Thomas Catenacci writes for the Washington Free Beacon about the money behind a new climate study in Maryland.
The left-wing environmental nonprofit Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) is bankrolling a study commissioned by Maryland governor Wes Moore (D.) to “assess the undue burden Marylanders are paying for extreme weather events,” records show. The group says the study is the first step in passing a law that would require oil companies to pay the state billions of dollars in climate damages.
When Moore announced he would move forward with the study in December, he touted $30,000 in “philanthropic funding” but did not disclose where that funding came from. Maryland’s 2027 state budget shows that RFF provided the $30,000 grant, which, in addition to $470,000 in state funds, will be used to “illustrate the extent of the damage done by increasingly intense weather events along with other environmental shifts related to climate change.”
Moore in May 2025 initially vetoed the bill that created the study before reversing course seven months later. RFF cheered the move, saying in a press release that the study would “lay the groundwork for a Maryland climate superfund bill, which would require fossil fuel companies to pay for a portion of the state’s climate adaptation costs identified through the study.” It also credited one of its grantees, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, for getting the study over the “finish line” but did not disclose that it was funding the study.
The RFF’s involvement in the study raises questions as to whether the study will be impartial. The fund—established in 1967 by the liberal great-grandchildren of John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil Company included entities that became ExxonMobil and Chevron when it was broken up in 1911—says oil companies “advance a business model that accelerates the climate crisis.”
