Additional Information on the League of Conservation Voters

Additional Information on the League of Conservation Voters

Additional Information on the League of Conservation Voters

Overview


Additional LCV Programs:

1) The Chemicals program works to “reduce exposure to toxic chemicals, which are prevalent in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the products we use.” Among “those most vulnerable” are “children, pregnant women, and low income and communities of color.”

2) The Energy program maintains that “in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must keep the vast majority – at least 80 percent – of fossil fuels unburned.”

3) The Land program works to “permanently protect at-risk landscapes and historic cultural sites that represent our country’s diverse history for future generations to enjoy.” Specifically, LCV seeks to ban all types of industry, development, and energy production from public lands.

4) The Transportation program says: “We must continue to raise fuel efficiency and carbon pollution standards for cars and trucks while we work to expand low or zero-carbon transportation alternatives, like public transit and electric vehicles, and support rail, cycling and walkable communities.”

5) The Water program affirms that “clean water is a basic human right,” and works to “defend our bedrock environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

6) The Our Lands Our Vote program is founded on the premises that: “our national parks and monuments are under unprecedented attacks from the Trump administration”; that “the administration proposed drastic budget cuts for the Department of the Interior, which manages many of our parks, public lands, and resources”; and that the administration is “reviewing” all national monuments designated under the Antiquities Act since 1996, paving the way to eliminate designations and protections. To help raise public awareness about these concerns, LCV leads groups of people to “visit many of the threatened national monuments and public lands to help demonstrate their tremendous public support.”

7) The Arctic program seeks to “beat back attempts by Big Oil to drill” in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Additional Information:

* Over the years, LCV has received funding from the Bauman Family Foundation, the Beldon Fund, the Blue Moon Fund, the Bullitt Foundation, the Compton Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, the Joyce Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the New-Land Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, the Tides Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and numerous other foundations.

* Additional major funders of LCV include: the Green Tech Action Fund (which donated $2.6 million in 2012); the Environment America Action Fund ($3 million in 2012); the Democratic-run Senate Majority PAC ($400,000 in 2012 and $350,000 in 2014); Boston-based investor Robert Grantham ($3 million in 2012); Bain Capital’s Joshua Bekenstein ($500,000 in 2012); George Soros ($500,000 in 2014); the AFSCME ($500,000 in 2014); Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate Action ($775,000 in 2014); Michael Bloomberg ($200,000 in 2014); Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz ($2.5 million in 2016); and Moskovitz’s wife Cari Tuna ($2.5 million in 2016).

* Past and present LCV board members have been closely affiliated with organizations like Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Democracy Alliance, the Wilderness Society, the Center for American Progress, the Turner Foundation, NextGen Climate, Green Latinos, the Hip Hop Caucus, The Accord Group, Latino Victory Project, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Rockefeller Family & Associates.

* The California chapter of LCV endorsed a May 1, 2003 document titled “10 Reasons Environmentalists Oppose an Attack on Iraq,” which was published by Environmentalists Against War.

* LCV’s 2003 Presidential Report Card gave George W. Bush the first “F” grade ever handed out by the group. “Bush’s dismal Report Card,” stated LCV’s then-president Deb Callahan, “is dominated by a disturbing trend: time after time, Bush favors corporate interests over the public’s interest in a clean, safe, and healthy environment. Under the Bush administration, corporate polluters have been allowed to write the laws.”

* In January 2004, LCV endorsed Democratic Senator John Kerry for U.S. President. Mr. Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, was chairwoman of the Howard Heinz Endowment and was a board member of both the Heinz Family Foundation and the Vira I. Heinz Endowment. Each of those philanthropies were funders of LCV. In addition, at least four members of the LCV board of directors were the heads of other environmental groups that had received more than $1 million from the Heinz philanthropies between 2001 and 2003.

* In June 2013, it was reported that LCV’s then-board chairman Scott Nathan was the manager of a Baupost Group hedge fund that invested heavily — to the tune of some $700 million — in the oil company British Petroleum (BP). Nathan was also a member of the Baupost Group’s management committee, which oversaw investments made by the hedge fund. LCV, which consistently opposes tax breaks and benefits to oil companies, and actively campaigns against proposals to open more areas to offshore drilling, was highly critical of BP during that company’s infamous Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

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