Public Citizen’s Members Call on Toyota to Stop Anti-Climate Lobbying, Consider Electric Vehicles
WASHINGTON — Outside of Toyota Motor Corporation’s Washington, D.C., lobbying headquarters, Public Citizen advocates delivered more than 7,500 petition signatures calling on the company to put an end to its aggressive anti-climate lobbying and funding of climate deniers in Congress.
“Electric vehicles are not only the future, they are the present,” said Adam Zuckerman, senior clean vehicles campaigner with Public Citizen’s Climate Program. “Yet, Toyota is funding a small army of climate-denying lawmakers to try to shift climate progress into reverse. Toyota is not only pursuing policies that will roll back the modest progress made to protect our communities and planet, it is also buying our politicians to put anti-EV policies in place.”
The leadership of Toyota under Akio Toyoda, the former CEO and now chairman of the board of directors, has undertaken a years-long lobbying effort to undermine policies that would move the U.S. toward EVs.
In January, Public Citizen released a report revealing that Toyota 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. Over the last three electoral cycles, Toyota has emerged as the top auto industry financier of climate deniers, financing 207 of their congressional campaigns to the tune of $808,500.
“We need to transition to electric vehicles and stop relying on polluting, dangerous fossil fuels,” said Zuckerman. “We cannot let Toyota use its political power to undermine the vital transition to clean transportation.”