By the end of the 2024 election cycle, Toyota Motor Corp. had donated to over four times as many climate change denying members of Congress as Ford Motor Company and nearly twice as many as General Motors, according to a new report released today by Public Citizen.
According to the report, over the last three electoral cycles, Toyota has emerged as the top auto industry financier of climate deniers, financing 207 of their congressional campaigns.
“The world’s largest automaker has quietly spent the past several years building a powerful U.S. influence operation in an effort to delay the transition to electric vehicles,” said Adam Zuckerman, senior clean vehicles campaigner with Public Citizen’s Climate Program, and author of the report. “Funding a small army of climate denying lawmakers, while lobbying aggressively against stronger emissions and fuel economy standards, is a volatile combination intended to roll back policies that protect our communities and planet.”
In the three congressional election cycles between 2020 and 2024, Toyota’s political action committee donated $808,500 to the campaigns of Congressional candidates that deny or question the existence of climate change.
Days after Donald Trump won his reelection bid, Toyota Motor North America COO Jack Hollis slammed clean air rules adopted by California and other states, effectively painting a target on the policies intended to clean up air and water. After the press conference, Hollis penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled “Trump Can Get EVs Back on Track,” calling on the new administration to dismantle the Biden-era policies that encourage automakers to reduce emissions, complaining that “unrealistic regulations favor one carbon-reducing option over, and at the expense of, all others.”
“Toyota wants to continue to make dirty, polluting vehicles and align itself with climate deniers in a futile effort to hold onto internal combustion and fossil fuels,” said Zuckerman. “But EVs are the future of the automotive industry, and if it fails to evolve, Toyota risks becoming the next Kodak or Blockbuster, corporate giants that fought innovation and paid the price for it. It is a risky strategy that has left Toyota vulnerable to an influx of competitors who have leapfrogged the auto giant to build the next generation of vehicles.”
* This article was automatically syndicated and expanded from Common Dreams.
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