The left-wing environmental nonprofit Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) is bankrolling a study commissioned by Maryland governor Wes Moore (D.) to “assess the undue burden Marylanders are paying for extreme weather events,” records show. The group says the study is the first step in passing a law that would require oil companies to pay the state billions of dollars in climate damages.
When Moore announced he would move forward with the study in December, he touted $30,000 in “philanthropic funding” but did not disclose where that funding came from. Maryland’s 2027 state budget shows that RFF provided the $30,000 grant, which, in addition to $470,000 in state funds, will be used to “illustrate the extent of the damage done by increasingly intense weather events along with other environmental shifts related to climate change.”
Moore in May 2025 initially vetoed the bill that created the study before reversing course seven months later. RFF cheered the move, saying in a press release that the study would “lay the groundwork for a Maryland climate superfund bill, which would require fossil fuel companies to pay for a portion of the state’s climate adaptation costs identified through the study.” It also credited one of its grantees, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, for getting the study over the “finish line” but did not disclose that it was funding the study.
The RFF’s involvement in the study raises questions as to whether the study will be impartial. The fund—established in 1967 by the liberal great-grandchildren of John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil Company included entities that became ExxonMobil and Chevron when it was broken up in 1911—says oil companies “advance a business model that accelerates the climate crisis.” It also funds a slew of left-wing climate organizations, including the Hollywood-based Climate Emergency Fund—which is the top backer of Climate Defiance, a radical group known for carrying out illegal demonstrations to “defeat” what it calls “fossil fuel fascism”—and Covering Climate Now, which works with media organizations like ABC and MSNBC to “make climate a part of every beat in the newsroom.”
The study, which will calculate past and future costs associated with climate change, was initiated in March and will be complete by the end of the year. It is being conducted by the Center for Climate Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based group that conducts global research on climate change, including in collaboration with Chinese government agencies. The center lists the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, which has taken in $640,000 from the RFF in recent years, as one of its “key partners.”
“We were happy to chip in to help the state understand the enormous cost of climate adaptation that Marylanders will be paying for as far as the eye can see,” RFF director Lee Wasserman said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon. “The Rockefeller Family Fund had no role in selecting the Center for Climate Strategies to do the study, and we will have no role whatsoever in the study’s completion.”
Moore’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
The move comes as RFF—which holds more than $200 million in total assets, according to its latest tax filing—simultaneously supports lawsuits seeking to compel oil companies to pay weather-related damages by holding them responsible for climate change. Such suits have largely been unsuccessful, including in Maryland, where the state’s Supreme Court recently dismissed three lawsuits from Democratic-led jurisdictions that accused the likes of BP, ExxonMobil, and Chevron of causing costly weather events.
The RFF-backed study, then, could be the first step toward securing payouts from oil companies through the legislative process rather than the judicial one.
Blue states like New York and Vermont have already passed so-called climate superfund laws, which stipulate that oil companies helped cause extreme weather events like floods and wildfires and thus must pay for damages. While Vermont’s does not specify how much the companies owe, New York’s stipulates that oil companies must pay the state $75 billion over the next 25 years. Wasserman came up with the idea for such laws, and his group gave $50,000 to a research organization housed within New York University’s law school to develop them, the New York Times reported.
Both New York’s and Vermont’s superfund laws have faced scrutiny from the Trump administration, which filed active complaints against the states in 2025, arguing that the laws illegally usurp federal emissions regulations. That has not stopped states like Maryland and Maine from moving forward with climate studies meant to support superfund legislation. Last week, Maine’s Legislature passed a bill to assess climate damages—and, in an amendment, authorized the state to accept private funding for that study. The Democratic sponsor of Maine’s bill said the study would “provide a foundation upon which Maine can later build a climate superfund program.”
Once the study is complete, the RFF will likely engage in lobbying to pass corresponding superfund legislation. Wasserman boasted in a New York Times op-ed that his group spent $200,000 in support of Vermont’s superfund legislation that passed in 2024. “Vermont’s law is an elegant legal approach to make oil company shareholders foot their fair share of these costs,” he wrote. Wasserman also registered as a lobbyist in New York to push that state’s superfund legislation, according to ethics disclosures.
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