The Financial Times had something about this, according to this August 2001 comment of mine.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former H2 fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes
Anonymous said…
I dont know about Greenpeace, but I know for sure that other "environmental" organizations which have been also protesting against NPP Temelin such as "Jihoceske matky" have been financed from Austria - not from GP Austria, but from the givernment of Upper Austria, which holds stakes in an energy company Alpen Adria Energie AG - a company which profits are largely decreased once a new large power source is brought on-line.

It is of course difficult to discover the financing trails, as they usually go via secret channels such as private individuals or independent foundations, however in this case they were stupid enough to write it in their yearly review and publish it on-line including detailed figures. This was I believe in year 2000, they ceased this soon after they were asked about it ...
GRLCowan said…
The Financial Times link seems to have expired. But here's Radio Prague:

"... An Austrian member of parliament said on Saturday that the lower house had approved the release of 40 million Austrian schillings for what he described as 'the battle against Temelin.'"

Where the scandal is, is in the fossil fuel revenues taken by the governments that apparently fund antinuclear activities. Dividing that revenue by the annual count of people killed by pipeline explosions, carbon monoxide poisonings, and other fossil fuel mishaps yields a take of several tens of millions of dollars per death. Funding the antinuclear lobby suggests they're more concerned about the millions than about the deaths.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former H2 fan
How do cars gain nuclear cachet

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin