{"id":4667,"date":"2017-05-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www-prod.greenpeace.org\/usa\/citizens-government-waste-cagw\/"},"modified":"2024-11-20T14:31:25","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T14:31:25","slug":"citizens-government-waste-cagw","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/usa\/climate\/climate-deniers\/front-groups\/citizens-government-waste-cagw\/","title":{"rendered":"Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group<\/span>
$4,800 from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n

Citizens Against Government Waste CAGW
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is a\u00a0501c3 nonprofit organization based in Washington, DC that claims<\/a> to represent a million people in the interest of reducing\u00a0government mismanagement and spending. CAGW has a 501c4 affiliate organization, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), which describes its mission<\/a>\u00a0“to advocate the elimination of waste and inefficiency in government through nonpartisan public education programs and lobbying activities.”<\/p>\n

The CAGW alluded\u00a0to “faulty climate science<\/a>” and “the damage the Paris agreement could do to our nation’s economy,” in a 2017 post<\/a> on President Donald Trump’s plans to leave the\u00a0Paris Climate Treaty.<\/p>\n

CAGW stated its disapproval<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0state Attorneys General who initiated investigations into ExxonMobil’s payments to political organizations that dispute the science of climate change, and specifically defended<\/a> the coal- and oil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) from similar scrutiny by the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

In a March, 2016\u00a0article<\/a> titled “Pushing Back on the Global Warming Hypothesis,” Elizabeth Wright promoted an effort by Congressman Lamar Smith<\/a> (R-TX), a politician with outsized support from the oil industry, to procure emails from scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) whose data appeared to bring an end to a popular (and incorrect) argument<\/a> used by climate skeptics. Without noting that Rep. Smith’s actions were denounced as a political attack<\/a> by most of the nation’s top science institutions, Wright cites a supportive letter<\/a> t0\u00a0Rep. Smith’s signed by “300 scientists, engineers, economists,” but did not appear to the credentials of the signatories. Many of the letter’s endorsers have\u00a0no expertise in climate science, do not conduct\u00a0research, don’t have Ph.D’s, or are financed by fossil fuel interests. In addition to the letter,\u00a0Wright quotes Patrick Michaels<\/a>, a longtime consultant for fossil fuel companies and spokesman for Charles Koch’s Cato Institute.<\/p>\n

Wrightdoes not mention the 97% of scientists who agree that climate change is an ongoing, documented and dangerous phenomenon rooted in human activity. Instead, \u00a0she wields the arguments\u00a0of industry-funded\u00a0“skeptics” against the entire scientific foundation of global warming, with emphatic statements like, “In fact it is clear that science is not settled when it comes to global warming.”<\/p>\n