The American Spectator

From this morning’s edition of the Washington Examiner’s weeklong series on Big Green:

The median salary among all 15 of the highest-paid Big Green environmental officials (the nonprofits like Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Conservancy, etc.) is $261,295, while the median total compensation for the 15 is $308,465….

You know — these are the leaders of the groups who constantly wail that nature is under unrelenting assault by Big Oil, whose money and influence they say is the Goliath to the enviros’ David.

Meanwhile:

[Big Green] opposition nonprofits analyzed by The Examiner included the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Concerned Women for America, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Citizens Against Government Waste, National Taxpayers Union, and the American Conservative Union.

An Examiner analysis found a median salary of $228,703 among the opposition groups, or nearly $33,000 less than that received by the environmental executives. The gap is even wider when media total compensation figures are compared, with top executives at environmental opponents receiving $254,605, or nearly $54,000 less than the top 15 environmental executives.

Wait a minute?! Aren’t these largely the same conservative nonprofits that Greenpeace says are in the back pockets of the pollution-loving Big Oil (specifically, the Koch brothers)?

But then again, those Climategate guys were also sucking up to the Big Oil companies for cash themselves. And, believe it or not, so were the Big Green groups, as Amy and David Ridenour noted in June:

According to published reports, major environmental advocacy organizations that accepted major gifts from BP in recent years include the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute, various branches of the Audubon Society, the Wildlife Habitat Council and others….

BP also was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, contributing substantial funding to the climate-change-related lobbying efforts of the environmental groups within it, which include the Environmental Defense Fund, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy and the World Resources Institute.

So the likes of Environmental Defense’s Fred Krupp ($496,174 in 2008 compensation) and the World Wildlife Fund’s Carter Roberts ($509,699 in 2009 compensation) are greedier fatcats soaked with Big Oil money than are the “climate deniers!”

Over to you, Alanis.