Complete Capitulation
By 
The environmental community has long mistrusted The Nature Conservancy, accusing it of selling out bigger values in order to save small parts of land and cozying up to the biggest polluters for greenwashing donations. I’ve been marginally defending it over that time, noting that different environmental organizations can have different missions. But this? This is just really bad work here:
A somewhat surprising organization has been more compliant: the Nature Conservancy, the country’s largest and wealthiest conservation nonprofit. In February, the group changed references to the Gulf of Mexico on its website to the Gulf of America. In the Gulf of America, the website now states, the group works on “restoring healthy shorelines, protecting the Gulf’s waters, and ensuring that diverse communities benefit from Gulf restoration.” On social media, environmentalists quickly criticized the group for capitulating to a White House that has targeted climate science, frozen climate funding, purged the Environmental Protection Agency, and pledged to tear up regulations while seizing enormous amounts of power for itself.
While controversial, the decision isn’t totally out of the blue for the Nature Conservancy. Shortly after Trump’s election, its CEO Jennifer Morris released a statement indicating the group’s intention to “work with the Trump administration on a range of issues.”
On Inauguration Day, January 20, TNC put out two press releases referencing federal policy. One said the group would “continue to honor the Paris Agreement goals and help the U.S. do its part.” The other stated that the group “remained committed to its values, including respect for people, cultures, communities and the world around us.” Neither statement criticized the Trump administration. Subsequent press releases haven’t either, and have all generally avoided discussion of White House policy decisions. Other large environmental nonprofits—including the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club—have repeatedly criticized the White House since Trump took office. As E&E News reported on Tuesday, other groups aren’t adopting Trump’s “Gulf of America” title, either.
Kevin Weil, chief product officer at OpenAI, sits on the Nature Conservancy’s board and had allegedly planned to attend Trump’s inauguration but doesn’t appear to have shown up. OpenAI has fostered an especially close relationship with the administration. CEO Sam Altman joined Trump in the Oval Office to announce the $500 billion Stargate initiative to build AI infrastructure, including energy-intensive data centers. Late last month, the company also unveiled a new product called Chat GPT Gov, aimed at helping the U.S. government use AI to “boost efficiency and productivity.” The company is reportedly in talks with “several” unnamed federal agencies that want to use it.
That’s the definition of a completely captured organization right there. I still apprecaite work saving bits of land here and there and unique ecosystems to a region that would never be national parks but still deserve conservation for wildlife and ecodiversity purposes. But…yikes.