WalMart Funding Cuts To NJ Greenwash Effort Offset By Dodge Foundation Grant

Why Do WalMart and Dodge Foundation Share Similar Funding Strategies?

Last month, I was pleased to report that WalMart had cut funding – by two thirds – of their NJ corporate greenwash efforts with Sustainable New Jersey,  slashing a $450,000 contribution to just $150,000, see:

• After Being Exposed Nationally, WalMart Slashes NJ Greenwash Funding

Confirming our assessment, a few days ago, a reader passed along this Grist story, saying that “Sustainable NJ must be so proud of their sponsor, Walmart these days, eh?”

• Walmart is a huge consumer of dirty coal energy

Walmart has been strutting around decked out in solar panels lately. At an event broadcast from its Arkansas headquarters last month, the company’s top executives crowed about their pledge, made nearly a decade ago, to shift to 100 percent renewable power, while a video screened shots of glossy new solar panels behind them. Many reporters — even many environmentalists — have been marveling at the emperor’s new finery. The Wall Street Journal ran the headline “Walmart Doubles Down on Solar Energy Plans,” while the San Francisco Chronicle and The Motley Fool explained “Why Walmart Loves Solar.”

But look a little closer and this emperor’s outfit isn’t all that it appears to be.

Far off from 100 percent, only 3 percent of Walmart’s U.S. power is supplied by its renewable energy projects and special green power purchases, according to data the company submits to the EPA’s Green Power Partnership. And only one-third of that 3 percent comes from Walmart’s rooftop solar and other onsite installations.

Which begs the question: Where does the other 97 percent of Walmart’s power come from?

Here at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, we decided to take a look. And what we found is a big, filthy mountain of coal.

But yesterday, in doing research for a different story on NJ’s Green Mafia, I discovered that the WalMart funding cuts were offset almost dollar for dollar by the NJ based Dodge Foundation.

According to their website, in June, Dodge provided a huge grant to SNJ that offsets the WalMart cuts:

A $370,000 grant to Sustainable Jersey was awarded to support this municipal certification program as it continues to grow and strengthen its core priority of serving municipalities through voluntary, citizen-led actions, and to expand its reach in schools and communities, including the launch of a new Green Team Leadership Academy.

Passive voice, i.e. “was awarded”? Revealing.

We have written extensively about the flaws in the concept of “sustainability” and “resilience” and the SNJ municipal certification program and how that flawed voluntary local effort displaces and diverts focus and resources from more effective forms of advocacy and activism and regulatory oversight.

But what should be even more disturbing to climate activists and environmental advocates alike is that the Dodge Foundation shares the same corporate values, priorities, and funding strategies of WalMart.

Both WalMart and Dodge fund efforts that divert attention and activists away from issues of corporate power and democratic and governmental regulatory powers to limit that corporate power.

And that should disturb everyone.

More coming, as we do additional research on NJ’s Green mafia.