nextgen climate action
see steyer
CRC DOGE COMM MTG 2025
...:{:{The Solidarity Center is by no means the only Labor Department grantee that deserves scrutiny by this Subcommittee and the Department of Government Efficiency. My Capital Research Center colleague Robert Stilson surveyed recent grants by the Department for our website TheDogeFiles.org and found other grantees of obvious political value to the Biden administration’s policy agenda and re-election campaign.[[7]](https://capitalresearch.org/article/scott-walters-written-testimony-to-house-doge-subcommittee/#_edn7) For instance, NextGen Climate America (aka, NextGen Policy) was awarded $6 million in 2024 for apprenticeship programs. This 501(c)(3) “charity”[[8]](https://capitalresearch.org/article/scott-walters-written-testimony-to-house-doge-subcommittee/#_edn8) is part of a network of nonprofits and PACs of similar name launched by Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer.[[9]](https://capitalresearch.org/article/scott-walters-written-testimony-to-house-doge-subcommittee/#_edn9)}:
After the 2024 election, NextGen’s executive director put out a statement declaring that the group was “incredibly disheartened” by Trump’s victory and that “clearly, this was not the outcome we hoped for.” Instead, he pledged the group would “fight for progressive policy change to address environmental, social, racial, gender, and economic inequities in California through justice-centered legislative advocacy, grassroots partnerships, and democratic civic engagement.”[[10]](https://capitalresearch.org/article/scott-walters-written-testimony-to-house-doge-subcommittee/#_edn10)}:
wealthy Bay Area environmentalist Tom Steyer, who for weeks has been lambasting oil companies about gasoline prices, said Friday he was exploring another potential cudgel against the industry: ballot measures to tax oil extraction and require more public disclosure on pricing and supply.
Laying the groundwork for a possible ballot battle next year, Steyer said he was attending this weekend’s state Democratic convention in Anaheim to “talk to a bunch of people and see where they put this in their priorities.”
Ballot measures would require a “broad coalition” of support to be viable, he said.
Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, declined to say whether he might spend the millions of dollars it would take to get such proposals on the ballot and run a campaign to win voter approval.
California voters and legislators have a history of rejecting bids to tax oil extraction.
Steyer’s record of spending heavily on political campaigns has made him a nemesis of the oil and gas industry. Last year, Steyer gave $74 million to candidates who pledged to fight global warming.
He has also flirted with running for political office himself. He recently weighed, and rejected, making a bid to succeed retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Many political observers consider him a potential gubernatorial contender in 2018.
Meanwhile, he is an increasingly visible force in state politics: testifying in the Legislature, contributing to political campaigns and funding his own advocacy organization, NextGen Climate, which aims to fight climate change“and promote prosperity for all Americans” through political activity.
He recently called on the state Senate to subpoena industry executives to explain why prices surged in California this spring.
In Anaheim on Friday, Steyer and Jamie Court, president of the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, released a memo on public opinion about two potential ballot measures.
One measure would impose a 10% oil extraction tax and dedicate the revenue “to making higher education affordable for California residents.” The other would strengthen “disclosure requirements for oil companies’ management of gasoline supplies and prices.”
Steyer and Court lamented refinery shutdowns, sometimes for maintenance, that oil companies have cited as a reason for price increases. The pair said there was too little public information about decision-making on the closures.
Some advocates of steps to address climate change have suggested that higher gasoline prices would be a good thing, an incentive to get motorists off the road. Steyer, however, called for lower fuel prices.
“I want to understand why Californians are paying up to $1 billion more to oil companies per month for gasoline prices than anywhere else in the country,” he said.
“To me, that’s a question about fairness to working people who have to use their cars to get to work, who don’t have a choice.”
Sabrina Lockhart, a spokeswoman for Californians for Energy Independence,an advocacy group for oil and gas companies, said, “It’s ironic that a billionaire who is promoting policies that will cause energy prices to rise suddenly cares about what Californians pay at the pump.”
An oil extraction tax has been on the ballot before. A 2006 initiative would have imposed a sliding scale tax on oil pumped from the ground to fund a $4-billion alternative energy program.
Proponents spent more than $60 million on the measure, with nearly $50 million coming from a single backer, Hollywood producer Steve Bing. The oil industry countered by spending $90 million and warning that any tax increase would lead to higher prices at the pump. The initiative was defeated.
At least half a dozen oil severance tax measures have been introduced in the Legislature since 2008; all failed to reach the governor’s desk.
Gov. Jerry Brown has been cool to the idea in the past. Asked last year about a possible levy on oil extraction, he said it was not the time for new taxes.
And while Brown’s ambitious goals to combat climate change rankle oil companies — particularly his desire to cut motorists’ gasoline use in half within 15 years — his relationship with the industry has not been purely adversarial.
He has heralded the economic possibilities of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, an extraction technique that critics have decried for its environmental ramifications. He signed a 2013 bill that would regulate, but not halt, the practice.
Inconvenient mogul: Big oil's shadow war on billionaire Steyer
By James Nash, Bloomberg News (TNS) Aug 18, 2015 Updated Jul 5, 2020
Inconvenient mogul: Big oil's shadow war on billionaire Steyer
Billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer, right, speaks during a news conference with consumer advocate Jamie Court, left, president of Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica, Calif. on Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2015. (]
LOS ANGELES — Oil companies that bankrolled a $9.7 million effort in 2014 to block laws against fracking in California now are focusing their sights on Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge- fund founder turned climate-change activist.
The top individual political donor in the U.S. last year, Steyer has put millions of his $2.7 billion personal fortune into the cause, hired California Gov. Jerry Brown’s former top spokesman and challenged Chevron Corp. Chief Executive Officer John Watson to a public debate on gas prices.
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In its campaign against him, Californians for Energy Independence — whose contributors include Chevron, Occidental Petroleum Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. — has been probing possible conflicts between Steyer’s business interests and legislative advocacy, attacking him in media statements as a “billionaire super-PAC king” and shadowing his public appearances.
“This is part and parcel of the way politics works right now,” said Bob Biersack, senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, which documents the influence of money in politics. “You have a small number of people who are making their presence felt in a huge way, and they become fair game.”
Steyer is part of this small but growing cadre of mega- donors whose influence has grown since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the 2010 Citizens United case lifted limits on independent campaign spending. Now, non-candidates including Steyer, the Koch brothers and George Soros are subjects of attacks, much like politicians.
The conservative David and Charles Koch have been the focus of at least three unflattering films and a KochWatch.org website with the tagline “Billionaires Corrupting Democracy.” The liberal Soros was featured in an hour-long Fox News television program, “The Puppet Master,” with conservative host Glenn Beck.
Steyer — who founded and ran Farallon Capital Management LLC for almost 27 years before leaving at the end of 2012 to focus on climate issues — backs a bill in the California Senate that would cut petroleum use in half, double the energy efficiency of buildings and increase retail sales of renewable electricity to 50 percent by 2030.
He worked on the bill with Kevin de Leon,its author and the Senate president pro tem, and has lobbied for the legislation. He also criticized oil refiners about California gas prices at a news conference with Jamie Court, president of the Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog advocacy group.
In July, Steyer hired Gil Duran, a former top spokesman for Brown, as a spokesman on California issues. Duran minimized his role, saying in an interview that Steyer had effective media- outreach aides already.
Last week, in a letter he made public, Steyer challenged Chevron’s Watson to an open debate on why gas prices in California have risen more than in other states. Chevron spokesman Braden Reddall didn’t say how Watson responded to the challenge, but noted in an e-mail that the company already engages in discussions about gas prices with politicians, regulators and the media.
NextGen Climate Action, Steyer’s super political action committee, has spent $729,000 on lobbying the California government so far this year, compared with about $100,000 in the prior legislative session, according to data from the secretary of State’s office. Oil and gas interests, led by the Western States Petroleum Association trade group and Chevron, have spent $6.8 million — including on lobbying against the bill Steyer supports.
Californians for Energy Independence says it has evidence that one of Steyer’s businesses, Kilowatt Financial, could make more money if the bill is passed. Steyer is listed as a manager of the limited-liability company in an April 2014 filing with the secretary of State. Kilowatt makes consumer loans for energy-efficient home renovations and is merging with another lender.
Sabrina Lockhart, spokeswoman for the energy-independence group, said Kilowatt stands to gain from the legislation because the bill mandates the renovations.
“He’s trying to shape policies and he’s trying to benefit financially,” she said.
Steyer’s spokeswoman, Suzanne Henkels, says he stepped down from Kilowatt last year and directed all his green-energy investments into a charitable trust, meaning he won’t profit from the company’s operations.
Steyer also was criticized for his opposition to the Keystone XL oil pipeline between Alberta, Canada and Nebraska. The national Republican Party denounced him in a Web posting for opposing the pipeline after Farallon profited from oil and gas investments, and invested in a company proposing a rival pipeline. Steyer still has vowed to back Democratic lawmakers who face attacks for voting against it.
Lockhart said Steyer “takes up a good chunk of my time.” She was in the room on June 12 when Steyer called on leaders of the $191.5 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System to consider divesting from fossil-fuel stocks. On Aug. 11, Lockhart sent reporters an e-mail calling Steyer a “billionaire super-PAC king” and asserting his criticism of higher gas prices is out of sync with his goal of weaning drivers off gasoline.
Her e-mail also noted that a July 2014Washington Timesarticle said Steyer used tax havens in the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands and Mauritius while heading Farallon. Steyer declined to comment to The Washington Times, and Duran and Henkels didn’t respond to an e-mailed request for comment from Bloomberg News.
“They are going to try to dirty him up,” said Court, a Steyer ally. “He is personally committed on a moral level to preventing a 4-degree temperature change that is irreversible, and he has $3 billion to pursue his passion.”
Last year, Steyer’s NextGen super-PAC tried to influence elections in several states by appealing to voters concerned about climate change. In Florida, it dispatched more than 500 staffers and volunteers to criticize Gov. Rick Scott’s energy policies and used a “Noah’s ark” to show the threat of rising ocean levels. Scott still won re-election.
Steyer gave $75.4 million to federal candidates and causes in 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, almost triple the contributions of the next-highest individual donor, Michael R. Bloomberg, majority owner of Bloomberg News parent company Bloomberg LP.
On Aug. 12, Steyer announced he’ll broaden his policy agenda to include “income inequality and middle-class opportunity.” In an interview at the event in Oakland, where he unveiled the “Fair Shake Commission,” he said issues related to inequality are linked to his environmental activism.
Lockhart of Californians for Energy Independence said before the announcement that Steyer “didn’t become a hedge-fund billionaire without getting a significant return on his investment,” and he could “take the same path in politics.”
Steyer has denied his efforts are intended to position himself for political office, even while refusing to rule out a bid. He considered running for the U.S. Senate before bowing out in January.
For now, he says the opposition won’t deter him and he’s focusing on his climate initiatives by giving speeches and meeting with editorial boards and policy makers in Iowa, participating in a panel on clean energy with business leaders and environmentalists in New Hampshire and joining a public clean-energy discussion in Ohio.
“I’m choosing to take it as a compliment that they’re taking us as a threat,” he said. “They’re making too much money if they’re going to waste it on stuff like that.”
(Alison Vekshin in San Francisco and Mark Niquette in Columbus contributed.)