The “green” group money opposing permitting reform

More than 200 environmental activist groups have written a letter in opposition to a major bipartisan permitting reform bill that was recently introduced in the U.S. Senate. The largest and most important environmental groups in the country, however, were conspicuously absent among the signatories. Even so, the combined 2024 revenues of the co-signers exceeded $430 million—highlighting the depth of resources available to the American environmental movement even without its biggest names.

Permitting reform

A bipartisan group of Senators recently introduced a major bill aimed at streamlining burdensome federal permitting and environmental review requirements, known as the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (BAAJA). The goal of the legislation is “accelerating the permitting and construction of critical energy and infrastructure projects while maintaining key environmental and historic preservation safeguards.”

Such reforms are widely understood to be necessary. The Bipartisan Policy Center, which supports the legislation, noted that “a permitting system created to protect the environment against industrial pollution more than 50 years ago has morphed into a system that is bad for both the economy and the environment.” For instance, a new mine reportedly takes an average of 29 years to successfully navigate the American permitting process—the second-longest timeline in the world, behind Zambia. The biggest regulatory contributors to this delay involve some of the same laws which BAAJA now aims to address, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.

BAAJA is a compromise bill, and in addition to attracting political backing from both Republicans and Democrats, it is supported by a remarkably diverse range of interest groups. These include environmental organizations such as Citizens Climate Lobby and Ceres, free-market and limited government advocates such as the Pacific Legal Foundation and Americans for Prosperity, labor unions such as LIUNA and the United Association, business associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, industry groups such as the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Solar Energy Industries Association, and left-leaning think tanks such as the Searchlight Institute and the Progressive Policy Institute.

Environmentalist Opposition

Support, of course, has been far from universal. In one letter obtained by Punchbowl News, more than 200 (mostly) environmental activist groups asked members of Congress to oppose BAAJA, arguing “the environmental damage that will occur due to the rollbacks and weakening of the nation’s environmental laws outweigh the potential emissions reductions that would occur in the future.” The letter’s signatories speculated that if Democrats were to gain control of one or both chambers in the midterm elections, “a better package” might be secured.

Supporters of permitting reform have optimistically noted that the biggest names in the American environmental/conservation movement were conspicuously absent from the letter. This included groups such as the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, the National Wildlife Federation, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, and others. These are enormously rich NGOs: all had nine-figure revenues in 2024, with the Nature Conservancy alone bringing in more than $1.4 billion that year.

The American environmental movement, however, is remarkable not only for how wealthy its top groups are, but also for the sheer number of well-funded groups that exist. Even without its organizational behemoths, the combined 2024 revenues of the letter’s signatories exceeded $430 million.

And this is a conservative undercount for several reasons.

The letter had 222 organizational signatories, but financial data is unavailable for many of these groups. This could be because the group in question does not have its own IRS-recognized tax-exempt status—for example, because it operates under a fiscal sponsorship arrangement—or because it is a tax-exempt group which is small enough to file the minimalist Form 990-N, which does not require precise revenue disclosure.

At least 125 of the signatories (56 percent) are distinct tax-exempt nonprofits whose identities could be ascertained to a reasonable certainty, and for which detailed Form 990 financials are available. Their combined annual revenue was $431.2 million, which in nearly all cases reflects 2024 filings. For the half-dozen groups where no 2024 filing was available, 990s from either 2023 or 2025 were used instead. Affiliated nonprofits and fiscal sponsors were excluded from this total.

The top fifteen largest signatories (by 2024 revenue) of the anti-permitting reform letter were as follows:

• Center for Biological Diversity ($45.7 million)
• Greenpeace USA ($38.5 million)
• Defenders of Wildlife ($36 million)
• American Bird Conservancy ($26.9 million)
• Food & Water Watch ($22.2 million)
• Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance ($12.6 million)
• Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation ($11.8 million)
• Oil Change International ($11.4 million)
• Environmental Law & Policy Center ($10.9 million)
• EarthRights International ($10.8 million)
• Climate Justice Alliance ($10.3 million)
• WE ACT for Environmental Justice ($10.3 million)
• Earthworks ($9.6 million)
• GreenLatinos ($8.6 million)
• Green America ($8.2 million)

It remains to be seen how the permitting reform bill will fare in Congress, and how the country’s biggest environmental groups will ultimately come down on it. Some have been equivocal in their public statements. Even at this stage, however, the bill’s avowed opponents have no shortage of resources.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-green-group-money-opposing-permitting-reform/