The Shell USA Co. Foundation donated half a million dollars over a decade to conservative Christian groups that deny a human role in climate change, oppose environmental regulations and favor the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency.
According to a report in The Guardian, Shell maintains it “does not endorse any organizations,” yet it funds the Heritage Foundation and 14 of the groups that have signed on to Heritage’s Project 2025, a blueprint for a next Republican administration that promotes growing oil production and consumption.
Donations went to influential groups that teach Christians to see climate change as a Leftist myth, including Focus on the Family and advocacy organizations it founded — Family Research Council and the legal group Alliance Defending Freedom — and the American Family Association, Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice, the young-earth Discovery Institute, and Texas Right to Life, which claims climate change is “arguably, nonexistent.”
Shell’s foundation also made donations to dozens of Southern Baptist churches and institutions, even though the Southern Baptist Convention taught until 1991 that “humans are changing the earth” and causing temperatures to rise. As BNG previously reported, the SBC backtracked from these views as evangelical leaders embraced the Republican Party.
Shell’s foundation also made donations to dozens of Southern Baptist churches and institutions.
The Shell Foundation’s searchable 990 filing shows it gave to churches in the oil-drilling states of Texas, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and other schools, the Louisiana Baptist Convention Executive Board, five Southern Baptist foundations, and school endowment funds.
Funds also went to the Heartland Institute, a right-wing anti-climate change nonprofit think tank that once compared environmentalists to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Heartland receives significant funding from energy companies but has quit making donor information public.
The Guardian partnered with DeSmog, a group that combats climate disinformation, on its story.
Shell is based in London, with Shell USA as its domestic division. The Shell USA Co. Foundation is designed to encourage employees’ charitable giving and donates to nonprofit groups across the ideological spectrum, with Shell matching employees’ charitable giving up to $7,500 per employee.
Focus on the Family offers a five-pronged opposition to climate change, arguing:
- The idea that humans can change earth’s climate is a heretical affront to the biblical principle of God’s sovereignty.
- We don’t know if humans contribute to climate change.
- We don’t know if humans can do anything to combat it.
- Environmentalism is a heretical, pagan religion.
- Christians who say the Bible endorses Creation care — the dominant evangelical position during the 1970s and 1980s — seek to pollute Christianity (with) paganism.
In 2010, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America and the Homeschool Legal Defense Association teamed up to produce “Rescuing People from the Cult of the Green Dragon,” a climate-skeptic DVD series for churches that received funding from energy companies.
“One of the greatest threats to society and the church today is the multifaceted environmentalist movement,” said a press release for the Green Dragon series.
Focus also offered advice about how to celebrate Earth Day in its article, “Beware of Any Earth Day Celebration that Ignores the Author of Creation.”
Promotional material said: “The best way to mark Earth Day is to make wise use (of) the many gifts of our planet — including oil, gas and the countless natural resources that make life so much fun to live.”