Wynn, Todd
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welcome to the show mofo
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/02/climate-science-deniers-trump-admin-happer-wehrum-rollins-wynn-simmons
readfearn
here are five folks spearheading the United States government who think that when it comes to climate change, they know better than all of the world’s main scientific institutions.
There’s Donald Trump himself, of course, who famously tweeted that climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese, and said that a cold snap in the weather overturns a century or more of scientific inquiry.
Then there’s energy secretary Rick Perry, whose fuzzy logic on the science sees him unconvinced that CO2 is the key driver of climate change.
Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, is similarly confused and non-committal about the impacts of burning fossil fuels, as is former coal-lobbyist-turned-EPA head Andrew Wheeler. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson said in 2015 that climate change was “irrelevant,” that temperatures were driven by natural cycles and, since then, hasavoided questions about the role of human activity in climate change.
OK, so there are more than five (with Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and Jeff Sessions among those who have denied the science in the past), but these five are well positioned to influence the energy and climate policies of the nation.
Wheeler, for example, is driving through cuts to national efficiency standards for motor vehicles and is relaxing pollution rules on coal power plants. Zinke and Perry are aggresively promoting fossil fuel growth with Trump as the climate-wrecker-in-chief. Carson heads an agency that has a role in promoting (or not) climate change adaptation and resilience for homes and properties, particularly after natural disasters.
Remembering not only do these five reject the advice of the world’s major science academies, but also the expertise of the scientists working in their own government agencies.
But while these five might be relative household names with their views well reported, DeSmog presents five lesser-known climate science deniers inside the administration who are also in positions to gut federal action on climate and promote fossil fuel-friendly policies, backed by their own convictions that climate change just isn't much of a problem.
Will Happer
Will Happer, emeritus professor from Princeton University, was once in the running as Trump’s science advisor but has now been appointed to the National Security Council, specializing in emerging technologies.
After news of Happer’s appointment became public, Science, republishing E&E News, characterized the 79-year-old physicist as a “vocal critic of mainstream climate science.”
But Happer is more than a mere critic — he has acted as an enabler and activist against action on climate change for well over a decade.
For years, Happer was chairman at the George Marshall Institute and then, when that was shuttered, he founded the CO2Coalition with former Exxon director, the late Roger Cohen. Both groups took fringe positions on the science of climate change, with Happer claiming that adding more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere will be good for humans.
In 2015, Happer was caught in a sting by Greenpeace when he offered to write a report on the “benefits” of CO2 for a fake oil client and then hide the funding, which would be directed to the CO2 Coalition. Since then, that group has received funding from the foundation of Trump backer and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer.
In December 2016, Happer attended a conference organized by conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin. Now he’s on the National Security Council.
Late in 2017, the Trump administration nixed climate change from a list of global threats to the U.S. in the National Security Strategy.
It's safe to say Happer won't be leading any pushes to add it back in.
Bill Wehrum
Bill Wehrum is the U.S. government’s most senior official on air pollution, as the assistant administrator in the Office of Air and Radiation at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Wehrum is a long-serving lawyer for the coal industry, as well as petrochemical and petroleum industry groups (such as Koch Industries).
Wehrum’s office is also tasked with looking at regulations to tackle power plant pollution and climate change and recently proposed the Affordable Clean Energy rule as a replacement for Obama's Clean Power Plan.
But as the New York Times reported, Wehrum has been delivering big time for his former fossil fuel industry clients by proposing the new rule, which EPA's own analysis shows would increase premature deaths from pollution.
One former EPA director, Bruce Buckheit, told the New York Times: “They basically found the most aggressive and knowledgeable fox and said, ‘Here are the keys to the hen-house.'”
Over a decade earlier, Wehrum was in the same position at EPA as he is now and back then argued against granting California a Clean Air Act waiver to set more stringent pollution standards for vehicles.
Back in power at the EPA, he ran the agency's midterm review of auto emissions standards, which this year recommended rolling back the stricter standards proposed by the Obama administration.
Under question during his confirmation hearings, Wehrum claimed that CO2 emissions as a main driver of climate change, which the government’s own scientists confirm, was to him an “open question." [vid]
Brooke Rollins
Rollins was an aide to Texas Governor Rick Perry before spending 15 years leading the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which she left in early 2018 to become assistant to the president in the Office of American Innovation (OIA), based in the White House (some wonder what the OIA actually does).
During her time at TPPF, Rollins promoted the work of the organization’s Kathleen Hartnett White, a climate science denier and fossil fuel evangelist whose controversial nomination to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality was ultimately withdrawn.
In August 2018, Rollins appeared at the Heartland Institute’s energy conference alongside that think tank’s new president Tim Huelskamp.
At the conference, Rollins nodded as Huelskamp suggested American schoolchildren’s heads were being “filled with mush” about the dangers of CO2.
When asked if the inner-workings of the White House were as chaotic as some media had claimed, Rollins replied: “Is there chaos? Yes. But I would say it’s like the chaos of my home — having four children in five years.”
Home life was like a “goat rodeo,” she said, and working in the White House wasn’t “much different.”
While at TPPF, Rollins wrote that Trump should exit the Paris climate agreement.
What she's actually doing in her role with OIA remains unclear, but the fact that she appeared at the America First Energy Conference, hosted by a climate science denying think tank, indicates she isn't likely straying from her previous positions on climate and energy.
Todd Wynn
Todd Wynn is director of the Interior Department’s Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs after spending years in pro-fossil fuel industry think tanks, many with Koch network connections.
On Wynn’s CV is his time working at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate bill mill where he led that group’s energy task force.
In that position, he fought against state renewable energy mandates and federal regulation of fracking fluids.
Lisa Graves, co-director of DocumentedInvestigations.org, has described Wynn as an “aggressive fossil fuel insider.”
In his new position with the Department of the Interior, Wynn is responsible for “strengthen[ing] relationships between state and local partners and external stakeholders” with Secretary Zinke's office, which, by the looks of it, has already been quite cozy with fossil fuel stakeholders.
An investigation by HuffPost alleged Wynn may have violated an ethics pledge by continuing to liaise with former associates while in his new job.
“Wynn has been a rising star in the influential network of fossil fuel-funded think tanks that push policies and produce pseudoscientific research to muddle the debate on climate change,” the HuffPost report detailed.
Wynn has himself questioned the role that fossil fuel emissions have on warming the planet, suggesting in 2010 that it was “absolutely ridiculous” to claim CO2 was driving climate change.
Daniel Simmons
Who better to lead the Trump administration's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy than a man who once asked for that same office to be closedwhile barracking for fossil fuels? Daniel Simmons is just that guy.
As reported by DeSmog and others, Simmons spent years working for so-called “free market think tanks,” including the Institute for Energy Research, before joining the Trump transition team and then securing the nomination for the role, located in the Department of Energy.
Simmons has a history of working at organizations that attack programs aimed at encouraging the development of clean energy industries like solar and wind power. But in 2015, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), where he was working, attacked the office Simmons now heads, writing disapprovingly that its role was to “promote and subsidize 'clean energy' as determined by government bureaucrats.”
The office, AEA wrote, “aims to control multiple sectors of the economy, from energy production and transmission to manufacturing and construction.” Cutting the office entirely could “save” the administration more than $9 billion. Simmons himself has claimed that the costs of the Paris climate agreement target of keeping global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius would be greater than any benefits.
Perfect man for the job? In the Trump administration, the answer is yes.
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ref 1
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/todd-wynn-interior-ethics_us_5b23f523e4b0f9178a9cd1fc
...Ryan Zinke's information from outside organizations comes under the control of a political appointee whose ties to former employers have raised ethics questions.
A top political appointee at the Interior Department repeatedly scheduled meetings with his former employers in an apparent violation of federal ethics rules, HuffPost has learned.
Todd Wynn, director of the agency’s powerful Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs, worked as the task force director at the American Legislative Exchange Council from 2011 to 2013, overseeing the energy, environment and agriculture division, and organizing three national conferences a year, a copy of his résumé shows. He then joined the utility trade group Edison Electric Institute, paying to participate in the ALEC task force he previously led.
On Oct. 27, he planned a 30-minute video call with Jennifer Butler, a senior policy adviser at the ALEC-linked State Policy Network, according to calendars released under a Freedom of Information Act request. On Dec. 19, he scheduled another such call with Grant Kidwell, the ALEC director in charge of his former task force. A spokeswoman for ALEC denied that the meeting occurred.
Two days later, Wynn slotted 30 minutes for a call with Rich Lindsey, who heads the energy and environment committee at the oil-funded Council of State Governments ― where, according to his CV and financial disclosures, Wynn also served as a committee member from June 2015 until he joined the Interior Department.
It’s unclear what might have been discussed during the calls, and indeed, HuffPost could not confirm whether they definitely took place as scheduled ― but the calendars of agency officials are generally reliable. The Interior Department and the three political operatives did not respond to HuffPost’s requests for comment on Friday.
Wynn’s meetings with ALEC and its affiliate did not violate the ethics pledge because his formal employment at the organization ended more than two years before he joined the agency, Interior Department spokeswoman Faith Vander Voort argued Monday via email. She said Wynn was not employed by the Council of State Governments.
Vander Voort did not respond to questions about Wynn’s continued work with ALEC through the Edison Electric Institute, his role at the Council of State Governments, or provide examples of other agency appointees with similar arrangements.
[pix looks like a proud boy]
CASCADE POLICY INSTITUTETodd Wynn appears in a video posted on YouTube by the conservative Cascade Policy Institute, one of his former employers.
But on Oct. 16, Wynn signed President Donald Trump’s ethics pledge prohibiting political appointees in the executive branch from participating “in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to [one’s] former employer or former clients.” Barred interactions include “any meeting or other communication relating to the performance of one’s official duties with a former employer or former client, unless the communication applies to a particular matter of general applicability and participation in the meeting or other event is open to all interested parties.”
The scheduled calls also appear to violate the “government-wide regulatory standards of conduct” that “bar [Wynn] from meeting personally with any former client or employer he served in the year prior to the meeting,” Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics, said in an email.
Apparentconflicts of interestare not new at the Interior Department. In March, HuffPost reported that Lori Mashburn, the agency’s White House liaison, attended two private events hosted by her former employer, the conservative Heritage Foundation. Her attendance violated the same ethics pledge Wynn signed. In May, newly released calendars showed David Bernhardt, the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, met with a trio of lobbyists for MGM Resorts International, the casino-resort giant that his longtime former employer also represents.
Wynn has been a rising star in the influential network of fossil fuel-funded think tanks that push policies and produce pseudoscientific research to muddle the debate on climate change. He maintained those ties since taking over in a critical position that controls the flow of information at the Interior Department, serving as a gatekeeper between Secretary Ryan Zinke and outside organizations.
In November, Wynn attended an energy conference hosted by the Heartland Institute,a former tobacco industry defender turned aggressive climate change denial outfit. Later that month he met with Reaching America, a group that advocates for increasing fossil fuel extraction as a means of reducing racial inequality. Throughout that month, he held four separate meetings with the Property and Environment Research Center, a Montana-based “free market” group associated with the State Policy Network.
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ref2
Interior Department advisory group relied on a top energy industry lobbyist to help draft a list of potential regulatory rollbacks, documents obtained by HuffPost show.
At least one suggestion ― reducing the role that local environmental concerns play in leasing federal lands for oil and gas development ― quickly became a reality.
The Onshore Work Group, charged with recommending how Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ought to regulate federal lands available for fossil fuel development, already has deep ties to the energy industry. Its chair is Kathleen Sgamma, the president of the oil and gas industry group Western Energy Alliance and a vocal proponent of tearing down many Obama-era environmental protections.
But metadata from the working group’s first draft of recommendations further link the Interior Department with the industry it is tasked with regulating. According to the metadata, Tripp Parks, the Western Energy Alliance’s head of government affairs, was the initial author of the document.
The working group belongs to a growing cadre of industry-friendly advisory bodies Zinke has set up to guide his agenda. In November, he assembled a wildlife conservation advisory group dominated by people with links to trophy hunting. Most members of a public lands advisory group have connections to the outdoor recreation industry.
“It’s a huge concern,” said John DeCicco, a University of Michigan research professor who has worked for the environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund. Under previous administrations, DeCicco said, committees like these were usually composed of scientific experts. “What it really represents is that certain powerful interests, moneyed interests, they have the ear of policymakers who are running roughshod over due process and running roughshod over important checks and balances that are supposed to be there.”
The working group was set up under the umbrella of the Royalty Policy Committee, a group tasked with recommending the royalty rates the federal government should charge for drilling. Many of the committee’s members hail from the oil and gas sector or have significant ties to it. Whereas the same committee had a narrow, technical focus under previous administrations, under Zinke, it has been making sweeping proposals to roll back regulations on federal lands. The committee members who set up the working group have proposed measures like charging bargain-basement royalties for deepwater drilling operations and have described their mandate as “looking at steps to be taken to make DOI a better business partner to its investors.”
Some of those steps appear to have been come directly from the Western Energy Alliance. A document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that Parks created the draft recommendations one day before Sgamma circulated them to committee members overseeing the working group.
“It’s a very clear instance of regulatory capture,” said Pat Gallagher, the Sierra Club’s legal director. Of the recommendations, he said, “There is no other object than to get drill bits in the ground as quickly as possible.”
At best, Gallagher said, industry representatives are creating an echo chamber inside the Interior Department. Several of Parks’ recommendations mirror a report the department released in October on “energy burdens.” Sgamma told HuffPost that Parks’ name appears in the document’s metadata because she asked him to pull out relevant sections of the report. This was “the full extent of my staff’s involvement,” she wrote in an email. What it really represents is that certain powerful interests, moneyed interests, they have the ear of policy makers who are running roughshod over due process.
John DeCicco, University of Michigan research professor
The recommendations included items that had been on Western Energy Alliance’s wish list for years, like a proposal to abandon the practice of re-evaluating long-term leases instead of automatically renewing them, which allowed federal regulators to plan around major changes to the landscape, such as new suburban developments.
Sgamma circulated the draft ― which she described as focusing on “increasing the competitiveness of federal lands” ― on Jan. 9, inviting her fellow group members to make changes. Some of Parks’ initial recommendations were cut from later drafts, but the agency has already taken action on one recommendation that survived: The Interior Department quietly ceased the Obama-era practice of planning local drilling sites according to local environmental concerns on Jan. 31. The industry had long argued that the practice created a redundant roadblock to new drilling projects.
“We’re very pleased,” Sgamma said at the time.
A handful of the most influential oil and gas developers in the country fund the Western Energy Alliance. Although it does not currently publicize the names of its members, the alliance has included Devon Energy, Halliburton, Anadarko Petroleum and Pioneer Natural Resources. Its political action committee donated $5,000 to Zinke’s campaigns while he served as Montana’s lone congressman.
The Western Energy Alliance fiercely opposed the Obama administration’s efforts to regulate the oil and gas industry,sometimes to the point of adopting a siege mentality. It invited Rick Berman, known for his ruthless, corporate-backed PR campaigns against environmentalists, to address its members in 2014. At the event, Berman framed the struggle against environmental groups as “an endless war.”
The draft recommendations are not the only example of the Western Energy Alliance having an outsized voice in the Trump administration. Parks, who is not registered as a lobbyist, previously presented an Interior advisory group with 15 recommendations for scrapping protections for the greater sage-grouse, which the industry felt impeded new energy projects; the advisory group adopted 13 of them.
The Interior Department did not respond to HuffPost’s questions about Parks’ role in drafting the recommendations. Sgamma has defended her role in making policy recommendations to the Interior Department by noting she has subject matter expertise. “I’m not an alternate member of the Royalty Policy Committee because of my sparkling personality,” she told HuffPost.
Sgamma added that the Interior Department had considered scrapping several of the Western Energy Alliance’s least favorite regulations even before the formation of her working group.
But the alliance’s relationship with the Trump administration also stretches back many months.
Entries in Zinke’s calendar show he met with representatives of the alliance in April 2017. A brief prepared for the secretary reminded him of a Trump administration order that for every new regulation created, agencies must place two old regulations on the chopping block.
The brief recommended that Zinke ask the alliance lobbyists which regulations he should scrap. But it wasn’t a matter of urgency: The agency has already rolled back more than two regulations for every new rule, the brief made clear, with the result that it had “built [up] a credit.”
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ALEC Dierector[sic] of Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force
former Vice President, Cascade Policy Institute
Wynn left the Cascade Policy Institute for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in 2011. As Director of the Energy, Environment, and Agriculture task force, he oversees much of ALEC’s work to deny climate change and promote fossil fuel corporations.
Holds a Master’s degree in International and Developmental Economics at the University of San Francisco. Prior to studying at the University of San Francisco, Todd attended Virginia Military Institute and California State University, Long Beach where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Economics.
QUOTES
"A lot of people like to say well Todd, you are in the hands of big oil or you’re an anti-environmentalist, but I consider myself an environmentalist of all sorts, I care about the beach, I care about the successful evolution of humankind and the planet. But the truth is you have to focus on environmental goals that are achievable cost effective and have a measurable benefit and if the cost outweigh the benefits it doesn’t make sense to charge ahead on an emotional and heart tugging issue like saving the planet.”
Source: todd wynn youtube
"Wind does not reduce carbon emissions but instead creates them."
Source: katu news
"Actual climate change in my part of the country, there’s not much, 1 degree Fahrenheit in the last few years."
Source: todd wynn youtube
"I think that global warming could be a net benefit for the planet in fact."
Source: Climate Chains homepage
DEEDS
Wynn has fought against renewable energy in Oregon.
Source: Cascade Policy Institute Website
Wynn is involved in the "Climate Chains" website and video along with well known climate deniers Chris Horner, Marlo Lewis, Myron Ebell, and Patrick Micheals.
Source: Climate Chains Website
Wynn is Project Director of the Carbon Cartel Education Project. The stated goal of the project is "to raise awareness of the costs and implications of policies based on global warming alarmism by conducting a multi-faceted campaign to peel away grassroots political support for carbon restrictions"
Source: Carbon Cartel Education Project
EVENTS
New York International Conference on Climate Change 2008, March 2-4
http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/proceedings.cfm
The relationship of Todd Wynn to the event: Speaker
Heartland Institute 4th International conference on climate change, Chicago, May 2010
http://www.heartland.org/events/2010Chicago/index.html
ORGANIZATIONS
Source: Cascade Policy Institute
Source: Heartland Institute website - Energy Policy for America guidebook
Source: sourcewatch CPI
ALEC - American Legislative Exchange Council
Source: ALEC website - Private Enterprise Board
SOURCES
Heartland Institute website - Energy Policy for America guidebook
Energy Policy for America, A Guidebook for State Legislators by Joseph L. Bast, President, The Heartland Institute and Sandy Liddy Bourne, Vice President, The Heartland Institute http://www.heartland.org/books/energyguide.cfm
Cascade Policy Institutehttp://www.cascadepolicy.org/
Cascade Policy Institute Websitehttp://www.cascadepolicy.org/2010/12/21/renewable-energy-woes/
Climate Chains Websitehttp://www.climatechains.com/bios.html
todd wynn youtubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YAfXiR3CeI&feature=related
katu newshttp://www.katu.com/news/local/87439577.html
sourcewatch CPIhttp://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cascade_Policy_Institute
Carbon Cartel Education Projecthttp://www.cascadepolicy.org/carbon-cartel-education-project/
Climate Chains homepagehttp://www.climatechains.com/
ALEC website - Private Enterprise Board
"Private Enterprise Board," American Legislative Exchange Council, obtained Mar 29 2012.http://www.alec.org/about-alec/private-enterprise-board/
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bs www http://cascadepolicy.org/analysts/more/todd-wynn/
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