The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is among the most active think tanks in the State Policy Network.
A leaked list of TPPF’s 2010 donors, reported by the Texas Observer, indicated that TPPF funders include petrochemical giants like Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and Chevron, coal companies like Luminant, and several wealthy families who made their fortunes in fossil fuels. TPPF takes large pass-through grants from the State Policy Network and addition funds from SPN’s top donors, including Koch foundations, the Searle Freedom Trust, and DonorsTrust.
As of November, 2016, TPPF continued to publish material that casts doubt on the existence of global warming, despite 97-99% consensus among climate scientists that humans are manipulating the climate by burning fossil fuels. TPPF’s Fueling Freedom project promotes the “Morality of Fossil Fuels”Doug Domenech–a member of Donald Trump’s Interior Department transition team–predicated his explanation of Trump’s direction on energy policy with a jab at those who heed the advice of scientists:
“Elections have consequences and, in this case, Americans just rejected the ‘keep it in the ground” extremism espoused by those whose only operating focus is their view that CO2 is a pollutant and climate change is real.”
In July 2009, 19 U.S. Senators spoke out about the fossil-fuel financed groups that have coordinated attacks on climate scientists and policy advocates, called the “Web of Denial,” Domenech accused the Senators of attacking TPPF’s “free speech.”
TPPF’s longtime senior fellow Kathleen Hartnett-White–who is reportedly among Donald Trump’s economic advisors–claimed that 2009 efforts to craft national climate policy would have a devastating impact on the U.S. economy, without making any effort to consider the estimated costs that economists warn far outweighs the estimated costs of protecting society from a changing global climate.
Hartnett-White, a former government environmental regulator in Texas who is also at the coal and oil industry-financed CO2 Coalition. She has claimed that “there is no environmental crisis, in fact there’s almost no major environmental problems” (see minute 19:00).
