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Left-wing billionaire's dark money group funded viral online campaign against major oil project
Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Sunrise AU

Left-wing billionaire's dark money group funded viral online campaign against major oil project

A supposedly grassroots social media campaign against a major oil drilling project in Alaska is largely funded by a left-wing billionaire's dark money environmental group.

The campaign's hashtag, #StopWillow, has gone viral on platforms like TikTok and Twitter, amassing over 650 million views. Social media users posting the hashtag are urging the Biden administration to axe the Willow Project, an oil drilling proposal in Alaska.

The White House is expected to decide on the project's fate in the coming days.

The ConocoPhillips project is anticipated to generate up to 180,000 barrels of oil daily and create thousands of job opportunities.

Stop Willow, the group behind the campaign to halt the Willow Project, claimed that the oil drilling would "add more than 280 million metric tons of climate pollution to the atmosphere over the next 30 years — equivalent to the annual emissions from 76 coal-fired power plants."

"Willow would emit more climate pollution annually than more than 99.7% of all single point sources in the country," the group's website states.

Stop Willow contends that the project is "a climate disaster" that "will do nothing to solve our current energy challenges because it won't be available for years."

A link on the movement's website to "take action to #StopWillow" redirects to a group called Protect the Arctic, which provides resources, information, and a media tool kit to oppose the Willow Project on social media. Some of those resources include a letter template for individuals against the project to fill out and send to the Biden administration and a voicemail script for individuals to read when calling the White House switchboard.

While Stop Willow appears to be a grassroots effort, Stop Willow is a project of the Conservation Lands Foundation, an environmental organization based in Colorado co-founded by Swiss-born billionaire Hansjorg Wyss.

Over the last decade, Wyss has donated millions to left-leaning organizations and causes. His philanthropic organization, the Wyss Foundation, donated at least $6 million to CLF.

CLF is dedicated to facilitating "community-based action" to obtain "long-lasting conservation." The organization has accepted millions of dollars from unknown donors.

The project has received bipartisan support from the Alaska delegation, who argue that the oil drilling will create energy security, support the economy, and have a minimal carbon footprint compared to importing foreign oil.

Republican Alaskan Senator Dan Sullivan told Fox News Digital that the environmental group's claims are not based on science.

"Almost every single Alaskan, especially the Native people, are unified on this project and how much it means for our country," Sullivan stated. "If they go with Greenpeace and Center for Biological Diversity and lower 48 radicals and tell the Native people of my state, 'Sorry, we're going to listen to lower 48 radicals, not you,' all of their talk of racial justice and racial equity is, quite frankly, bulls---."

The CLF did not respond to a request for comment, Fox News Digital and the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.

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