If there were any doubts about how interconnected left-wing groups and donors are, Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope’s new book, Climate of Hope, puts them to rest.
George Soros, major financer of the left-wing agenda, was mentioned in the very first paragraph of the first chapter. Climate of Hope was released April 18, 2017, in an effort to show how cities and businesses can “save the planet” from catastrophic climate change.
Former executive director and chairman of the Sierra Club Carl Pope couldn’t even write an entire paragraph without mentioning the liberal moneyman.
Pope called Soros “one of the major funders” of the Sierra Club’s efforts to elect Sen. John Kerry and defeat President George W. Bush in 2004. They were upset with what they called Bush’s “war on the environment.” Soros even hosted an election eve party in Manhattan for it.
He didn’t specify whether Soros contributed to the Sierra Club directly or through another group. Soros and Sierra Club were part of the huge left-wing coalition mobilized by the 527 organization America Votes, intent on defeating Bush and electing Kerry.
According to Open Secrets, Soros Fund Management was the second highest donor to America Votes, with a quarter of a million dollars that year. He gave the organization $3.65 million overall between 2001 and 2010. Sierra Club was one of the many coalition partners for America Votes. Others included the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU and pro-abortion groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood in 2004, which each donated $50,000.
Over 10 years, Soros also gave millions to members of the “Democracy Initiative” coalition, which was led by the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the Communication Workers of America and the NAACP to get “big money” out of politics. Soros funded at least 12 of the Democracy Initiative members.
The Sierra Club also ran anti-Bush ads that election cycle, according to Open Secrets.
Bloomberg, the billionaire founder of a media empire and the former mayor of New York, also used his charities to directly support the Sierra Club while Pope was still working there. Now his co-author is a senior climate adviser to Bloomberg and writes for Bloomberg View among other things, according to Pope's Climate of Hope bio.
The book lays out how the Sierra Club’s anti-coal project “Beyond Coal,” began and grew and eventually got millions from Bloomberg.
Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is Michael Bloomberg’s organization for charitable giving, worked with Sierra Club to come up with metrics for the initiative, learn how to track and measure its progress and then donated $50 million to the Sierra Club to help it shut down coal power in the U.S. The Bloomberg Philanthropies website even has a Beyond Coal section touting its support for the Sierra Club campaign.
In 2015, they gave $30 million more to the previous Beyond Coal contributions, to help shut down even more coal plants across the U.S. contributing to the job losses of coal states.
Worried about sea level rise and flooding, Bloomberg wrote, “We decided to take matters into our own hands. The New York City Panel on Climate Change, which we had created through PlaNYC in partnership with Columbia University and the Rockefeller Foundation, provided us with the most complete local projections for climate change in any city in the world.”
In the chapter “How We Invest,” Bloomberg also said he “teamed up” with Hank Paulson and lefty billionaire hedge fund manager Tom Steyer “to create the Risky Business project” intended to “quantify the economic risks of climate change ...”
