{"id":4786,"date":"2015-06-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www-prod.greenpeace.org\/usa\/americans-for-prosperity-foundation-afp\/"},"modified":"2024-11-21T08:55:17","modified_gmt":"2024-11-21T08:55:17","slug":"americans-for-prosperity-foundation-afp","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.greenpeace.org\/usa\/climate\/climate-deniers\/front-groups\/americans-for-prosperity-foundation-afp\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group<\/span>
$6,324,834 received from Koch foundations, 2005-2017. $850,000 from David Koch in 2004.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Koch (1940-2019)<\/a> was the chairman of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.<\/a> Koch executive vice president Richard Fink was also on the AFP board, while he was\u00a0 president of the Charles G. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations.<\/p>\n

AFP was founded in 2004 with an undisclosed $850,000 seed grant from David Koch<\/a>, making him the largest initial donor. Another $150,000 from Art Pope, and several other large contributions like State Farm, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and Johnson & Johnson.\u00a0These previously undisclosed payments are not included in our\u00a0data (see table below),\u00a0which only includes the\u00a0Koch family’s nonprofit foundation spending.<\/p>\n

In March, 2011, Americans for Prosperity sent memos to U.S. senators<\/a> to support an attack on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s lawful regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act AFP has led attacks on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative<\/a>, a climate pollution reduction program signed by ten northeast and mid-Atlantic states, by pressuring state lawmakers to repeal from the program despite its economic successes<\/a>. Similarly, AFP California supported Proposition 23<\/a>, the ballot attack on state climate legislation that was heavily financed by Koch Industries and other oil companies.<\/p>\n

Beginning in 2008, Americans For Prosperity<\/a> organized the “Hot Air Tour:” astroturf “hot air balloon<\/a>” events to highlight their opposition to clean energy and climate legislation. This astroturf campaign has been repeatedly exposed in many forums, including the Wall Street Journal’s\u00a0blog,<\/a> Environmental Capital.<\/p>\n

At the 2010 international climate negotiations in Cancun, Mexico, AFP had a live broadcast of its Hot Air Tour<\/a> featuring Senate climate denier James Inhofe (R-OK) and conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.<\/p>\n

As detailed by Jane Mayer for the New Yorker<\/em><\/a>, AFP ran the “No Climate Tax” campaign and helped organize the “Tea Parties” tax protests. See archives of the No Climate Tax pledge website<\/a>, listing the politicians that signed it.<\/p>\n

AFP played a key role in forcing green jobs expert Van Jones out of his former position<\/a> at the Council of Environmental Quality.<\/p>\n

AFP\u2019s 2010 Regulation Reality Tour, featuring Smart cars and \u201ccarbon cops\u201d at stops across the country, was launched to obstruct U.S. Environmental Protection Agency<\/a> regulation of major greenhouse gas emitters and undermine the seriousness of climate change. Citizens observing the tour were given fake citations for mowing their lawns or filling gas tanks<\/a>, falsely alleging that the EPA would regulate individual consumers.<\/p>\n

Americans For Prosperity and state AFP chapters are members of the State Policy Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n