Here is some helpful data for those of you wondering whether the green pressure groups are in fact part of the global warming industry (and making vastly more than any groups advocating climate rationalism), thanks to the dogged Paul Chesser of Climate Strategies Watch. I have in my hands a financial statement for the Western Climate Initiative, revealing what taxpayers in a handful of Western U.S. states, and three Canadian provinces, have paid to green pressure groups simply to help advance those groups’ own agenda. Quite a racket.

In this year alone, the following groups received these amounts:

Pew Center $55,000
World Resources Institute $63,200
Center for Climate Strategies $246,730

Notice how these groups, particularly Pew, are already being amply supported by rent-seeking and poseur industry, even before the taxpayer ponies up to pay for development of an activist plan that they never approved. Oh, the majority of the funding for this initiative has been donated by — surprise! — rent-seeking companies hoping to benefit from the mandates this regime will impose (SoCalEdison $750,000, Honeywell $1,000,000, and something called DCP Midstream, a joint venture of ConocoPhillips and former Cinergy assets now called Spectra Energy — the latter being a product of Ken Lay protégée and former Cinergy CEO, now Duke Energy CEO James Rogers at $350,000). “Corporate Social Responsibility?” Or do they see this as an investment, with large returns coming their way if they succeed? You decide.

There’s more, with a PR firm reaping sixty grand to pump the message, and numerous other pilot fish also doing well along for the ride.

Yep. As climate-alarmism multimillionaire Al Gore likes to say, parroting Upton Sinclair, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. If money is the corrupting influence the greens have for years insisted it is, then the Big Green Machine is thoroughly corrupted.