Koch-funded group mounts cut-and-paste attack on regional climate initiatives
by David Anderson.
Fresh
off last year’s successful defeat of federal climate legislation in the U.S.
Senate, the oil baron Koch
brothers and their dirty-energy buddies are now bent on dismantling one of
the nation’s last hopes for doing anything about climate change in the near
term: regional climate accords.
Today,
a total of 32
states are active participants or observing members in the Regional Greenhouse
Gas Initiative in the Northeast, the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction
Accord, or the Western Climate Initiative.
That number will get a lot smaller if
the American Legislative Exchange Council—a D.C.-based conservative
advocacy organization funded by Koch
family foundations, ExxonMobil,
and other
oil companies and big corporations—gets its way.
ALEC
offers legislative templates to state lawmakers who don’t want the hassle of
writing their own conservative bills. Raegan Weber, ALEC’s senior director of
public affairs, says the group has produced 800 to 1,000 pieces of so-called
“model legislation.” Access to those templates is restricted to legislators who
pay $100 for a two-year membership, which makes it difficult to trace a bill’s
language back to ALEC.
But
thanks to a blog
post by a conservative states-rights activist in Florida (and a tidbit in
one of ALEC’s
own press releases), we can make out at least part of what’s in ALEC’s
template for “State Withdrawal from Regional Climate Initiatives,” one of the
offerings on the group’s environment
webpage. And it looks like the template has been getting a lot of use
lately.
Language
that regurgitates all of the right’s favorite—and in many cases fallacious—anti-cap-and-trade talking points has cropped up in nearly identical form in
resolutions or bills in at least six states:
WHEREAS, there has been
no credible economic analysis of the costs associated with carbon reduction
mandates and the consequential effect of the increasing costs of doing business
in the State of ______;
WHEREAS, forcing business, industry, and food producers to reduce carbon
emissions through government mandates and cap-and-trade policies under
consideration for the regional climate initiative will increase the cost of
doing business, push companies to do business with other states or nations, and
increase consumer costs for electricity, fuel, and food;
WHEREAS, the Congressional Budget Office warns that the cost of cap-and-trade
policies will be borne by consumers and will place a disproportionately high
burden on poorer families;
WHEREAS, simply reducing carbon emissions in the State of ______ will not have
a significant impact on international carbon reduction, especially while
countries like China, Russia, Mexico, and India emit an ever-increasing amount
of carbon into the atmosphere;
WHEREAS, a tremendous amount of economic growth would be sacrificed for a
reduction in carbon emissions that would have no appreciable impact on global
concentrations of CO2;
WHEREAS, no state or nation has enhanced economic opportunities for its
citizens or increased Gross Domestic Product through cap and trade or other
carbon reduction policies; and
WHEREAS, Europe’s cap and trade system has been undermined by political
favoritism, accounting tricks and has failed to achieve the carbon reduction
targets,
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the legislature of the State of ______ urges the
Governor to withdraw [state] from the regional climate initiative.
Last
year in Michigan, the language appeared in a
resolution [PDF] introduced in the state House of Representatives, demanding that
the state drop out of the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction Accord.
This
year, the language has shown up in resolutions in Montana, New
Mexico, Oregon,
and Washington [PDFs] calling for the states to quit the Western Climate Initiative.
In
New Hampshire, it popped up in the “findings” section of a House bill
that would repeal the cap-and-trade system established under the Regional
Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The bill’s lead sponsor, state Rep. Richard
Barry (R), looked a bit like a dog caught with the family cat in its mouth when
he was asked to explain the language at a public hearing; he nervously said that
none of the bill’s sponsors had written this particular section, but stopped
short of revealing ALEC as the source of the text. That didn’t sit well with
Rep. James Garrity (R), chair of the House Science, Technology, and Energy
Committee, who later explained, “Our committee does not feel that editorials
belong in laws.” The matter was resolved by dropping the ALEC text, and the amended
bill went on to pass the House.
The
New Mexico resolution hasn’t fared so well; it stalled in committee, according
to sponsor Rep. Tim Lewis (R). Unlike Barry in New Hampshire, Lewis readily
acknowledges that the language in his resolution came from ALEC, but adds, “I
am not a member of that group.” A first-term legislator who’s still busy learning the ropes in Santa Fe,
Lewis admits he didn’t put much time into examining ALEC’s claims about
cap-and-trade. As a teacher, he might be unhappy to learn the copycat text is
full of questionable claims (find out just how questionable).
“I
don’t mind being an observer in the Western Climate Initiative,” says Lewis, who is proud to support wind and solar power. He says he just
worries that implementing cap-and-trade policies could hurt poor families in
his state. Sound familiar?
Oregon state Rep.
Kim Thatcher (R), sponsor of the resolution in her state, seems to be more thoroughly
on board with the Koch brothers’ agenda. An aide to the lawmaker, who spoke on
condition of not being named, said Thatcher contacted all the right groups
before moving forward with the resolution, including: Americans for Prosperity,
a Koch-funded
organization that has been waging a very public assault on regional climate
accords (get that story); the Heritage Foundation, recipient
of more than $3.3
million in Koch funds from 1997 to 2008; and the Cascade Policy Institute,
considered by Koch Industries to be one of the few reputable sources of information on “climate controversies.” For now, the resolution is stuck in committee.
In 2010, Greenpeace published a report about the Koch brothers’ funding of climate-denial groups, and Koch Industries responded by saying,
“we believe science—not politicized opinion—must play a central role
in the discussion about climate and related policy proposals. Both a free
society and the scientific method require an open and honest airing of all
sides.”
Can
we look forward to an open airing of the ALEC text that’s being surreptitiously
slipped into state-level bills and resolutions around the country? And will we
see the text corrected so that it is in fact honest and all “politicized
opinion” is removed?
Read
more:
A debunking of questionable claims in the ALEC template
Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity wages frontal assault on regional climate
accords
The big-picture outlook for regional cap-and-trade agreements
ALEC’s questionable claims about climate policies
The
American Legislative Exchange Council’s “model legislation”
for “State Withdrawal from Regional Climate Initiatives” is full of debatable and
debunkable assertions. It starts off:
WHEREAS, there has been
no credible economic analysis of the costs associated with carbon reduction
mandates …
In
fact, there have been dozens upon dozens of such analyses. Environmental
Defense Fund rounded
up some of the best. Even while denying that any credible studies have been
done on costs, the template goes on to claim that all sorts of costs are
looming.
WHEREAS …
cap-and-trade policies [et al] … will … increase consumer costs for
electricity …
By
no means do carbon-cutting policies have to lead to higher electricity costs
for Americans—it depends on the specific kind of system implemented. For
example, an EPA analysis of the Waxman-Markey climate bill in U.S. House found
that it would lower
average household utility bills.
WHEREAS, the
Congressional Budget Office warns that the cost of cap-and-trade policies …
will place a disproportionately high burden on poorer families
The
CBO actually found that a cap-and-trade system could
lower costs for low-income households if implemented the right way.
WHEREAS, a tremendous
amount of economic growth would be sacrificed for a reduction in carbon
emissions …
EDF’s
roundup of economic analyses concludes that the “cost of capping
global warming pollution over the next two decades is almost too small to
measure.”
WHEREAS, no state or
nation has enhanced economic opportunities for its citizens or increased Gross
Domestic Product through cap and trade or other carbon reduction policies
Many
analyses reach an opposite conclusion. A 2010
study by the California Air Resources Board projected that many parts of
the state’s economy will grow, and the overall economy will not suffer, under
its climate-change law. Germany, which has an aggressive pro-renewables policy,
has grown the number of jobs in its renewables sector by 87 percent since 2004,
according
to a 2010 report, more than offsetting job losses that resulted from
efforts to de-carbonize the nation’s economy. An analysis by Trevor
Houser and his colleagues at the Peterson Institute for International
Economics points to lots of potential job growth that could result from
national climate policies.
WHEREAS, Europe’s cap
and trade system has been undermined by political favoritism [and] accounting
tricks …
The
European Union’s system has had problems, but they’re totally
fixable. And there’s no reason to believe those mistakes would be repeated
in the U.S.; on the contrary, American
wonks have been watching closely and will make sure not to replicate Europe’s errors. In
the U.S., RGGI’s cap-and-trade system has been operating smoothly since
2008 with no evidence of fraud or manipulation, according to independent monitors; other non-carbon
cap-and-trade markets in the U.S. have been running smoothly for decades.
There’s
plenty of room for debate about the potential effects of climate policies, but
ALEC’s predictions of gloom and doom have little basis in reality and are
certainly not “facts” that state lawmakers of any persuasion should
want to enshrine into legislation.
Americans for Prosperity wages attack
on regional climate accords
Americans
for Prosperity (AFP)—a Tea
Party-affiliated group founded and
funded by David H. Koch of Koch Industries—is mounting
a frontal assault on regional climate initiatives.
In
New Hampshire, in the run-up to a vote on a House bill that would repeal the
cap-and-trade system established under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative,
AFP’s state branch hounded voters with robocalls,
asking them to demand that their state reps support the measure. After the bill
passed, AFP Vice President for Policy Phil Kerpen and AFP’s New Hampshire State
Director Corey Lewandowski celebrated with an
op-ed published by Fox News.
In
New Jersey, AFP is putting
pressure on Gov. Chris Christie (R) to drop out of RGGI, and has launched
a TV and radio ad campaign in the state arguing that RGGI will drive
electric rates “through the roof,” resulting in “higher taxes,
lost jobs, and less freedom.” The group has also been pressuring Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) to pull out.
In
Arizona, AFP started publicly
campaigning in 2009 to get the state to withdraw from the Western Climate
Initiative. Its efforts paid
off in February 2010 when Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) issued
an executive order announcing that the state would not participate in a
cap-and-trade system under WCI, though she stopped short of pulling the state
out of the accord entirely.
In Michigan, AFP is
pushing new GOP Gov. Rick Snyder to reject the Midwestern Greenhouse Gas Reduction
Accord. A post on the AFP Michigan site praises a 2010 resolution (with ALEC language) that
would have pulled the state out of the accord, and warns, “Similar resolutions
will be introduced by legislators in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.”
For
more, check out the AFP website’s “RGGI
Repeal Resource” page.
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