The ten top-paid environmentalists

Do you donate to outfits like Greenpeace or the WWF? Ever wondered what happens to your money? Well, part of the answer is that you are supporting massive transnational organisations with large numbers of paid, (in some cases highly paid), employees and with often substantial property portfolios. This is an American list, but have a think for a moment about the situation here in Australia. Is there a day that goes by when there isn't a full-time paid representative of the WWF, the Climate Institute or some other environmental group appearing on TV or being quoted in the press and telling us that we are all doomed if (by implication) we don't give money to them? (I doubt the spokespeople for the WWF in Australia or the Climate Institute earn anything like the amounts below, but I'd be surprised if they were on anything less than $100,000 a year.) Very often spruiking yet another report, (produced by a friendly academic that they know will produce the "right" results), that they had commissioned and paid for. Just how much money is at the disposal of the green movement? It seems almost bottomless. I know that internationally over the last ten years or so the income for Greenpeace and the WWF alone has been in the billions of dollars. Honestly. They publish their accounts online, (or at least the WWF used to - they seem to have gone a bit shy about this recently). And while Greenpeace, to its credit, refuses to take money from governments it criticises, the WWF shows no such scruples. It is actually a fact that in terms of climate change the alarmists outspend the sceptics many times over. And much of this money these days is from taxpayers, as governments around the world pour vast amounts of money into bureaucracies set up to promote climate alarmism. I've had to simplify the table because of formatting issues, so the figures quoted are the gross amount of salary plus retirement plan/deferred compensation. As you can see, there's a lot of money in the environmental/climate change caper and a lot of people with a lot at stake in it. Big Green is a profitable enterprise By: David Freddoso Commentary Staff Writer 09/22/09 2:12 PM EDT "Do you have a minute to save the planet?" Perhaps you've been asked this question recently on some Washington sidewalk by a young twenty-something. But where do you suppose the money goes if you accept his sales-pitch and make a financial pledge to his organization or one like it? One possible destination for your cash: huge salaries for top environmental non-profit executives. The chart below lists only the top beneficiaries of the Green non-profit culture. Among the honorable mentions is former Clerk of the House Jeffrey Trandahl, who made a mere $270,000 at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in 2007. For the purpose of comparison, Fred Smith of the pro-business Competitive Enterprise institute, which deals mostly with envirnomental issues as well, makes just over $200,000.   The ten top-paid environmental executives Frederic Krupp,  Environmental Defense Fund, Inc., President - $496,174.00 Carter Roberts,  World Wildlife Fund, President - $486,394.00 Frances Beinecke, Natural Resources Defense Council, President - $432,959.00 David Yarnold, Environmental Defense Fund, Inc., Executive Director - $365,773.00 David Festa, Environmental Defense Fund, Inc., VP West Coast - $360,872.00 Stephanie K. Meeks, Nature Conservancy, Acting President - $349,373.00 Larry Schweiger, National Wildlife Federation, President - $345,004.00 Eileen Claussen, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, President - $335,099.00 Rodger Schlickeisen, Defenders of Wildlife, President - $312,896.00 William Meadows, The Wilderness Society, President - $308,465.00 Washington Examiner

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