Mills: Bloomberg’s money funds anti-fossil fuel agenda

Alex Mills

By Alex Mills

It is well known that presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, one of richest men in the world, has used his money in a massive advertising campaign to tout his candidacy for the Democrat Party’s nomination. His money was a focal point of the latest Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday.

However, it is not well known that he also uses his money to support his political positions, such as gun control, abortion and anti-fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal).

Bloomberg, the 78-year-old former mayor of New York City, privately funds anti-fossil fuel programs at the Sierra Club (he donated $50 million for its Beyond Coal and Beyond Gas campaigns) and the Environmental Defense Fund ($6 million to stop hydraulic fracturing), according to Wikipedia.

Bloomberg Philanthropies also gave $6 million in 2017 to create the New York University School of Law’s Environment and Energy Impact Center to provide lawyers to state attorneys general whose sole focus would be on environmental and climate change lawsuits and regulatory actions, according to a story authored by Jessica R. Towhey in Inside Sources.

“Massachusetts and Minnesota, whose Democratic voters will go to the polls on Super Tuesday (March 3), are among at least 10 states where activist attorney are working for the state AGs offices but are paid through the Impact Center,” the story stated. “Their mission is to promote state legal action to advance Bloomberg’s political views, such as lawsuits against energy companies.”

The Energy Impact Center will pay the salaries of the attorneys hired by the attorneys general to fight for programs to deter fossil fuels, according to the story.

Bloomberg’s political career has been erratic. During his business career he called himself a Democrat until 2001 when he ran for mayor as a Republican and won. He won re-election in 2005, but switched parties again in 2007. He ran again in 2009 but as an independent on the Republican ballot and won.  He switched again in 2018 from independent to Democrat.

His outstanding success in business – he’s worth $61 billion – started after his graduation from John Hopkins University in 1964 and Harvard Business School in 1966 in the financial world at Salomon Brothers. He started his own company, Bloomberg L.P., a financial services software and mass media company, in 1981. It became very successful in providing financial data widely used in the financial industry. Bloomberg L.P. also includes successful news outlets in the print, broadcast and social media.

Bloomberg has used his money to jump-start his candidacy for president spending $209 on broadcast television, $13 million on cable $1 million on radio, and $27 million on digital ads.

He also has financed anti-fossil fuel programs at nonprofit organizations, and now we learn that his philanthropy is funding private attorneys to focus on bringing down the oil, natural gas and coal industries.

Alex Mills is the former President of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers.