NAM2
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3/16 see main and tag</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">see MAP legal arm</b>
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-april-6-2023/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-april-6-2023/</a></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">04.06.23 - 10:00AM</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Century Long PR Campaign to Connect Capitalism to Democracy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guest: Naomi Oreskes is professor of the history of science at Harvard University. Her books include, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, and her latest with historian of science and technology <b>Erik Conway, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.</b></font></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...child labor pew sunoco <b>NAM dupont</b> paid for von mises and hayek to come to US u chic; the free mkt pjt blueprint (rewrite road to serfdom, milton does it; lect series wm volker fdn)</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">little hse on prairie</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">xian econ, norm v peale; billy g; $ sign of god favor (recycled the --- of wealth); commies are godless, thus god likes capitalism</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">hollywood no more grapes of wrath motion pix assoc w ayn rand; wrote censorship codes not crit bank rich ppl; [sinclair EPIC? ]; CoC</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">RR: ike ltr to bro sec secure ~ sm# and stupid; GE NY (convicted rig elec mkt) , horatio alger, very pop pgm; RR sends the speech to nixon; libtard bk list ; RR unites social and fiscal conservatives? xian?</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">1929 ~ libtard</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/21/oreskes-conway-the-big-myth-free-market-capitalism-climate-change-mont-pelerin-society/">https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/21/oreskes-conway-the-big-myth-free-market-capitalism-climate-change-mont-pelerin-society/</a></font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, authors of the classic 2010 book <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2010/06/10/oreskes-conway-exposing-merchants-doubt/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming</span></a>, have released a new book placing that doubt machine into a longer arc of U.S. business and political history. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market</span></a> explores an even more ambitious history dating from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The book documents how today’s prevailing anti-regulatory and anti-government postures that deride Big Government and cheer for Big Business did not arise simply from grassroots demands. Instead, they arose from well-funded industry campaigns creating what Oreskes and Conway have called a manufactured consensus “quasi-religious belief” in deregulated markets and an accompanying diehard opposition to governmental solutions to public policy problems. </font></p><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fighting Public Utilities, Child Labor Laws</font></span></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of the first campaigns in that spirit occurred within the electricity utility industry via an organization which eventually became known as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/edison-electric-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Edison Electric Institute</a>. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What is now colloquially called<b> EEI, was launched in 1885 as the National Electric Light Association, or NELA</b>. At the time, it “represented more than five hundred of the largest privately owned electrical utilities, accounting for more than 90 percent of U.S. kilowatt output,” according to the book. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the 1920s, according to Oreskes and Conway, “electricity industry leaders organized one of the largest propaganda campaigns in the history of the United States.” The campaign aimed to persuade the public that<b> municipal-owned electricity was a bad thing,</b> advocating instead for investor-owned utilities. In the end, though, it resulted in higher rates for homeowners and small businesses and bigger profits for company owners and their bankrollers. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The initially unpopular campaign framed its activities under the guise of freedom and market efficiency. NELA’s influence operation — involving rewriting K-12 and university textbooks, courting and funding industry-friendly professors, utilizing astroturf campaigns, deploying sophisticated lobbying techniques to facilitate regulatory and legislative capture, and other deceptive practices — <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2015/12/28/miracle-american-oil-continental-resources-corporate-media-oil-exports/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">resembles</a> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/10/29/lng-exports-comments-copy-paste/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">much</a> of the fossil fuel industry’s <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/13/exxon-shell-bp-api-concerns-carbon-capture/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">political pressure</a> that DeSmog has <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/01/31/three-states-pushing-alec-bill-climate-change-denial-schools/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">covered</a> and <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/09/16/frackademia-people-money-behind-edf-fracking-methane-emissions-study/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">uncovered</a> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/06/14/your-energy-america-ddc-advocacy-atlantic-coast-pipeline/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">week-in</a> and <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2019/06/06/enbridge-minnesotans-line-3-front-group-oil-pipeline/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">week-out</a> for <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dyyx/how-a-small-blog-became-a-thorn-in-the-side-of-corporate-climate-denial" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">over a decade and a half</a>. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the time, it was th<b>e first of its kind industrial-scale full-court press, and it provided a roadmap for other corporate hegemons in subsequent decades. And NELA’s goal went far beyond merely winning a PR campaign, Oreskes and Conway conclude; it had much deeper ideological underpinnings.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“[U]nlike conventional PR, the aim was not simply to create a positive impression of a particular business or even of the whole industry,” they write. “Rather, the goal—expressed outright in numerous documents—was to change the way Americans thought about private property, capitalism, and regulation” altogether.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Core to NELA’s campaign, Oreskes and Conway wrote, was the idea “that free-market capitalism was the embodiment of freedom, writ large, and that any restriction on the freedom of any business would put us on a slippery slope to tyranny.” </b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Private ownership of the electricity industry was, up until then, relatively rare in the United States and even more so throughout the industrializing world. But as of 2017, <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">72 percent </a>of U.S. electricity customers got their power from investor-owned utilities. NELA’s campaign, in other words, changed history as we know it. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, its successor EEI and its member companies continue to <a href="https://www.energyandpolicy.org/eei-campaign-institute/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">wage</a> <a href="https://www.energyandpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ratepayers-funding-Edison-Electric-Institute-and-other-organizations.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">deceptive</a> PR campaigns to fight renewable energy and <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2018/05/23/koch-edison-electric-institute-wooing-interior-department-vincent-devito/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">bolster</a> the <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/07/12553/utility-trade-group-funds-alec-attack-americans-who-use-solar" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">continued consumption</a> of fossil fuels.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The NELA campaign’s legacy, however, goes far beyond its sector alone, according to Oreskes and Conway. “Perhaps most importantly, NELA pioneered a strategy of insisting that these claims were true, regardless of the facts,” they wrote.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Broadening their view beyond the fossil fuel industry, Oreskes and Conway also detail how the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/national-association-manufacturers/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">National Association of Manufacturers</a> (NAM) propelled similar efforts across other industries during the same era. Like EEI, fast-forwarding to the present-day, NAM has served as a key node of climate denialism</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But in its earliest days,</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">NAM maintained a different sinister focus, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">according to </span><em style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">: advocating against child labor laws amid what the authors described as a “pandemic” of workplace deaths both among young workers and the adult workforce. </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The sheer volume of such deaths served as one of the first major wakeup calls in the need for a more active regulatory state, the book maps out.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In making its case for child labor and against regulations protecting children, NAM espoused “that the federal government had no business interfering in business” and called such a notion “socialistic in its origin, philosophy and associations.”</font></p><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Libertarian Fringe to (Neo)Liberal Mainstream</font></span></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While both NELA and NAM laid the groundwork for a paradigm that’s alive and well today, their ideas were not adopted globally until the formation of the<b> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/mont-pelerin-society/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Mont Pelerin Society</a>, </b>a group created in 1947 that like EEI and NAM has received close scrutiny from DeSmog for years. Oreskes and Conway devote a whole chapter of <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em> to Mont Pelerin. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like NELA and NAM, Mont Pelerin’s roots lay in anti-regulatory and business-funded ideology. <b>But unlike them, Mont Pelerin came out of academia a</b>nd via professors committed to the now globally pervasive neoliberal ideology they created. Mont Pelerin inspired similar groups that are, like it, still active today, such as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/koch-industries-inc/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch Industries</a>-funded <a href="https://www.desmog.com/institute-humane-studies-george-mason-university/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Institute for Humane Studies</a> at <a href="https://www.desmog.com/george-mason-university/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">George Mason University</a> and the University of Chicago’s free market-oriented Economics Department. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oreskes and Conway point to a legion of like-minded groups arising by the 1970s, riding the momentum of an academic community devoted to neoliberal ideology, and reacting to the gains made in environmental protection and other areas. Formation of these groups accelerated after the metaphorical call-to-arms made in a memo written to the<b> U.S. Chamber of Commerce by the then-tobacco industry attorney and soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell. </b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Known today as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2011/08/23/40th-anniversary-lewis-powell-memo-launching-corporate-propaganda-infrastructure/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Powell Memo</a>, the 1972 letter called for Big Business to undergo “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Powell Memo, Oreskes and Conway concluded, spearheaded free market fundamentalist groups such as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/cato-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Cato Institute</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/koch-family-foundations//#!/stream" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch Family Foundations</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/scaife-family-foundations/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Scaife Family Foundations</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2016/01/21/beyond-koch-brothers-scaife-olin-bradley-jane-mayer-dark-money/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Olin Foundation</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/heritage-foundation/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Heritage Foundation</a>, and the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/federalist-society-law-and-public-policy-studies/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Federalist Society</a>, among others. All of these entities, and the groups they fund or work alongside in coalitions, remain powerful forces within U.S. and global politics. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</span> further highlights how those think tanks and companies also played a<b> key role in defeating the 2009 and 2010 congressional push, led by then-President Barack Obama, to pass a federal, market-oriented climate bill known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act</b>. Critics would charge that the policy approach taken in the bill, emblematically, embodies the very “market fundamentalist” ethos reigning over U.S. politics for the past 100-plus years. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the congressional debate over a bill that would have<b> enshrined the policy lever of cap-and-trade, the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/02/11/study-confirms-tea-party-was-created-big-tobacco-and-billionaires/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch-funded Tea Party network</a> also ascended</b>[</font><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">vid]</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">previous congressional pushes in the 2000s for what was ultimately a business-friendly climate policy, had enjoyed bipartisan support. But <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em> explains how as the <b>Tea Party</b> network took flight, Republican Party support for the climate bill — and broader climate action — eroded to a near-zero level. It has mostly remained there since.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the same time, the reality of climate change had and has continued to become all the more clear. That reality though, Oreskes and Conway wrote, clashes with the <b>religion of market fundamentalism. </b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“[H]ad the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market-place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale?” the authors asked of the legion of climate-change deniers who helped to kill the bill. “To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, but now.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Although this “quasi-religious belief” in the power of the market holds the greatest sway with conservatives, Oreskes and Conway argue that belief in the “magic of the marketplace” has become an intoxicating ideology within<b> liberal circles too, including within climate policy debates.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Even in supposedly liberal enclaves like Cambridge, Massachusetts,” where <a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Oreskes teaches at Harvard</a>, “many people think climate change will be best addressed by technological innovation in the marketplace,” the co-authors surmise, perhaps in alluding to the prototypical <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2020/05/24/ernest-moniz-labor-fracking-clean-coal-geoengineering/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">industry-friendly</a> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/18/doe-moniz-blueprint-carbon-capture-pipelines/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">policies</a> pushed by former Obama Administration U.S. Secretary of Energy <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/04/09/ernest-moniz-keystone-xl-contractor-american-petroleum-institute-fracked-gas-exports/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Ernest Moniz</a> — a professor at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The rise of right-wing think tanks helped spread the pro-market, antigovernment gospel across the country and insert what had been decidedly niche views into the mainstream,” the authors explained of the ideology’s spread. Other scholars have referred to this as the <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2016/01/21/beyond-koch-brothers-scaife-olin-bradley-jane-mayer-dark-money/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">“force field” effect</a>, moving the gravitational pull of what’s possible within U.S. politics further and further toward right-wing, corporate-created policy solutions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ideological roots of anti-democracy, anti-environmental, and anti-regulatory campaigning explored in <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em> also serve as the heart and soul of the book <a href="https://www.desmog.com/climate-cover-up/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming</span></a>, written by DeSmog co-founders James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you have learned from DeSmog’s reporting shedding light on the climate change denial machine, you’ll love <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em>, an excerpt from which follows below. The book is a must-read for all students of the sordid history of public relations and governmental capture. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Go <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">grab a copy</a> and <a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">check</a><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/widening-the-lens-of-accountability-with/id1439735906?i=1000581948495" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> out</a> some <a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-november-16-2022/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">recent</a> interviews on the book, as well, for further background. A <a href="https://vimeo.com/727392720" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">video</a> of Professor Oreskes discussing the book can also be seen below.</font></p><h2 id="h-excerpt-from-the-big-myth" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Excerpt from <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</span></font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">In the 1990s,</span> as capitalism was being declared triumphant in many quarters, scientists had proved that man-made climate change was under way.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="1" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">1</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Climate change was textbook market failure. It arose from everyday economic activity— using fossil fuels—but was about to impose a huge external cost, inundating major coastal cities around the globe, making hurricanes and cyclones even more deadly than they already were, and dislocating tens or even hundreds of millions of people. It was also textbook environmental injustice, as poor people would almost certainly bear the brunt of a problem created by the rich.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But it also had a textbook answer: putting a price on carbon</b>. Economists called this solution a “Pigouvian tax”—after the Cambridge economist Arthur Pigou, who in the early twentieth century had helped develop the concept of negative externalities. (Pigou also suggested it would be reasonable for governments to subsidize activities that had “positive externalities,” such as education.) The idea of pricing social and environmental costs of carbon was hardly radical; Pigou was firmly mainstream, a respected scholar at Cambridge University, a leading figure in what came to be known as the Cambridge school of economics.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="2" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">2</a></span> The obvious benefit of the Pigouvian approach was that it remedied the market failure directly by embedding information—in this case scientific information—into the price of fossil fuels. Then consumers could decide for themselves whether or not to buy more expensive fossil fuels, and producers of alternatives could compete on a level playing field.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The Clinton administration proposed to address climate change through a Pigouvian tax, the so-called “BTU” tax</b> (referring to the heat content of fuels as measured in British Thermal Units).<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="3" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">3</a></span> But it was opposed—indeed, ridiculed—by a broad coalition of conservatives, including, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and virtually every right-wing think tank in Americ</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">a.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="4" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">4</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The notorious Global Climate Coalition, a network of fossil fuel producers and users that in the 1990s successfully prevented the U.S. Congress from ratifying the Kyoto protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, was originally established as a committee of the National Association of Manufacturers. Even though the idea of putting a price on carbon was a mainstream economic approach to market failure, Republicans framed it as just another example of Democrats’ penchant to “tax and spend.” The Wall Street Journal mocked it as Al Gore’s “favorite tax</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.”</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="5" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">5</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his 1979 paper on nonmarket failure, economist Charles Wolf had slipped into his conclusion the idea that one cause of nonmarket failure was “premature but politically effective demands for government action.”<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="6" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">6</a></span> In the 1990s, many Republicans picked up on this theme, arguing that it was premature to act on climate change. Even at the time, that was wrong: scientists already had a consensus that man-made climate change was under way and likely to be very costly.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="7" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">7</a></span> To act in the 1990s would have been appropriate. It would have been timely. But Clinton was unable to generate congressional support for action; Republican opposition made it clear that any proposal to put a price on carbon would be dead on arrival. In 1999, when Vice President Al Gore ran for president on a platform prioritizing climate change, journalist Gregg Easterbrook (brother of Judge Frank Easterbrook) embarrassed him on the campaign trail with a false story that his mentor—climate champion Roger Revelle—had experienced a deathbed conversion and died thinking climate change was not a serious problem.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="8" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">8</a></span> (He had not.)</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As the 1990s became the 2000s—and scientists declared the evidence “unequivocal”—market fundamentalist did not adjust their views. To the contrary, their opposition hardened.</b><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="9" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">9</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2006, Lord Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, concluded on behalf of the UK government that, yes, fixing climate change would be expensive—perhaps as much as 1 percent of global GDP per annum—but not fixing it would cost much more: at least 5 percent and perhaps as much as 20 percent.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="10" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">1</a><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">0</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Here was a solid argument from a man who could scarcely be accused of being any kind of -ist other than an economist. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In response, conservatives dug in deeper. Senator Ted Cruz promoted the canard that global warming had stopped; Senator James Inhofe called it a liberal conspiracy to bring down capitalism.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="11" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">11</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> No matter what solutions were proposed—market-friendly or not—the right wing found reasons to oppose them. The science wasn’t settled (they claimed). It would be too expensive to fix. We could just adapt. It was all a hoax. Often these claims were couched in libertarian terms, as when in 2011 former House Speaker Newt Gingrich deemed the push to address climate change “the newest excuse to take control of lives.”</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="12" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">12</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The singular exception to climate denial in Republican Party leadership was Senator John McCain. He and conservative Democrat Joe Lieberman introduced Climate Stewardship acts in 2003, 2005, and 2007 to address the carbon dioxide emissions </b>that drive climate change by creating an emissions trading system—a proven mechanism, albeit more complicated than a Pigouvian tax. But when given the chance to use it to address climate change, Republicans refused.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="13" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">13</a></span> The 2003 bill failed on mostly party lines, with a few Democrats and nearly all Republicans in opposition. But it was a closer call than many expected, and soon Congress faced intense lobbying pressure against climate legislation, <b>particularly from NAM and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce</b>. The 2005 version came to a vote and failed 60–38, with only a handful of Republicans voting yea.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="14" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">14</a></span> Two years after that, McCain could not even persuade Republican leaders to bring a climate bill to the Senate floor.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="15" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">15</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2009, Congress tried once more, with the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as <b>Waxman-Markey, </b>for its primary sponsors, Massachusetts representative Ed Markey and California representative Henry Waxman). For the fourth time in a decade, Congress had the opportunity to address climate change using a market mechanism, and for the fourth time rejected it.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> The bill barely passed the Democratic-led House; nearly all Republicans voted against, as did Democrats from fossil-fuel-producing states (and a few Democrats who found the bill too weak). The Senate never brought it to a vote. Democrats concluded they could not overcome the “wall of opposition” they faced from their Republican colleagues, opposition fortified by fierce lobbying.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="16" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">16</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> One analysis concluded that, in the eighteen months between January 2009 and June 2010, electric utilities, oil and gas companies, trade associations, and think tanks spent at least $500 million against climate change legislation.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="17" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">17</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Another study tracing anti-climate lobbying back to 2003 places the figure at closer to $1 billion.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="18" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">18</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">The fossil fuel</span> industry’s economic interests in preventing climate action have always been obvious; less understood is how it has camouflaged those interests. No one ever said, “I am denying climate change to protect corporate profits.” They said they were protecting jobs, protecting the economy, and protecting free markets from government “encroachment.” They said they were <b>fighting for capitalism and freedom</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>.</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But historically, capitalism has never been just one thing: Adam Smith’s eighteenth-century vision of a democratic, distributed marketplace populated by small bankers and businessmen was a far cry from the industrial capitalism that developed in early nineteenth-century England and Germany—with its cruel “Satanic mills”—or the monopolies and managerial capitalism that came to dominate America in the late nineteenth century, much less the globally financed capitalism that emerged at the end of the twentieth century</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. China has liberalized its markets while continuing to oppress and even murder its ethnic and religious minorities. There are many capitalisms. American market fundamentalists fight for a form of capitalism that is both brutal and ignorant: that brushes aside market failure, anticompetitive practices, and external costs, in part by denying the facts of science, the facts of history, and the necessary role of government in making capitalism work.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="19" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">19</a></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The question is not whether government should set limits that prevent individual autonomy from producing collective harm, the question is where we draw the lines. That is not an economic question, it is a political one. Market fundamentalists have managed to distract from the political aspects of these decisions and frame them as questions of “economic freedom.” Thus, a reasonable response to climate change is rejected as unreasonable “government encroachment.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All this may make one wonder: was this ever <b><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">really</span> </b>about capitalism? Or freedom? Or was it all just one long, semi-continuous, shape-shifting defense of the prerogatives of big business? Of freedom for capital and capitalists? Or had the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market- place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale? To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, but<b> <span style="box-sizing: border-box;">now.</span></b></font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ref bib...</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">~ ESG // conflict minerals 1st maned free sp BS?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/national-assn-of-manufacturers-v-securities-and-exchange-commission/">
</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/national-assn-of-manufacturers-v-securities-and-exchange-commission/">https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/cases/national-assn-of-manufacturers-v-securities-and-exchange-commission/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><section class="attribution notice show" data-id="1" style="margin: 0px 0px 40px; padding: 40px; box-sizing: inherit; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(232, 232, 232); background-color: rgb(228, 232, 234);"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Global Freedom of Expression is available on our <a href="https://globalfreedomofexpression.columbia.edu/credits/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; transition: border 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, color 0.25s ease 0s, box-shadow 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px !important;">Credits</a> page.</font></p></section><section class="open" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(232, 232, 232);"><h2 class="hx" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 25px 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: 300; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 30px; letter-spacing: 2px; text-transform: uppercase; box-sizing: inherit; cursor: pointer;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CASE ANALYSIS</font></h2><div class="wrap" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding: 20px 80px 40px 100px; box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px !important;"><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; letter-spacing: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Case Summary and Outcome</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) required companies to disclose on their websites and in reports to the SEC whether they used minerals from African regions in conflict (conflict disclosure). The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the label was compelled speech, which the government failed to show would reduce violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and thus it violated the companies’ free speech rights. The current case reviewed the U.S. Court of Appeal’s earlier ruling on the disclosure in light of a decision that allowed the government to compel meat companies to put origin of production labels on their products. The court upheld its earlier ruling, stating that the meat label case did not apply since the conflict disclosure label did not deal with advertisement or point of sale issues.</font></p><hr class="thick" style="background: rgb(200, 220, 231); margin: 20px 0px 25px; padding: 0px; width: 80px; height: 4px; border: none; box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 80px;" /><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; letter-spacing: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Facts</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The 2010 Dodd Frank Wall Street reform law included a provision requiring public companies to disclose on their websites and in reports to the SEC whether the products they produce include materials from war torn regions of Africa, specifically the DRC.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) challenged the law arguing that the SEC adopted the costliest rule and rejected alternative regulation (administrative procedure). NAM also argue that the law’s requirement to place a “conflict free” label was compelled speech that violated the First Amendment.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In June 2013, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against NAM on both arguments.</b> On April 14, 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the district court’s ruling on the administrative procedure issue, but rejected its ruling on the compelled speech issue. On August 18, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals reheard the case on the First Amendment issue per the requests of the SEC and Amnesty International in light of this court’s intervening decision in the case of <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">American Meat Institute v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, </em>760 F.3d 18 (AMI) and its application of the <em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the Supreme Court of Ohio, </em>471 U.S. 626 (Zauderer). <b>The AMI case ruled that the federal government did not violate the First Amendment when it compelled companies to place country of origin labels on their meat.</b></font></p><hr class="thick" style="background: rgb(200, 220, 231); margin: 20px 0px 25px; padding: 0px; width: 80px; height: 4px; border: none; box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 80px;" /><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; letter-spacing: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Decision Overview</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The decision overview is based on the most recent court decision on the First Amendment compelled speech issue.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The main issue in this case concerned the purpose of the conflict minerals label. Defining the purpose allows the court to pick what test to apply in judging the constitutionality of compelled speech. If the purpose of compelled speech related to voluntary commercial advertising then a more relaxed test listed in <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Zauderer </em>and used in <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">AMI</em>, the meat labeling case, could be applied. <b>The <em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Zauderer </em>two part test required that (1) the government’s compelled speech advances a substantial interest, and (2) the compelled speech was reasonably related to the government’s substantial interest.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the compelled speech was for commercial speech for other purposes, then the court would apply the test listed in the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v Public Service Commission</em>, 447 U.S. 557<em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">.</em> <b>The <span style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Central Hudson<i> </i></span>test requires governments to show (1) substantial government interest (2) directly and materially advanced by the restriction (3) and that the restriction is narrowly tailored.</b></font></p><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> The court ruled that the conflict minerals disclosure did not deal with voluntary commercial advertising or points of sale since it required companies to disclose on their websites and reports to the SEC. Thus, the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Zauderer</em> test did not apply. The court reiterated that in its prior judgment on this case, it did not decide whether to apply the strict scrutiny test or the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Central </em><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Hudson </em>test because the labeling requirement violated <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Central </em><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Hudson</em>‘s requirement that the restriction be narrowly tailored as the government did not provide evidence that less restrictive means would fail the purpose of the regulation. Despite its early ruling that the label was unconstitutional, the court nonetheless went through the application of the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">AMI </em>and <em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">Central Hudson </em>tests since it felt that there was too much uncertainty in the legal reasoning of applying the tests.</font></div><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, the court determined that the substantial interest required by both the <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">AMI </em>and<em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"> Central Hudson </em>was to ameliorate the humanitarian conflict in the DRC. The court identified the substantial interest from the SEC’s appellate briefs.</font></div><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The court then evaluated the effectiveness of the measures to achieve the substantial interest. The court explained that the government offered little evidence in this regard and dismissed the government’s assertion that the regulation was based on a value judgment of common sense in a foreign affairs matter and that foreign relations judgments are not always made on concrete evidence. The court reiterated that this was speculation and conjecture, lacking quantifiable evidence, and although the label might have positive effects, the lack of evidence was not enough to compel speech under the First Amendment.</font></div><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The court also reviewed the compelled disclosure in this case against the <em style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;">AMI </em>holding that compelled disclosure must be purely factual and uncontroversial. The court explained that there was no clear definition as to what “purely factual and uncontroversial” meant, only that “uncontroversial” must have meant something different than purely factual. The court explained that something factual and uncontroversial presently may be different in the future, citing the example of new findings regarding the effect of eggs on cholesterol levels in people after new studies. The court also explained that a controversy was a dispute, especially a public one. However, the court failed to offer a specific definition or a test of the “factual and uncontroversial” legal standard.</font></div><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Lastly, the court ruled that even if the government statutorily defined “conflict free”, it was not enough to withstand constitutional review of<b> compelled speech</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>. This is because ruling otherwise would allow the government to compel companies to use certain speech simply by defining it, which in turn would allow the government to skew public debate in certain directions by using certain definitions.</b></span></font></div><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><div data-canvas-width="8.715686274509803" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The court concluded that the labels “conflict free” or “not conflict free” were hardly factual and non-ideological because they conveyed a moral responsibility for the Congo war on companies that only indirectly finance armed groups</b>. [more]</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></section></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5 2017 NEELA B may</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26052017/children-climate-change-lawsuit-fossil-fuel-api/">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26052017/children-climate-change-lawsuit-fossil-fuel-api/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">t<span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">he country’s most powerful fossil fuel lobbies have asked a federal judge for permission to withdraw from a groundbreaking climate change lawsuit, a stark about-face after the groups voluntarily intervened in the case two years ago and fought assiduously to have it dismissed.</span></font></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">The federal lawsuit, </span><a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/YouthAmendedComplaintAgainstUS-a9b4.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Juliana et al v. United States</em></a><em style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247); box-sizing: inherit;">, </em><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">was brought in August 2015 on behalf of 21 youths, now aged 9 to 21, over the federal government’s alleged failure to rein in fossil fuel development and address climate change.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> The <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/20170525-API-motion-to-withdraw.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">American Petroleum Institute</a> (API), the <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/20170525-AFPM-motion-to-withdraw-5cya.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers</a> (AFPM) and the <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/20170522-NAM-motion-to-withdraw.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">National Association of Manufacturers</a> (NAM) joined the federal government’s side as intervenors, saying the case was a “direct threat” to their businesses.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It is unusual for intervenors to seek to withdraw from a case. API and AFPM filed withdrawal motions in federal district court in Eugene, Oregon, on Thursday, and NAM filed a similar motion on Monday</b>. It is unclear when federal magistrate judge Thomas Coffin will rule on their requests. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The intervenors and the Justice Department have repeatedly filed motions to have the case dismissed</span><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><b>. But federal judges have ruled against them, and the case could go to trial as early as November. In the interim, lawyers for both sides could seek documents from one another and question people under oath through what is known as the discovery process.</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Julia Olson, one of the lead counsels for the plaintiffs and executive director of the environmental group <a href="https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">Our Children’s Trust</a>, said the industry lobbyists are seeking to withdraw in order to avoid <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01032017/childrens-trust-climate-change-lawsuit-api" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none;">handing over potentially damaging information</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two separate <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">investigative series in 2015, first by InsideClimate News</a> and then the Columbia University School of Journalism/Los Angeles Times, revealed that the oil industry conducted cutting-edge research on <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">climate change</a> as far back as the 1970s before launching a multibillion-dollar campaign in the 1990s to cast doubt on climate science and delay action to cut fossil fuel emissions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“After these youths sued the government, the trade associations pleaded their members’ interests would be destroyed if they weren’t allowed to be in the case, but now they are running for the hills,” Olson said in a statement. “Now, they’ve decided they’re better off being on the sidelines than subjecting themselves to discovery.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The plaintiff lawyers have said they will try to depose key federal officials, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Tillerson was chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil from 2006 to January 2017 and also served as president of API.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Frank Volpe, an attorney for all three groups, did not answer a request for comment. API also declined to respond.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In their motions, the defendants’ lawyers said withdrawing would streamline the discovery process</b>. “Withdrawal of an intervenor will reduce the number of parties to this proceeding and, accordingly, reduce the amount of discovery, reduce discovery-related motions practice, and avoid the possibility of duplicative discovery efforts and duplicative proceedings,” the defendants wrote in the API and AFPM motions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The intervenors joined in part because of their concerns that the Justice Department under President Obama might not mount a sufficiently vigorous defense. NAM Senior Vice President and <b>General Counsel Linda Kelly i</b>ndicated that her group seeks to leave the suit in part because its interests align more closely with the Trump administration. </font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px; background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As the dynamics have changed over the last several months, we no longer feel that our participation in this case is needed to safeguard industry and our workers,” Kelly said in an emailed statement. “We fully support the efforts of the remaining defendants to push back against the plaintiffs’ ill-conceived legal theory of regulation by court decree, and we are confident they will ultimately prevail.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">The lawsuit is based on a legal concept called the <b>public trust doctrine,</b> which argues that the government holds resources such as land, water or fisheries in trust for its citizens. C<b>limate litigators contend that the government is a trustee of the atmosphere, too. The doctrine’s power flows from the Fifth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and the Vesting, Posterity and Nobility Clauses of the Constitution, the plaintiffs maintain.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In <b>2015, environmental plaintiffs in the Netherlands, </b>South Africa and Pakistan, as well as <b>Massachusetts and Washington state, </b>won similar human rights or constitutional cases that force authorities to more aggressively cut carbon emissions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The plaintiffs in <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Juliana </em>argue that the federal government has known for at least 50 years that combustion of fossil fuels adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and damages the climate. Because it chose to take actions to promote and subsidize fossil fuel use and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions, the government violated their right to protection from environmental degradation under the trust doctrine, the suit alleges.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(247, 247, 247);">“The overarching public trust resource is our country’s life-sustaining climate system, which encompasses our atmosphere,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">”</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> the <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Juliana </em>pleading says. “As sovereign trustees, Defendants have a duty to refrain from ‘substantial impairment’ of these essential natural resources.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 0.75rem; grid-column: 4 / span 6; word-break: break-word; z-index: 1; margin-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Until their requests to withdraw, the <b>intervenors and the federal government had countered that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue and that the constitutional arguments they used lacked merit.</b></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MAP legal arm</font></span></div><div><h2 id="h-key-people" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Key People</font></h2><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><li style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">Linda Kelly </span>— Senior vice president and general counsel of the National Association of Manufacturers (<span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">NAM</span>) and “lead on the <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">NAM</span>’s Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (<span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span>)</span>.”<a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s5" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> [5]</a>, <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s9" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[9]</a></font></li><li style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">Lindsey de la Torre </span>— <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20180220232458/http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2018/01/29/ee-news-nam-hires-ex-doj-lawyer-fight-activist-litigation/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Executive director</a>. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s10" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[10]</a></font></li><li style="background: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">Phil Goldberg </span>— <a href="https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2019/01/23/national-association-of-manufacturers-hires-special-counsel-to-handle-growing-climate-change-lawsuits/" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Senior outside legal adviser and spokesman</a>. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s18" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[18]</a></font></li></ul><h2 id="h-actions" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Actions</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">January 2019</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The National Association of Manufacturers</span><a href="https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2019/01/23/national-association-of-manufacturers-hires-special-counsel-to-handle-growing-climate-change-lawsuits/?slreturn=20190126193308" rel="nofollow external noopener noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> hired Phil Goldberg</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, managing partner of the Washington, D.C., office of </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Shook, Hardy <span class="amp" style="box-sizing: border-box;">&</span> Bacon</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, as special counsel to help </span><span class="caps" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span><a href="https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2019/02/26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> fight against climate change lawsuits</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> filed against oil companies. </span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s18" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[18]</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, </span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s19" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[19]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Goldberg formerly <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lobbyist.php?id=Y0000015602L&year=a" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">worked as a lobbyist</a> for the coal industry, and his law firm <a href="http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/shook_hardy_smokes_em/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Shook, Hardy <span class="amp" style="box-sizing: border-box;">&</span> Bacon</a> has a history of defending the tobacco industry</b>. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s20" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[20]</a>,<a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s21" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> [21]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sharon Eubanks, a former Department of Justice lawyer who has worked on cases against the tobacco industry, compared <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span>‘s fight of climate litigation suits to tobacco:</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span class="dquo" style="box-sizing: border-box;">“</span>It’s very similar what they’re doing, only the tobacco industry at least didn’t come right out and say ‘We’re going to target these lawsuits directly.’ They did so indirectly. But <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">NAM</span> and <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span>, they’re like, ‘We’re targeting the lawsuits.’</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">” </span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s19" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[19]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">April 2018</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b><a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060078557" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">E&E</span> News</span> reported </a>that <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> began fighting back against Californian municipalities</b> and cities that had sued more than 20 oil companies. <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> demanded a range of documents including paperwork, cellphone records, payments, and other documents containing the names of the oil companies</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s17" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[17]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> said their goal was to expose details of the lawsuits against the oil companies:</font></p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; position: relative; margin-top: 10px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; padding: 0px 35px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“We really believe strongly in transparency. We think that taxpayers have a right to know what’s behind these lawsuits,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">” said Lindsey de la Torre, executive director of </span><span class="caps" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. She added that</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> “really what this whole effort is about is <b>trial attorneys and politicians</b> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">raising their public profile</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> at the expense of manufacturers.”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s17" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[17]</a></font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>They said they became involved because oil manufacturers have been among those targeted by climate-related lawsuits. De la Torre declined to respond whether <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> gets any funding from oil companies. </b> <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s17" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[17]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Officials from the cities described it as </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">bullying: <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s17" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[17]</a></span></font></p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; position: relative; margin-top: 10px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; padding: 0px 35px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> “Instead of owning up to the liabilities and culpabilities of issues of climate change, they’re carrying out a very specific and targeted campaign of me and others. That’s very clear,” said Serge Dedina, mayor of<b> Imperial Beach</b>. “This is part of the fossil fuel industry playboo</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">k.”</span></font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> contended that the lawyers representing the cities “stand to gain a lot of money in these lawsuits.” Dana McRae, county counsel for <b>Santa Cruz </b>County, said that their aim is “ensuring that our taxpayers aren’t on the hook for climate-change-related damages knowingly caused by these fossil fuel companies.” <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s17" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[17]</a></font></p><blockquote class="wp-block-quote" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; position: relative; margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; padding: 0px 35px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our outside counsel only gets paid if we prevail in court, so if <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> and Exxon are so confident that our lawsuits have no merit, let’s just go to trial and see who is right,” McRae said. “If <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> is really so concerned about attorney fees, they should start with the lawyers for Exxon and the other defendants. Those lawyers get paid for every six minutes they work, at rates that are upward of $1,000 an hour or more.” <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s17" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[17]</a></font></p></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">February 12, 2018</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180220210153/http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2018/02/12/map-launches-ad-campaign-expose-mayor-de-blasios-attack-manufacturers/" target="blank" rel="nofollow noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> announced</a> it was launching an ad campaign to attack New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio after de Blasio said he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/01/10/new-york-city-sues-shell-exxonmobil-and-other-oil-majors-over-climate-change/?utm_term=.ee69f391349c" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">would sue oil companies</a> including <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BP</span>, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell in the wake of the devastation caused by climate change</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s11" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[11]</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, </span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s12" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[12]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="dquo" style="box-sizing: border-box;">“</span>Mayor de Blasio’s frivolous lawsuit is a farce and a direct threat to the jobs and livelihoods of manufacturing workers in New York and across America,” <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">NAM</span> President and <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">CEO</span> Jay Timmons stated in a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180220210429/https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/timmons-mayor-de-blasio-owes-new-yorkers-an-apology-300598173.html" target="blank" rel="nofollow noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">February 13 <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> news release</a>.<a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s13" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> [13]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">City Hall spokesman Eric Phillips criticized the ad campaign. “Shadowy groups funded by Big Oil won’t keep the mayor from fighting for our planet and city’s future,” he said, <a href="https://nypost.com/2018/02/12/ads-will-attack-de-blasios-lawsuits-against-oil-companies/" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">quoted by the <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">New York Post</em></a>. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s14" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[14]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Jay Timmons later </b><a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20180220231527/http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2018/02/20/icymi-nams-ceo-fox-business-fighting-trial-lawyers-politicians-want-take-manufacturing/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><b>went on <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Fox Business News</em> with Charles Payne</b> </a>where he discussed de Blasio. ““Another problem that we’re facing and another reason that I’m here in New York today, Charles, is we are fighting against trial lawyers and politicians who want to take down manufacturing. Mayor de Blasio is suing energy companies right now for the subject of climate change,” Timmons said. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s15" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> [15]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">December 2017</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>One of <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span>‘s first actions was to criticize the investigation by Democratic state attorneys general investigating <a href="https://www.desmog.com/2015/11/05/ny-attorney-general-investigation-subpoena-exxonmobil-peabody-coal-climate-denial" target="blank" rel="noopener external noreferrer" data-wpel-link="external" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">what ExxonMobil knew</a></b> about climate change, although <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span> would also target other issues they see as impacting industry’s bottom line. <a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[2]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to Linda Kelly, “We’re trying to raise awareness of the tactics that are behind these lawsuits and some of the groups that are funding them and how different interest groups are teaming up with state officials, because these lawsuits are being brought by states and by cities and counties, and show this isn’t an organic effort of different states and cities to try to recover damages.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">” </span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s2" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">[2]</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/stories/1060066375?xrult%EF%BF%BDevhAMs1GUctEhZig1OkA" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">E&E</span> News</em> reported</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> that the </span><span class="caps" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;">MAP</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> campaign was launched to fight “activist litigation” and would primarily consist of a website, with the goal of fighting “frivolous: lawsuits.”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Its initial target included litigation by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland against <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">BP</span> <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">PLC</span>, Chevron Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell <span class="caps" style="box-sizing: border-box;">PLC</span> for damages under</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> state</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">public nuisance law</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s3" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"> [</a><a href="https://www.desmog.com/manufacturers-accountability-project/#s3" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">3]</a></font></p></div><div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">docket</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">microsoft is a prominent example of an American company walking a public relations tightrope on climate change. It professes a serious commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, touts its clean energy bonafides and vocally supports the Paris Climate Agreement and the dire need to combat a growing climate crisis. But it also remains a member of a trade group, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), which has worked for decades to delay action on climate change and defend the fossil fuel companies whose products cause it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NAM, in fact, has been so proactive in anti-climate action projects that it draws comparisons to its <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/results/#q=%22national%20association%20of%20manufacturers%0A%22&h=%7B%22hideDuplicates%22%3Atrue%2C%22hideFolders%22%3Atrue%7D&subsite=tobacco&cache=true&count=6053" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">support for the tobacco industry</a> as it faced a liability battle in the 1980s. NAM, along with other trade groups, backed tobacco companies as they faced hundreds of lawsuits and were charged with racketeering by the federal government for deceiving the public about the catastrophic health hazards of smoking.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NAM has <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/02/26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">even hired the same law firm</a> that defended the tobacco industry to launch an assault on climate liability lawsuits.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As then, NAM’s member companies face public pressure for supporting those efforts. Microsoft, along with other companies, including Intel and Proctor and Gamble, told Climate Liability News that they disagree with NAM’s actions and policy positions on climate change.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">But they have not ended their memberships. While other climate change-denying groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council have suffered membership losses because companies like Google and Apple felt they could no longer be publicly associated with its tactics, NAM has experienced no such repercussions so far.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“The views expressed by NAM do not reflect Microsoft’s position on climate change,” a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Microsoft is committed to sustainability and addressing climate change.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> We work with many groups on various technology policy issues and do not expect that any organization’s agenda will align to ours in all policy areas.”</span></b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Trade Group Tango</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></h4><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Whether a company joins—and remains—a member of NAM or any trade group depends on how much it agrees with the association’s activities and how its membership in the association affects its reputation, said Michael Barnett, a professor of management & global business at <a href="http://www.business.rutgers.edu/faculty/michael-barnett" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Rutgers Business School</a> who has studied trade groups.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“[Trade associations] are effective by influencing what others outside the industry think of the industry, like regulators, like customers, like communities,”</b> Barnett said.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Trade groups help shield individual companies from the public relations backlash of lobbying on behalf of their industry. They often work as organizing forces to oppose regulation of industries and to lobby government for favorable laws and policies.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“The member firms want cover, they want that legitimacy, they want an improved reputation, but they don’t want to do those things necessary to gain that,” Barnett said. “It’s sort of like they’ve hired a personal trainer and they want that trainer to say, ‘Eat cake and you’re going to get fit.’”</b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sharon Eubanks, a former Department of Justice lawyer who led the government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, compared efforts by NAM to defend the fossil fuel industry’s inaction on climate change to efforts by trade groups to back the tobacco companies. She cited the Tobacco Institute and the Center for Tobacco Research, which provided faulty research and inaccurate testimony to support the tobacco industry’s lies about the harms of its product.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I would say that this group is a little more in your face and direct than the tobacco industry was in what they are doing,” Eubanks said. “They tried to put on a fig leaf, the tobacco industry did, but NAM, there’s no fig leaf—it’s out there.”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">NAM has attacked climate scientists, undermined international climate negotiations and worked to delay the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions through the <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/04/25/gcc-global-climate-coalition-history/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Global Climate Coalition</a>, a fossil fuel front group that operated from 1989 to 2002. NAM and the Global Climate Coalition were so closely intertwined that one recently discovered document instructs members to make dues checks payable to “NAM – Global Climate Coalition.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More recently, NAM launched its <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/02/26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Manufacturers’ Accountability Project</a> to defend big polluters against climate liability suits. Formed in 2017, the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project has attempted to discredit municipalities filing suits against oil companies for the damage they’ve caused to the climate.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Last year NAM launched the <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/03/07/nam-shareholder-pressure-climate-change/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Main Street Investors Coalition</a> to fend off shareholder resolutions calling for more transparency and action on climate change.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Why Do NAM’s Members Abide Its Backing of Fossil Fuel Companies?</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></h4><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">NAM doesn’t publicly list its members, and companies with executives on NAM’s <a href="https://www.nam.org/About/Board-of-Directors/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">board</a> include large fossil fuel companies with a clear interest in preventing climate liability suits.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the same time, other board members come from a wide variety of companies, some which appear to have a strong commitment to protecting the climate and have little or no chance of being named in a climate liability suit, including Pella, Microsoft, Intel, Mueller WP, Volvo, Ball, Proctor and Gamble, Corning and Baker Boy, a North Dakota-based donut chain, among others.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/environment/carbon/our-approach" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Microsoft</a>, which has recently come under fire for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/01/microsoft-joins-group-seeking-to-avoid-climate-change-lawsuit" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">joining</a> the <a href="https://www.clcouncil.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Climate Leadership Council</a>, an <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/10/09/exxon-carbon-tax-climate-liability/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">industry-backed</a> group advocating for a <a href="https://www.clcouncil.org/our-plan/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">carbon dividend plan</a> that could <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/07/17/carbon-tax-climate-liability-waiver/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">do away with</a> climate liability suits, has tried to back away from NAM’s work without leaving NAM.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Intel is also carefully distancing itself from NAM’s campaigns to delay action on climate change.</b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Intels positions don’t always align with NAM’s, said William Moss, an Intel spokesperson.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In the case of climate change, we have raised it directly with NAM, and state in our <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/corporate-responsibility/environment-climate-change-policy.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">climate change policy</a> our support for the IPCC and the Paris Agreement, and our own commitment to reducing our carbon footprint,” said Moss, who added that the overall benefits of Intel’s membership in NAM outweigh its differences on issues like climate change.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">“</span>In areas where we may have significant differences, we often publish our position separately so our stakeholders know where we stand</b>,” Moss said. <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Proctor and Gamble said its NAM membership is aligned with its general business goals and strategies, but the company does not agree with NAM’s position on every issue.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We also respect and value the views of our shareholders, especially on topics that are of importance to the company,” said a Proctor and Gamble spokesperson in a statement. “The trade associations of which we are members are aware of our policy positions, including our views on climate policies. We are consistent in the positions we share with external stakeholders as well as in our trade association engagement.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NAM did not respond to a request for comment, but in a radio interview last year, its president, Jay Timmons, claimed NAM’s 250 board members are “unified in their concern about what lawsuits like this will do to manufacturing operations if they are successful,” Timmons said, referring to climate liability suits.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guy Moos, president of<a href="http://www.bakerboy.com/About/Culture" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"> Baker Boy</a>, said his company remains a member of NAM because of other membership benefits, not its stance on climate issues.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In North Dakota, we’re probably wired a little differently because the Bakken oil field is a pretty big deal around here and so I personally don’t take a position of anti-fossil fuel,” Moos said.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barnett said the more trade associations try to serve a narrow focus, the more difficult it is to retain a broad industry base.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">After a recent <a href="https://www.shell.com/sustainability/transparency/public-advocacy-and-political-activity/jcr_content/par/textimage.stream/1554466210642/0a46ab13e36e99f8762ebb021bd72decec2f47b2/final-industry-association-climate-review-april-2019.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">review</a> of its membership in several trade associations, Shell found it had “some misalignment” with NAM’s climate-related policy positions. While the oil giant announced it would not renew its membership in the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, it said it would “continue to engage with [NAM] and closely monitor our alignment on climate-related topics.”</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Shell is facing climate <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/02/11/nyc-climate-suit-appeal-second-circuit/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">liability</a> suits in the U.S. for the <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/11/15/fisheries-crab-climate-change-liability/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">damage</a> its <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/03/13/san-francisco-oakland-climate-lawsuit-appeal/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">products</a> have done to the climate and for failing to adequately plan for and <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/05/15/shell-climate-suit-conservation-law-foundation/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">protect</a> its facilities from climate change. Seven environmental and human rights organizations in the Netherlands have filed suit against Shell for <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/04/05/shell-sued-in-the-netherlands-for-insufficient-action-on-climate-change/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">failing</a> to align its business model with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Barnett said fossil fuel companies will continue to accrue liability as long as they deny responsibility for climate change....</font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><header class="entry-header" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 16px; line-height: 1.2; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">trade Group Gears Up to Discredit Climate Liability Movement</font></h1><p class="entry-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; clear: both; letter-spacing: 1px; text-transform: uppercase; text-align: center;" /><div><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DECEMBER 15, 2017</font></b></span></div><span class="entry-categories" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FILED UNDER: <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/category/liability-litigation/california-climate-lawsuits/" rel="category tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">CALIFORNIA CLIMATE LAWSUITS</a>, <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/category/featured/" rel="category tag" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; text-decoration-line: none;">FEATURED</a></font></span><p /></header><div class="entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Dana Drugmand</font></span><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">In response to a growing wave of climate change lawsuits and legal investigations attempting to hold fossil fuel corporations accountable for climate consequences and decades of deception, a large industry trade group is now </span><a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/manufacturers-push-back-against-environmentalists-climate-court-strategy/article/2642361" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">fervently pushing back</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> with an “accountability” initiative of its own.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The </span><a href="http://www.nam.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">National Association of Manufacturers</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> (NAM) has launched the </span><a href="http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/about-us/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Manufacturers’ Accountability Project</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">, (MAP) which aims to undermine what it calls a coordinated campaign that “jeopardizes the ability of all manufacturers to continue growing and providing jobs to millions of Americans.” NAM identifies those behind the campaign as “trial lawyers, public officials, deep-pocketed foundations and other activists.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The project is similar to previous industry-backed public relations campaigns against lawyers defending victims dying of asbestos-related diseases, those taking on the tobacco industry and advocates fighting for lead paint removal.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">MAP targets the new climate tort cases filed in California, as well as the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general investigations into ExxonMobil. Blog posts on the MAP website call out actions by specific individuals and organizations, including attorney </span><a href="http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2017/12/04/second-installment-insights-pawas-calculations-legal-strategy-attack-energy-manufacturers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Matt Pawa</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">, New York Attorney General </span><a href="http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2017/11/28/rise-partisan-ag-schneiderman-takes-peabody/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Eric Schneiderman</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">, 350.org founder </span><a href="http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2017/12/08/two-years-later-politically-motivated-investigation-rallying-cry-manufacturers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Bill McKibben</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">, the </span><a href="http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2017/12/01/money-power-corrupted-union-concerned-scientists/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Union of Concerned Scientists</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">, the nonprofit news website </span><a href="http://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2017/11/13/la-jolla-anatomy-plot-part-ii/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">InsideClimate News</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> and others.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The project springs from NAM’s </span><a href="http://www.nam.org/The-Center-For-Legal-Action/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Manufacturers’ Center for Legal Action</span></a></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, which alleges that this activist campaign is politically motivated and intended for profit at the expense of American workers.</span> “It has become clear that these activist plaintiffs’ attorneys, sympathetic academics and agenda-driven media outlets are distorting the use of tort litigation to advance their narratives with the ultimate objective of undermining manufacturers and the engine of the American economy,” NAM senior vice president and general counsel Linda Kelly said in a </span><a href="http://www.nam.org/Newsroom/Press-Releases/2017/11/NAM-Unveils-Campaign-to-Expose-Activist-Litigation-Against-American-Manufacturers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">press release</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> announcing the initiative.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">One of its main arguments is that plaintiff attorneys are bringing these climate cases purely for their own profit and the expense of fighting the claims comes at the expensive of job and wage increases. In a </span><a href="https://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/trial-lawyers-relentless-war-on-manufacturers-kills-jobs-lowers-standards-of-living/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">November op-ed</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> in Investor’s Business Daily, Kelly wrote, “Trial lawyers are waging a reckless assault against American manufacturers in pursuit of a fat payday for themselves.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kelly did not respond to requests for comment.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Carroll Muffett, president of the Center for International Environmental Law debunked Kelly’s claim that climate cases are driven by trial lawyers seeking a big payday, calling it simplistic and incorrect.</b></font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The challenge with that argument is that these cases are not simply being brought by lawyers. They’re being brought by nonprofit organizations, they’re being brought by state attorneys general, they’re now being brought by cities’ attorneys,” Muffett said. “The most obvious profit motive involves those companies who are being sued, not those who are bringing the investigation.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The deep irony is the name of the website and of the project,” Muffett added. “We would welcome them helping us hold those who are most responsible for climate impacts responsible, but that is clearly not their goal.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The timing of the initiative is also telling. “What is ironic is the launch of this project at precisely the moment when the courts are finally addressing and overwhelmingly rejecting the sort of empty legal arguments that Exxon and its corporate and political allies have been making with respect to the ongoing investigations,” Muffett said.</font></span></p><h6 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NAM Intervened in Youth Lawsuit, Then Withdrew</font></h6><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While NAM’s accountability project is new, the trade association is no stranger to litigation. “NAM has a history of trying to use the courts aggressively to oppose regulations the industry doesn’t like,</span>” said Muffett.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Notably, NAM, along with the American Petroleum Institute (API) and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), initially joined the landmark youth climate lawsuit<b> </b></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><b>Juliana v. United States</b></span></span><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> as an intervenor on side of the federal government, only to later back out.</span> As the case proceeded and the court required the intervenors to explain their position on climate change under oath, NAM refused and moved to withdraw from the case in May. The court <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2017/07/13/the-kids-climate-case-against-the-u-s-government-a-timeline/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">allowed all three intervenors</a> to back out of the case.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Julia Olson, executive director of Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit spearheading the youth case, </span><a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/571d109b04426270152febe0/t/59238d8d17bffcd2707e5879/1495502222421/2017.05.22+NAM+seeks+to+remove+pr.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">said at the time</span></a><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"> in response to the withdrawal motion: “Over 18 months ago, NAM, like the other fossil fuel intervenors, went to great lengths to become a party defendant in this case. They claimed their members were seriously threatened by our case. Now, faced with significant legal victories by these young plaintiffs, and on the eve of having to take a position on climate science, NAM wants out of this case. We believe the court will determine that there should be consequences for wasting the court’s time.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Phil Gregory, counsel for the youth plaintiffs, said he’s surprised no one has taken NAM to task for its hypocrisy and the conflicting views among its numerous members regarding climate change. “NAM opposed our case in favor of the fossil fuel companies, yet members of NAM’s board of directors, such as Proctor & Gamble, Merck and Pfizer are claiming in other venues that they’re committed to preventing climate change,” he said. “So they’re talking out of both sides of their mouths.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 26px; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“These companies shouldn’t be able to hide behind their trade associations and take contradictory positions.” NAM, he said, “is not only a hypocrite, but it doesn’t have the courage to take a stand under oath.” </font></span></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/02/26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.climatedocket.com/<b>2019/02/</b>26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/</a></font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"> Karen Savage</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In its fight to stave off a wave of climate change-related lawsuits, the fossil fuel industry has found a vocal and unapologetic ally in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). The 123-year old trade group represents a wide range of the nation’s manufacturing companies, but it has frequently gone to bat for select segments of its membership during major liability battles. Currently, it is Big Oil’s staunchest defender.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The group has filed briefs defending oil companies in liability lawsuits, launched campaigns to discredit the communities filing them, and has worked to stop shareholders from pressing the oil companies to disclose climate risks.</b> In these roles, NAM has put itself front and center in the effort to keep fossil fuel companies from being held liable for their role in climate change, and from paying for the related damages that will run in the hundreds of billions of dollars to communities across the country.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Taxpayer resources should not be used for baseless lawsuits that are designed to enrich trial lawyers and grab headlines for politicians,” Lindsey de la Torre</span>, executive director of NAM’s spinoff group, the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP), <a href="https://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2018/07/02/manufacturers-denounce-rhode-island-attorney-general-lawsuit/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">said in a statement</a> after Rhode Island filed one of the climate liability lawsuits last year. NAM launched MAP in 2017 as a response to the increasing number of climate liability suits.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Those suits, according to NAM, are a result of a <b>coordinated campaign by activists “to disparage U.S. manufacturers</b> with a focus on America’s largest energy manufacturers.”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MAP is now attempting to convince the American public—as well as judges who might hear those liability cases—that attempts to hold companies accountable for their role in climate change will harm business, said Richard Daynard, president of Northeastern University Law School’s<a href="https://www.northeastern.edu/law/academics/institutes/phai.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"> Public Health Advocacy Institute</a> and chair of its <b>Tobacco Products Liability Project.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“This is essentially the PR front for the defendants in climate litigation,”</span> Daynard said, adding that <b>MAP is also working to discourage municipalities from filing future suits.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“This is all part of a long history of tort reform propaganda,</span>” he said, adding that NAM has worked for decades to reign in all types of liability litigation, including against the tobacco industry.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So perhaps it’s not surprising that NAM’s defense of fossil fuel companies has begun to look increasingly like its <a href="https://www.industrydocumentslibrary.ucsf.edu/tobacco/results/#q=%22national%20association%20of%20manufacturers%0A%22&h=%7B%22hideDuplicates%22%3Atrue%2C%22hideFolders%22%3Atrue%7D&subsite=tobacco&cache=true&count=6053" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">support for the tobacco industry</a> in the 1980s. Similar tactics were used when tobacco companies were facing hundreds of lawsuits and were charged with racketeering by the federal government for deceiving the public about the catastrophic health hazards of smoking. <b>NAM has even hired the same law firm that defended the tobacco industry to launch an assault on the climate liability lawsuits.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">NAM <a href="https://www.law.com/corpcounsel/2019/01/23/national-association-of-manufacturers-hires-special-counsel-to-handle-growing-climate-change-lawsuits/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">recently named</a> Phil Goldberg, a former <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/induscode_lobs.php?id=e1210&year=2011" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">coal lobbyist</a> as special counsel for MAP. Goldberg is a managing partner in the Washington office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, which <a href="http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/shook_hardy_smokes_em/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">gained notoriety</a> for defending the tobacco industry, and is the co-chair of the firm’s public policy group.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Some say Shook, Hardy & Bacon went <a href="https://www.thepitchkc.com/news/article/20603947/devils-advocates" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">beyond</a> defending tobacco companies, actively coordinating efforts by its clients to deliberately deceive the public about the ruinous health effects of smoking.</b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Judge Gladys Kessler, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who found 10 tobacco companies guilty of violating racketeering laws in 2006, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/civil/legacy/2014/09/11/amended%20opinion_0.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">said the company’s lawyers</a> “played an absolute central role in the creation and perpetuation” of the companies’ “fraudulent schemes,” calling it a “sad and disquieting chapter” in the legal profession.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Even before Goldberg was hired, MAP had launched an offensive against climate suits, filing friend-of-the-court briefs and intervening in a landmark constitutional suit brought by 21 young people against the U.S. government</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">MAP has also submitted public records<a href="https://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/category/press-statements/page/3/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"> requests</a> and coordinated a<a href="https://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2018/02/12/map-launches-ad-campaign-expose-mayor-de-blasios-attack-manufacturers/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"> public relations</a><a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/364125-activist-litigation-against-manufacturers-has-gone-too-far" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"> campaign</a> to<a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/417416-suing-americas-manufacturers-calling-them-a-public-nuisance-wont" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"> discredit</a> the municipalities behind the liability lawsuits.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sharon Eubanks, a former Department of Justice lawyer who led the government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, said MAP is launching a direct attack on climate litigation suits.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“It’s very similar what they’re doing<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, only the tobacco industry at least didn’t come right out and say ‘We’re going to target these lawsuits directly,’” Eubanks said. “They did so indirectly. But NAM and MAP, they’re like, ‘We’re targeting the lawsuits.’</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">”</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Barnett, a professor of management & global business at <a href="http://www.business.rutgers.edu/faculty/michael-barnett" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Rutgers Business School</a> who has studied trade associations, said groups like NAM exist to defend the interests of their industry.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“It’s sort of an outsourced arm of those firms, rather than doing it all on their own, there’s strength in numbers,” Barnett said.<b> “There’s some efficiency to having one centralized legal defense that attacks on behalf of the whole industry</b> in addition to each of the individual firms taking on these issues.”</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">No Stranger to the Liability Battlefield<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></h4><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The addition of Goldberg to MAP’s legal team indicates a continuing commitment to defending NAM’s fossil fuel defendants. In addition to being the go-to law firm for tobacco companies,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <a href="https://www.shb.com/services#?service=energy" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Shook, Hardy & Bacon</a> has a long history with NAM, <a href="http://ccbjournal.com/articles/9045/shook-hardy-bacons-civil-justice-reform-initiatives" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">partnering</a> as far back as 2007 to support firms facing product liability suits. The firm <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/civil/legacy/2014/09/11/amended%20opinion_0.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">worked so closely</a> with the tobacco industry to <a href="https://www.thepitchkc.com/news/article/20603947/devils-advocates" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">attack the science</a> showing the dangers of smoking it was <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1996-12-15/business/fi-9180_1_tobacco-industry" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">named</a> in several cases along with their clients, charging them with deceiving the public by fraudulently concealing the health effects of smoking.<b> Oklahoma’s attorney general called Shook, Hardy & Bacon an “aider and abettor” of fraud in one suit.</b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“[The Department of Justice] considered suing them and making them defendants because they were so much a part of the RICO violations we alleged,” Eubanks said.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“They’re not even hiding from anything, they’re just saying ‘we want to influence what’s happening in these cases the best way that we can.’</span>”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">She said she’s seen no evidence that MAP’s tactics are illegal, but they are similar to some of what was alleged in the tobacco cases.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goldberg did not respond to a request for comment. In a NAM press release he said, “The NAM and its Manufacturers’ Accountability Project are the <b>tip of the spear in the fight against the wave of unfounded public nuisance lawsuits targeting America’s manufacturers.”</b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Goldberg said climate liability suits get in the way of finding real solutions and “are more about politics than addressing the global challenge of climate change</span>.” He did not elaborate on what the solutions are or how municipalities will pay for the infrastructure needed to protect their residents, costs that are projected to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide.</font></p><h4 style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 16px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A History of Advocating for Fossil Fuel Members</font></h4><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NAM, which <a href="https://www.nam.org/About/History-of-the-NAM/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">was founded</a> in 1895, describes itself as the largest manufacturing association in the United States. It doesn’t publicly disclose its membership list, but its board includes some of the oil and gas industry’s most powerful executives.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>Exxon senior vice president and management committee member <a href="https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/Company/Who-we-are/Management-Committee#darrenWWoods" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Neil Chapman</a> joined NAM’s executive committee in 2015</b></span><b>, taking over the position vacated by current Exxon chief executive Darren Woods</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Chapman, who <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgave2.php?cycle=2018&cmte=C00541169" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">donated</a> $10,000 to NAM’s political action committee during the 2018 election cycle, also serves as NAM’s southwest regional vice chair. </span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Chapman and Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For decades, the association has promoted climate denial, <a href="https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=FAC38FED2207ADEA66DBC5A0D9B29616?doi=10.1.1.25.6082&rep=rep1&type=pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">founding</a> the <a href="http://www.climatefiles.com/denial-groups/global-climate-coalition-collection/1996-global-climate-coalition-overview/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Global Climate Coalition</a> in 1989 and sharing offices until 1992 while the Global Climate Coalition and its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/documents/global-climate-coalition-aiam-climate-change-primer#p=1%20" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">members</a>—primarily energy companies and automobile manufacturers—worked to cast doubt on what was fast becoming overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels drives climate change. The goal was to change the public’s perception and cast doubt on climate science.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Global Climate Coalition was disbanded in 2002 after several of its largest corporate members pulled out under public pressure to accept that climate change—and the projected catastrophic effects—was an undeniable global threat.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">More recently, NAM’s focus has shifted from promoting climate deception to defending member companies from efforts to hold them accountable for years of deceiving the public and damaging the climate.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Along with the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, NAM in 2015 joined the landmark youth climate lawsuit<b> <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2017/07/13/the-kids-climate-case-against-the-u-s-government-a-timeline/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Juliana v. United States</span></a></b> as an intervenor on side of the federal government.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Calling the suit a “direct threat to businesses,” the trade associations said the “significant reduction in [greenhouse gas] emissions would cause a significant negative effect on [their] members by constraining the sale of the product they have specialized in developing and selling.” When the court asked intervenors to explain their views on climate change, NAM quickly <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2017/07/13/the-kids-climate-case-against-the-u-s-government-a-timeline/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">backed out</a>.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>When the liability lawsuits began—and now total more than a dozen from communities across the country and one state (Rhode Island)—NAM responded by <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2017/12/15/nam-climate-liability-industry/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">launching</a> MAP </b>to “set the record straight and highlight foundations and other activists who have sought to undermine and weaken manufacturing in the United States” by engaging in climate change-related litigation.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><b>MAP came out swinging, <a href="https://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2017/11/27/martin-act-mayhem/" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">claiming</a> that then-New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s use of the Martin Act to investigate Exxon for possible climate change-related fraud was “politically motivated</b>.</span>” It <a href="https://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/2018/02/13/timmons-mayor-de-blasio-owes-new-yorkers-apology/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">demanded</a> New York Mayor Bill de Blasio apologize to New Yorkers for using an outside firm to file its suit against five major oil companies and launched a campaign to highlight what it called de Blasio’s “politically-motivated attacks on manufacturers.”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eubanks said that rhetoric doesn’t add up.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Lawsuits are to enforce the law, to ensure that people are following the law and it takes you out of a political process and puts you before a neutral person, a judge,” she said, adding that <b>Shook, Hardy & Bacon also does a good bit of political lobbying.</b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They say, ‘We think these matters should be handled by legislation, not litigation, and by regulations that will come out of any statutes that are enacted,” she said. “Then they fight real hard to make sure there are no statutes that come down the pike because regulations come out of regulatory authority, so it sounds real good, but that’s wholly inconsistent with their approach.”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>NAM and MAP have made a big deal out of the potential for future RICO charges against the fossil fuel industry—the same racketeering laws that ultimately ensnared the tobacco industry</b>—and <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">contend that a conspiracy is being waged on the other side by a “group of politically motivated activists” who are “trying to take down America’s energy manufacturers.”</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Right now, there are groups of <b>trial lawyers slinking around the country tantalizing elected officials</b> in cities and states with unrealistic promises of jackpot justice if they will only agree to sue energy manufacturers over climate change,” <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NAMpage/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">said</a><b> NAM president and chief executive Jay Timmons</b> in NAM’s State of Manufacturing Address last week in Houston. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“These lawyers—they want to get rich at the expense of manufacturing workers.”</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Daynard said this type of messaging is used in an effort to control the narrative around— and media coverage of—climate litigation.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“They have this notion that if they can get continue to get news coverage and establish themselves, they can make sure when cases are filed journalists will look go to them and they can then get in some comment on how this is all worthless crazy stuff stirred up by ‘greedy lawyers’ or ‘ideologically driven NGO’s,’</b>” Daynard said.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To try and substantiate its view that litigation is part of a vast conspiracy—and in what some say is an attempt to have a chilling effect on municipalities that file lawsuits—MAP has also submitted extensive public record requests to plaintiffs in the suits, seeking documents and communication between the municipalities and their attorneys, prior records requests that include those attorneys, certain communication regarding the defendant companies and <b>communication between the municipalities and billionaire Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen</b>, a progressive organization working to stem the risks of climate change for future generations.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/07/02/rhode-island-climate-liability-suit/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">filed the first state-level suit</a> last July, MAP denounced it.</span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eubanks said ensuring manufacturers abide by state law is exactly what attorneys general should do.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We have consumer protection statutes, we have consumer protection agencies, that’s part of what makes this country great,” Eubanks said. “You can’t just come in and roll over people with deceptive and unfair methods of competition, you can’t just lie about things without consequences and we have organizations to protect that. That’s what I find so alarming about this—the whole idea that there’s something wrong with enforcing the law.”<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NAM did not respond to a request for comment. De la Torre, could not be reached for comment.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Perhaps NAM’s biggest attack on liability suits thus far has been its accusations against several California municipalities. <br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Not long after the suits were filed, Exxon went on the <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/01/10/exxon-california-climate-lawsuits/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">offensive</a>, <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/04/13/nam-sec-climate-lawsuits-liability/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">accusing</a> plaintiffs of failing to disclose climate risks to their bond investors.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">To try to bolster that allegation, NAM—along with the industry ally <a href="https://cei.org/sites/default/files/Final%20SEC%20Tip%20Clean.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">Competitive Enterprise Institute</a>—asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to <a href="https://mfgaccountabilityproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SEC-Letter_3.27.18-3.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">investigate</a> whether several cities and counties that filed climate suits misled investors when they stated in bond offerings that they couldn’t predict the impacts of climate change.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">A <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/04/30/california-climate-lawsuits-municipal-bond-sec/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">report</a> by the former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal bonds division later found the municipalities did not mislead potential investors.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In another instance, NAM partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to back Exxon, <a href="https://www.nam.org/uploadedFiles/NAM/Site_Content/Advocacy/The-Center-for-Legal-Action/Briefs-Online/2018/ExxonMobil%20v.%20Healey%202nd%20Cir%2008102018.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">filing</a> a friend-of-the-court brief in the oil giant’s quest to stop investigations by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.</b><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New York has since filed a lawsuit against Exxon based on that investigation, <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2018/10/24/new-york-attorney-general-exxon-climate-fraud/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">alleging</a> the oil giant for years deceived investors by deliberately downplaying the climate risks to its business and long-term financial health. The Supreme Court recently <a href="https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/01/07/supreme-court-exxon-climate-massachusetts-healey/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; transition: all 0.1s ease-in-out 0s;">ruled</a> against Exxon’s attempt to stop Massachusetts’ investigation, which now continues.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is the first in a series of articles on the trade group coordinating opposition to climate liability suits.</font></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 26px; box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This story has been update to more accurately describe the review which found California municipalities did not mislead potential investors.</font></span></p></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div style=""><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">frontline 5 22</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">late 80's (after hansen?) FF deniers pretty sure gov't action on AGW, rallied to ~, doubted they cd win but "ran the table"; dems knew W-M beat ended action for a decade?!</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1992</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Chapter iii. The Environmental Presidency</b></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>GOV. BILL CLINTON, Arkansas, 1983-1992:</b></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The man standing beside me today has what it takes to lead this nation from the day we take office. Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MARC CHUPKA, White House economist, 1993-94:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Bill Clinton announced that his running mate was going to be Al Gore, that was very exciting.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There was an anticipation of a much greater effort to tackle climate change.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">BILL CLINTON:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We will finally give the United States a real environmental presidency.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AL GORE:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then President-elect Clinton understood clearly that that's why I was on the ticket. That's why I agreed to run as vice president.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MALE NEWSREADER:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He has won this presidential race, along with Sen. Al Gore, now the vice president-elect.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JANE McMULLEN:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Now you’re in the White House—</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AL GORE:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yeah.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JANE McMULLEN:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">—to tackle it. Did you feel a sense of responsibility?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AL GORE:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oh, absolutely. That was the principal task that I set for myself entering the White House. And I went to work right away to try to get a carbon tax in our first budget plan.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MARC CHUPKA:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Sen. Gore asked me to produce some quantitative results of how much various energy taxes would reduce emissions.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Feb. 17, 1993</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Our plan does include a broad-based tax on energy, and it is environmentally responsible. It will help us in the future as well as in the present with the deficit.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MARC CHUPKA:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I was excited that a fairly bold step had been proposed.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MALE NEWSREADER:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s called a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">"BTU tax."</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FEMALE NEWSREADER:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The tax is likely to be levied at the producer or distributor level, though consumers would feel it as energy companies passed it along in their prices.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MARC CHUPKA:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s a tax policy. You don’t expect everyone to love it. But the opposition to this particular proposal was very strong, very strident, very aggressive.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MALE NEWSREADER:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Koch Industries has been called the biggest company you never heard of. The sprawling giant includes pipelines, petrochemicals, asphalt plants, trading floors. Based in Wichita, Kansas, it sells everything from gasoline to beef.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>JEFF NESBIT, Comms. Dir., Citizens for a Sound Economy</b>, 1993:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I would say that virtually no one in the early 1990s had ever heard of Koch Industries.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MALE NEWSREADER:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Koch's core business is distribution. It owns 37,000 miles of international pipeline.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEFF NESBIT:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>They can take the heaviest oil, the dirtiest oil, the hardest to turn into a useful product and refine it. And they became the best in the world at doing that. I think it's still probably the second-largest privately held company in the world.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The two brothers who ran Koch Industries were Charles and David Koch. They had their sights set on how they were going to deal with issues that were existential to their industry. It's the heart of what they do, so they're going to fight and hang on to that till the bitter end.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JERRY TAYLOR, Cato Institute, 1991-2014:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Cato Institute was a public policy think tank. It was founded by Charles Koch. And Charles was heavily invested in energy policy discussions back in that time, particularly the emergence of climate change.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Cato Institute position was that climate change is real, but the climate change that we're seeing today is far, far more modest than what the computer models say we should have seen by now. We need to know a lot more before we should be spending trillions of dollars to address it.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEFF NESBIT:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So the Kochs had funding directed at the Cato Institute as a libertarian think tank; they also had funding that went to<b> Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was built for a slightly different purpose, which was to be a quote, grassroots mobilizer.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JERRY TAYLOR:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Coming out of the gate, we then get served up with a proposed BTU tax. It was obvious to us at the Cato Institute that once that tax is in place, it's going to be very hard to get rid of.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEFF NESBIT:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">We walked over from Citizens for a Sound Economy over to the <b>American Petroleum Institute, and we met with the entire leadership of API. And the meeting was all about, let's just knock out the BTU tax in its infancy.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JERRY TAYLOR:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">We would be meeting in various locales in Washington with over 100 people in the room. It was a real war room situation.</font></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">JERRY JASINOWSKI, President of the National Association of Manufacturers</span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>[Archive] This coalition is one of the fastest growing and strongest that I've seen. We will stop the BTU tax</b> and <b>I believ</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>e substitute spending cuts in its place</b>. </span>Thank you very much for coming.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oklahoma</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RON HOWELL, Former consultant, Koch Industries:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We were known, and I think we made ourselves known that way, as the oil capital of the world. Almost everywhere you'd look had behind it oil industry dollars.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I thought that the tax was a bad idea for America, but predominantly a bad idea for Oklahoma. Oklahoma was not in a good spot at that time at all. Oil wells were being shut. That meant a lot of lost jobs, a lot of lost companies. And this was putting the heel of the boot down hard.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">I got a call from Koch Industries telling me the industry is very concerned about this, but we're worried that this word isn't getting out. Our particular goal was to focus on Sen. Boren.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEFF NESBIT:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">David Boren was a moderate Democrat who chaired the relevant committee that would deal with the Clinton budget.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RON HOWELL:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">We were hearing that he wanted to be left to do his own revising of it behind closed doors.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEFF NESBIT:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They basically said <b>if we can get David Boren to flip, we win. So they said, we're going to do whatever it takes.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RON HOWELL:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">We set about what I would call a grasstops and a grassroots campaign</span>. The grassroots were encouraged to call Sen. Boren and let him know that you do not want a tax, after seeing an ad that showed "take shower, pay a tax; start your car, pay a tax."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEFF NESBIT:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Everybody was given their marching orders out of this playbook. People would stand up behind politicians with signs about no BTU tax. There were rallies.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ENERGY INDUSTRY SPOKESMAN:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">—cost to the average household in Oklahoma is going to be roughly about $500 a year.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RON HOWELL:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">My main role was what I would call the <b>grasstops.</b> You may be a civic leader, you may be a CEO. Often it would be Mr. Koch would call them, or myself, and talk them through "Did you know it does this, this, this and this?" Encourage strongly Sen. Boren kill it.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEFF NESBIT:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">What they told the public and what the policymakers were led to believe was that there was an army of folks who were ready to march in the streets. Maybe there were a handful of folks who thought, "Oh, gosh, I should call my senator and register my complaint,"<b> but they had no such grassroots army. It was funded and fueled by the corporate interests.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MALE NEWSREADER:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">CSE says its work isn’t done yet. It’s joined forces with other lobbying groups, stoking the flames of the prairie fire, hoping they’ll spread and burn the BTU tax for good.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RON HOWELL:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">I remember a very late night or early morning phone call, and it was actually Sen. Boren's communications guy. "We want those ads to stop. And we want the CEOs to quit calling us, and in return, Sen. Boren’s going to announce his intentions to vote against it."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">SEN. DAVID BOREN, D-Oklahoma, 1979-94</span> <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Our proposal is fairer than that put forward by the administration—that is the BTU tax, which is the tax which is a part of the administration's plan that does hit lower- and middle-income Americans.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEFF NESBIT:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">He folded right away. It’s like wow, this can really work. We can pick our targets strategically and win, even when we’re not in political power.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NARRATOR:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At the time, David Boren disputed he was influenced by the oil industry. He said he was responding to concerns from the American public, and he opposed the tax because it would hurt consumers and businesspeople.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MALE NEWSREADER:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Clinton has pulled the plug on his proposed BTU energy tax.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FEMALE NEWSREADER:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Critics said it would cost jobs and devastate the economy, and there weren't enough votes in the Senate to pass it. Besides, who the heck knew what it was?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MALE NEWSREADER:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is after all a nation addicted to its cars and to the idea of driving down the open road.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>AL GORE:</b></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It was extremely disappointing to not get the votes. It was just the raw power of all the money that they threw into this. But we just decided to regroup and try to skin the cat a different way.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">MARC CHUPKA:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">They never proposed another energy tax. It was just considered radioactive.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JEFF NESBIT:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">I think some of the l<b>eadership of the Koch network were really quite excited that it worked so well. So that's how that playbook first began. It was developed right then. What I didn’t know at the time was that it would become the beginning of something much bigger. And that playbook is still in use today.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>I don't feel embarrassed or regretful. In hindsight, I shouldn't have done that. There's no question I shouldn't have done that. But they were my client. I was a contractor. I was paid, I'm going to do my job. And my job was to do that.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NARRATOR:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px; box-sizing: border-box; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.725em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Charles Koch did not respond to questions about the campaign against the BTU tax. In 1994, a top Koch executive said, "Our belief is that the tax, over time, may have destroyed our business."...</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The <b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley" class="mw-redirect" title="Mohawk Valley" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Mohawk Valley</a> formula</b> is a plan for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaking" class="mw-redirect" title="Strikebreaking" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">strikebreaking</a> purportedly written by the president of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand" title="Remington Rand" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Remington Rand</a> company <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rand,Jr." class="mw-redirect" title="James Rand, Jr." style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">James Rand, Jr.</a> around the time of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand_strike_of_1936%E2%80%931937" class="mw-redirect" title="Remington Rand strike of 1936–1937" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Remington Rand strike</a> at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilion,New_York" title="Ilion, New York" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Ilion, New York</a> in 1936/37.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The plan includes discrediting union leaders, frightening the public with the threat of violence, using local police and vigilantes to intimidate strikers, forming associations of "loyal employees" to influence public debate, fortifying workplaces, employing large numbers of replacement workers, and threatening to close the plant if work is not resumed.<sup id="cite_ref-nation_1-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-nation-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-IAMAW_2-0" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-IAMAW-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a></sup></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The authenticity of the written plan has never been clearly established. Although it was allegedly published in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Manufacturers" title="National Association of Manufacturers" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">National Association of Manufacturers</a> <i>Labor Relations Bulletin</i>, no original copy has been found, nor does NAM list it among its pamphlets from that era.<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[3]</a></sup><sup class="noprint Inline-Template noprint Template-Fact" style="line-height: 1; white-space: nowrap;">[<i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary,secondary_and_tertiary_sources" title="Wikipedia:No original research" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;"><span title="This claim needs references to reliable secondary sources. (December 2012)">non-primary source needed</span></a></i>]</sup> Parts of the plan use language sympathetic to the views of labor organizers. The Remington Rand company did indeed ruthlessly suppress the strikes, as documented in a ruling by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Board" title="National Labor Relations Board" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">National Labor Relations Board</a>, and the plan has been accepted as a guide to the methods that were used. At least one source names the strikebreaker <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Bergoff" title="Pearl Bergoff" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Pearl Bergoff</a> and his so-called "Bergoff Technique" as the origin of the formula.<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[4]</a></sup> Rand and Bergoff were both indicted by the same federal grand jury for their roles in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand_strike_of_1936%E2%80%931937" class="mw-redirect" title="Remington Rand strike of 1936–1937" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Remington Rand strike</a>.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky" title="Noam Chomsky" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">Noam Chomsky</a> has described the formula as the result of business owners' trend away from violent strikebreaking to a "scientific" approach based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda" title="Propaganda" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">propaganda</a>. An essential feature of this approach is the identification of the management's interests with "Americanism," while labor activism is portrayed as the work of un-American outsiders. Workers are thus persuaded to turn against the activists and toward management to demonstrate their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotism" title="Patriotism" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">patriotism</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[5]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-6" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[6]</a></sup></font></p><h2 style="background: none rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 1em 0px 0.25em; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(162, 169, 177); line-height: 1.3;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline" id="Elements_of_the_formula">Elements of the formula</span><span class="mw-editsection" style="font-weight: normal; user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; white-space: nowrap; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="margin-right: 0.25em;">[</span></span></font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The following is the text of the Mohawk Valley formula as quoted in the labor press:</font></p><ol style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 3.2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>When a strike is threatened, label the union leaders as "agitators" to discredit them with the public and their own followers</b>. Conduct balloting under the foremen to ascertain the strength of the union and to make possible misrepresentation of the strikers as a small minority. Exert economic pressure through threats to move the plant, align bankers, real estate owners and businessmen into a "Citizens' Committee".</font></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Raise high the banner of "law and order",</b> thereby causing the community to mass legal and police weapons against imagined violence and to forget that employees have equal rights with others in the community.</font></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Call a "mass meeting" to coordinate public sentiment against the strike and strengthen the Citizens' Committee.</font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Form a large police force to intimidate the strikers and exert a psychological effect. Utilize local police, state police, vigilantes and special deputies chosen, if possible, from other neighborhoods.</font></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Convince the strikers their cause is hopeless with a "back-to-work" movement by a puppet association of so-called "loyal employees" secretly organized by the employer.</b></font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When enough applications are on hand, set a date for opening the plant by having such opening requested by the puppet "back-to-work" association.</font></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Stage the "opening" theatrically </b>by throwing open the gates and having the employees march in a mass protected by squads of armed police so as to dramatize and exaggerate the opening and heighten the demoralizing effect.</font></li><li style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Demoralize the strikers with a continuing show of force. </b>If necessary turn the locality into a warlike camp and barricade it from the outside world.</font></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Close the publicity barrage on the theme that the plant is in full operation and the strikers are merely a </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">minority attempting to interfere with the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">right to work</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">With this, the campaign is over—the employer has broken the strike.</span><sup id="cite_ref-IAMAW_2-1" class="reference" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-IAMAW-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[2]</a></sup></font></li></ol><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0.5em 0px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A similar, although more nuanced and longer, version was published in <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nation" title="The Nation" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">The Nation</a></i> in 1937.<sup id="cite_ref-nation_1-1" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: isolate; white-space: nowrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley_formula#cite_note-nation-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[1]</a></sup></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>British Petroleum (BP) is working to clean up its climate image. In the two months since environmental law nonprofit Client Earth filed a complaint against the UK oil giant with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) alleging its ads were misleading, BP has announced intentions to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050, stop all “corporate reputation” advertising and, now, withdraw from trade associations with approaches on climate that are out of step with its values.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The company announced this week it will resign its membership in the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) and will not renew its membership with the Western Energy Alliance (WEA).</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The decision came after BP conducted a review comparing the climate-related policies of several trade associations to its own. The company found its policies are not aligned with those of the AFPM, WSPA and WEA.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">BP cited WEA’s opposition of federal methane regulation as a main area of misalignment. BP said “recent and developing differences in the area of carbon pricing” have contributed to its decision to leave the WSPA, as has its current focus on stopping a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) initiative in Washington state. But while proclaiming to support a tax on carbon, BP contributed nearly $13 million to a campaign by the WSPA to help defeat a Washington state carbon emissions fee initiative in 2018.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">BP listed disagreements over carbon pricing as the main reason for leaving the AFPM.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">However, BP will remain a member of the American Petroleum Institute (AP), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and the </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">National Association of Manufacturers (NAM</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">), despite finding that its policies are only partially aligned with those groups. According to its review, BP disagrees with the API’s opposition to the federal regulation of methane, disagrees with NAM over its opposition to carbon pricing and differs from the Chamber’s approach to climate science and emissions reduction efforts.</span></b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Yet for now, BP will remain a member of these groups, despite the fact that the API, U.S. Chamber and NAM are well-known architects of climate science denial.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“A company like BP that engages with trade associations is doing a constant cost-benefit calculation--to what extent does this group represent BP's interest and its policy advocacy versus pose a reputational risk for the company with its own investors, and with the public," said Kathryn Mulvey, climate accountability campaign manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Clearly the fact that the company is staying with the American Petroleum Institute, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers, despite finding only partial alignment indicates that there's a calculation being made on its part.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">BP is not the first oil major to call it quits with the AFPM. Shell withdrew its membership last year in response to pressure from investors. It continued its membership with the WSPA despite finding “some misalignment” between its own policies and those of the WSPA. Shell appears to have discontinued its WEA membership in 2016.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>AFPM president and chief executive officer Chet Thompson said the association is disappointed.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"As a member of our executive committee they know that AFPM is and has been committed to supporting policies that address climate change. Because of that, it leads us to assume that this decision was made based on factors other than our actual positions on the issues,” Thompson said in a statement without specifying what those factors are.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>The split could ratchet up the pressure on ExxonMobil and Chevron, along with other oil companies to examine their trade association membership, Mulvey said.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"We would expect it would make it a good deal harder for major oil and gas companies to hide behind third-party lobby groups,” she said. “We're starting to see a real new norm in terms of transparency, regarding climate policy positions and also action to address misalignment and inconsistency of trade group positions with stated company positions.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">BP said it will conduct its next review in two years and plans to provide periodic, internal updates to its board of directors and stakeholders. It did not rule out potentially withdrawing from more trade associations in the future.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“BP will pursue opportunities to work with organizations who share our ambitious and progressive approach to the energy transition. And when differences arise we will be transparent. But if our views cannot be reconciled, we will be prepared to part company,” said BP chief executive officer Bernard Looney in a statement, adding that the industry has long demonstrated it can collaborate effectively through trade associations.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“My hope is that in the coming years we can add climate to the long list of areas where, as an industry, we work together for a greater good,” Looney added.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Catherine Rheis-Boyd, president of the WSPA resident said her group and its members will continue to talk with BP and other stakeholders regarding the creation of a sustainable energy future.</b></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Our members know the way the world produces, distributes and consumes energy is evolving, and our industry will remain leaders in investing in and developing the diverse energy sources and technologies we need for the future,” Reheis-Boyd said. “Working together as an industry, we will rise to the challenge of a changing climate.”</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The WEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Mulvey said while BP is clearly concerned about its reputation and has pledged to be at net zero, whether the company will take the necessary steps remains to be seen. The company has so far only mentioned carbon capture technology and carbon offsets as methods to achieving net zero, promising to provide more details in September, nine months after its announcement.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Meanwhile, the company has pulled its “Possibilities Everywhere” campaign (the source of the Client Earth OECD complaint), but has been advertising its net zero commitment quite a bit on social media and in search engines.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">BP’s withdrawal from the three associations does make one thing clear, Mulvey said.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">"It lays down a gauntlet for ExxonMobil and Chevron to really step up or they may be understood, by the investor community in particular, to be falling behind their competitors."</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><div class="3sZWk blog-post-title-font igE5v 2lmPI Qz_XW" data-hook="post-title" style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px 0px 9px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; max-width: 740px;"><h2 class="2MNte post-title post-titletext blog-post-title-color blog-hover-container-element-color" data-hook="post-title" style="margin: 1px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; display: -webkit-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 2;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">BP Calls It Quits with 3 Trade Associations, but Continues Membership in </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">NAM,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> API, US Chamber</span></font></font></font></div></h2></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a class="1NTXA igE5v _2lmPI" href="https://www.drillednews.com/post/bp-calls-it-quits-with-3-trade-associations-but-continues-membership-in-nam-api-us-chamber" target="top" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); width: 100%; height: 100%; box-sizing: inherit;" /></font></font></font></p><div class="-RDEl igE5v blog-post-description-font Qz_XW" data-hook="post-description" style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 23px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="1Uunh post-excerpt" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; opacity: 0.8; word-break: break-word; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><div style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; display: -webkit-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 2;"><div class="AB7h6" data-hook="post-description" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.5; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); box-sizing: inherit;"><a class="1NTXA igE5v 2lmPI" href="https://www.drillednews.com/post/bp-calls-it-quits-with-3-trade-associations-but-continues-membership-in-nam-api-us-chamber" target="top" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); width: 100%; height: 100%; box-sizing: inherit;"><font color="#000000" /></a><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><a class="1NTXA igE5v _2lmPI" href="https://www.drillednews.com/post/bp-calls-it-quits-with-3-trade-associations-but-continues-membership-in-nam-api-us-chamber" target="top" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); width: 100%; height: 100%; box-sizing: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /></a><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a class="1NTXA igE5v _2lmPI" href="https://www.drillednews.com/post/bp-calls-it-quits-with-3-trade-associations-but-continues-membership-in-nam-api-us-chamber" target="top" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); width: 100%; height: 100%; box-sizing: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /></a><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a class="1NTXA igE5v _2lmPI" href="https://www.drillednews.com/post/bp-calls-it-quits-with-3-trade-associations-but-continues-membership-in-nam-api-us-chamber" target="top" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); width: 100%; height: 100%; box-sizing: inherit;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /></a><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a class="1NTXA igE5v _2lmPI" href="https://www.drillednews.com/post/bp-calls-it-quits-with-3-trade-associations-but-continues-membership-in-nam-api-us-chamber" target="top" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); width: 100%; height: 100%; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the heels of its net zero announcement and commitment to stop corporate reputation ads, BP withdraws from three trade groups over climate</font></a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div></div></div></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a class="1NTXA igE5v _2lmPI" href="https://www.drillednews.com/post/bp-calls-it-quits-with-3-trade-associations-but-continues-membership-in-nam-api-us-chamber" target="top" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); width: 100%; height: 100%; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"></font></a></font></font></font></font></font></font></p></div><div><div><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-admin-repeals-protections-for-smaller-streams-and-wetlands-2640338564.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-admin-repeals-protections-for-smaller-streams-and-wetlands-2640338564.html</font></a></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font></font></font></font></font><div><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div><b>Trump Admin Repeals Obama-Era Clean Water Protections</b></div><div> Olivia Rosane Sep. 13, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><b>The Trump administration repealed the 2015 Clean Water Rule rule Thursday, a rule intended to protect 60 percent of the nation's waterways from pollution,</b>The New York Times reported.</div><div>
</div><div>At stake is the definition of "waters of the United States" under the Clean Water Act. The Obama-era rule expanded that definition from larger bodies of water to include streams and wetlands. Thursday's repeal will return the country to more-limited 1986 water-protection standards, The Washington Post reported. The administration will also announce a new definition within months.</div><div>
</div><div>"Today, EPA and the Department of the Army finalized a rule to repeal the previous administration's overreach in the federal regulation of U.S. waters and recodify the longstanding and familiar regulatory text that previously existed," Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a press release. "Today's Step 1 action fulfills a key promise of President Trump and sets the stage for Step 2—a new WOTUS definition that will provide greater regulatory certainty for farmers, landowners, home builders, and developers nationwide."</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Because court rulings have suspended the rule in 28 states, while keeping it in place in 22 others, Wheeler argued that a new rule would provide regulatory certainty across the board.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"We want to make sure that we have a definition that once and for all will be the law of the land in all 50 states," Wheeler told The Washington Post.</span></div><div>
</div><div>But environmental advocates say the repeal will endanger wetland wildlife and national drinking water.</div><div>
</div><div><b>"By throwing out the Clean Water Rule, Andrew Wheeler is acting like the former coal lobbyist that he is, putting the drinking water for one in every three Americans at risk just so he can placate corporate polluters who don't want to be held accountable,</b>" Dalal Aboulhosn, Sierra Club's Deputy Legislative Director for Land and Water, said in a statement provided to EcoWatch. "We will fight Wheeler's rollback to not only protect our communities from dangerous water pollution, but also restore order and common sense as to how we go about protecting our water in the future."</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Wheeler made the announcement at the headquarters of the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">National Association of Manufacturers,</span> one of the industry groups that opposed the Clean Water Rule. </b>Critics argued it gave the federal government too much power over the actions of developers and farmers. Farmers were prohibited from planting certain crops near streams or wetlands, or using certain pesticides without an EPA permit, The New York Times explained.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"When you take private <b>property rights</b> from a <b>man who's worked all his life," American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall told The New York Times, "that is very intrusive to him and it's something he just can't stand for."</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>President Donald Trump singled it out for repeal in a Feb. 2017 executive order, in which the President asked the EPA to start a review process that would lead to "the elimination of this very destructive and horrible rule," The Washington Post explained.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Its repeal means that farmers, developers or landowners will no longer need a permit to pollute the streams and wetlands now excluded from protection,</b>according to The New York Times. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When finalized, the new Waters of the United States definition is likely to include streams that feed into larger bodies of water and wetlands directly adjacent to them, but exclude streams that run only during rainfall or wetlands not directly connected to larger waterways.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>But the 2015 rule was based on a review of 1,200 scientific studies that showed how important these streams and wetlands are to downstream waters, according to The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).</b></div><div>
</div><div>"The Trump administration's wild-eyed attempts to reward polluters knows no bounds, so it is repealing these important protections without regard for the law or sound science," NRDC Director of Federal Water Policy Jon Devine said.</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>The Clean Water Rule repeal is the latest in a growing number of environmental rollbacks initiated by the Trump administration. Others include the repeals of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and tailpipe emissions standards. Wheeler said Thursday that the Trump EPA had finalized 46 deregulatory actions, and that an additional 45 were in the works, NPR reported.</div></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/03/08/main-street-investors-coalition-national-association-manufacturers-shareholders-climate">https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/03/08/main-street-investors-coalition-national-association-manufacturers-shareholders-climate</a></font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></font><div><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx doc?</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>By Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Crossposted from Climate Liability News.</div><div>
</div><div><b>The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), a 123-year-old trade group that has worked diligently to defend Big Oil in the burgeoning climate liability battles, has also taken on another opponent to the status quo: investors.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In addition to filing briefs in defense of the fossil fuel industry, launching campaigns to discredit the communities filing suits and intervening on the side of the federal government in a landmark constitutional climate lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, <b>NAM has rallied behind efforts to keep corporate shareholders from influencing how oil companies conduct business.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>In recent years, shareholders concerned about climate-related risks to the companies’ bottom lines, which includes liability suits, have introduced proposals urging oil and gas companies to reduce their carbon footprint and be more forthcoming about the climate risks to their bottom line.</div><div>
</div><div>Once largely unmoved by a hard-to-imagine future threat, investors now need only look out their windows or turn to news reports to see firsthand the catastrophic effects of climate change: The charred remains of entire communities in the aftermath of California wildfires; parts of Texas submerged by more than 4 feet of water in the wake of Hurricane Harvey; countless unnamed weather events from the record-shattering rain that swept through Louisiana in 2016 to the now-routine flooding in Florida and areas along the Atlantic seaboard.</div><div>
</div><div>While most shareholder proposals have failed, there have been some victories: In 2017, investors forced Exxon to produce its first climate-risks report and other proposals prompted Occidental Petroleum, BP and Shell to increase reporting on climate risks. BP announced in February that it will support a resolution calling for even more disclosure that will be proposed at its May 2019 shareholder meeting.</div><div>
</div><div><b>With the potential for more successful proposals, NAM has ramped up its opposition<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Last year it launched the Main Street Investors Coalition (MSIC), a broad initiative to put the brakes on shareholder proposals involving climate change and other social justice issues. The group considers those efforts “politically motivated shareholder activism.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">NAM is also targeting proxy advisory firms, which are hired by institutional investors to analyze reports and recommend how shareholders should vote on certain issues. NAM supports new legislation in Congress calling for tighter regulation of proxy firms by the SEC and even funded its own study claiming proxy firms’ advice is often politically motivated or influenced by conflicts of interest, painting investors as uninformed and unconcerned with corporate profits.</span></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>Suggesting that institutional investors have a political agenda or don’t care about the bottom line is not true, said Timothy Smith of the Boston Trust and Investment Management Company, a state-chartered bank and trust company, who wrote a letter to the SEC rebutting NAM’s claims.</div><div>
</div><div><b>“That’s absolutely insulting to a pension fund, which has to care about shareholder value. It’s a very, very high priority,” Smith said.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Smith said investors have met with many of NAM’s member companies, most of which value shareholder participation. He said he has found none that share NAM’s pessimistic view of shareholder motivation. </div><div>
</div><div>To spearhead its effort, NAM tapped George David Banks to lead MSIC. Banks, the current executive vice president of the American Council for Capital Formation, a conservative think tank, served for a year as an advisor to President Trump on energy and climate policy<b>. During a previous stint on the staff of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), he wrote that he considered oil lobbyists “partners.” </b></div><div>
</div><div>In addition, MSIC wants shareholders to rely on the government and not the individual companies to tackle climate change. But with the Trump administration’s propensity for appointing industry insiders to political positions — including the recent confirmation of former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to lead the Environmental Protection Agency — the government has been dismantling existing environmental regulations and backpedaling away from climate action. </div><div>
</div><div>As part of its attack on shareholders’ efforts for more transparency and accountability, <b>NAM also partnered with the Chamber of Commerce in November to launch a six-figure ad campaign warning that proxy firms lack oversight and endanger investors’ savings.</b></div><div>
</div><div>The initiative — dubbed proxyreforms.com — maintains that proxy advisory firms are putting their 401K retirement plans at risk by giving bad advice and ignoring small investors.</div><div>
</div><div>“There’s a growing risk to millions of workers and retirees like you,” warns a dire voice on a video posted NAM’s YouTube channel. “Your retirement savings could be in jeopardy.”</div><div>
</div><div>By painting proxy advisory firms as the enemy of individual investors, MSIC is misleading the public, said Sue Reid, vice president of climate & energy for Ceres, a non-profit organization dedicated to sustainable investing.</div><div>
</div><div>Reid said the suggestion that “big ugly billionaire–driven money-grubbing asset managers” are driving shareholder resolutions that work for them and not the “little guy” completely misses that many shareholder resolutions are backed by pension funds, which administer the savings of thousands of individual retirees.</div><div>
</div><div>“They might have a lot of money that they manage, but absolutely those are the resources of the ‘little guy,’” Reid said. “So for workers across the spectrum — an awful lot of blue collar workers across the United States — these are their hard-earned resources to support their retirement.”</div><div>
</div><div>Corporate Disconnect </div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Projects like MSIC and the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project call into question an apparent disconnect between NAM’s direction on climate change and that of many of its member companies. </span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In a letter to companies with executives on the NAM board,<b> investors led by the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), Walden Asset Management and the New York State Common Retirement Fund last year called for an end to attacks on shareholders by NAM and the MSIC</b>. It also questioned the accuracy of the NAM-funded study. </span></div><div>
</div><div>“We are deeply concerned about the negative message that the NAM Report conveys about investor engagement and shareholder resolutions in general and climate change in particular,” the investors said in the letter. They said they were particularly concerned about the NAM-funded study, which suggests that shareholder resolutions — particularly resolutions related to climate change — do not increase investor profits. </div><div>
</div><div>“The report, which argues that shareholder resolutions on climate change are politically motivated and may negatively affect company performance and shareholder value, is clearly at odds with the policies and experiences of many NAM members. Further, NAM’s depiction of climate-related resolutions may permit an inference that the companies that serve on its board are skeptical about climate science or the action needed to address this urgent issue,” wrote the investors.</div><div>
</div><div>Smith, representing Walden Asset Management, a division of the Boston Trust and Investment Company, appealed at the time to NAM’s member companies to protect their reputations and integrity by distancing themselves from both NAM and MSIC. </div><div>
</div><div>“The irony is that many companies on the NAM board are active business leaders on climate change, yet their dues to NAM are funding an aggressive attack against the very investors they meet with regularly to address climate change.”</div><div>
</div><div>Corporate Change Comes From Within</div><div>
</div><div>Shareholder resolutions stem from not only concerns about future profitability, but also the social impacts of their investments. In recent years, shareholders have proposed hundreds of resolutions aimed at forcing companies to address the risks of climate change and make other policy changes.</div><div>
</div><div>These resolutions provide a way for shareholders to bring critical issues to the attention of a company’s management and board. Generally, any investor holding $2,000 worth of stock or 1 percent of a company can introduce a resolution. </div><div>
</div><div>It was pressure from shareholders that forced Exxon in 2014 to provide a report on its climate-risk calculations. That report, Energy and Carbon — Managing the Risks, was subsequently subpoenaed by the New York attorney general’s office in its investigation into a potential climate fraud lawsuit. The AG office has since filed suit against Exxon.</div><div>
</div><div>The passage of a shareholder resolution in 2017 forced Exxon to acknowledge for the first time that its core oil and gas assets face some risk of becoming stranded — or unusable — due to government policies and international agreements that seek to limit climate change. </div><div>
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</div><div><b>Hoping to push Exxon to more fully outline which assets could become stranded</b>, shareholders are now proposing a resolution that the company provide investors with an accounting of how it plans to meet its short-, medium- and long-term greenhouse gas targets as outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement. Exxon in January asked the SEC for permission to avoid a vote on that resolution. The SEC has not yet ruled on it.</div><div>
</div><div>NAM believes proxy advisory firms have been a reason for the recent success of some of those resolutions and is calling for increased SEC oversight to limit their influence.</div><div>
</div><div>“For far too long, proxy advisory firms have exerted undue influence over manufacturing companies, trying to force business decisions without any regard to investors’ best interests,” NAM president and chief executive Jay Timmons told Reuters.</div><div>
</div><div>NAM also submitted a letter to the SEC, urging the agency to “highlight the importance of effective guardrails around third parties (like proxy advisory firms and activist investors) that often detract from business growth and shareholder value creation” and to streamline the proxy process in order to allow companies to “continue to focus on growing their businesses and driving shareholder returns.” </div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>NAM and the Main Street Investors’ Coalition did not respond to requests for comment.</b> </div><div>
</div><div>Not only can shareholder resolutions lead to increased corporate earnings, but carbon asset risk resolutions could prevent companies from incurring additional liability for climate change damages, said Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, a non-profit advocating for corporate responsibility through shareholder advocacy. </div><div>
</div><div>“It will help companies move forward understanding that they need to start making changes, that they need to start reducing their carbon risk, that demand may in fact fall precipitously in the future and the world is moving to a low carbon energy system,” Fugere said. “If they are not on board, then they are at risk of being competitively disadvantaged.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Nell Minow, a long-time shareholder rights advocate, said the Main Street Investors Coalition does not represent actual Main Street investors.</b> </div><div>
</div><div>“In reality, it is a corporate-funded group with no real ties to retail investors,” Minow wrote in a post on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. “And its advocacy is as fake as its name.”</div></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/27/oil-manufacturers-accountability-project-trade-group-climate-suits">https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/27/oil-manufacturers-accountability-project-trade-group-climate-suits</a></font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></font></div><div><b>Battling for Big Oil: Manufacturing Trade Group Leads Assault on Climate Suits</b></div><div>Read time: 12 mins</div><div>By Guest • Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 11:09</div><div>
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</div><div>By Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Crossposted from Climate Liability News.</div><div>
</div><div><b>In its fight to stave off a wave of climate change-related lawsuits, the fossil fuel industry has found a vocal and unapologetic ally in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). </b>The 123-year old trade group represents a wide range of the nation’s manufacturing companies, but it has frequently gone to bat for select segments of its membership during major liability battles. Currently, it is Big Oil’s staunchest defender.</div><div>The group has filed briefs defending oil companies in liability lawsuits, launched campaigns to discredit the communities filing them, and has worked to stop shareholders from pressing the oil companies to disclose climate risks. In these roles, NAM has put itself front and center in the effort to keep fossil fuel companies from being held liable for their role in climate change, and from paying for the related damages that will run in the hundreds of billions of dollars to communities across the country.</div><div>
</div><div>“Taxpayer resources should not be used for baseless lawsuits that are designed to enrich trial lawyers and grab headlines for politicians,” Lindsey de la Torre, executive director of NAM’s spinoff group, the<b> Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP</b>), said in a statement after Rhode Island filed one of the climate liability lawsuits last year. NAM launched MAP in 2017 as a response to the increasing number of climate liability suits. </div><div>
</div><div>Those suits, according to NAM, are a result of a coordinated campaign by activists “to disparage U.S. manufacturers with a focus on America’s largest energy manufacturers.” </div><div>
</div><div>MAP is now attempting to convince the American public — as well as judges who might hear those liability cases — that attempts to hold companies accountable for their role in climate change will harm business, said Richard Daynard, president of Northeastern University Law School’s Public Health Advocacy Institute and chair of its Tobacco Products Liability Project.</div><div>
</div><div>Manufacturers' Accountability Project logo</div><div>The Manufacturers' Accountability Project (MAP) was launched in November 2017 to push back against climate-change-related lawsuits affecting the manufacturing industry. ]</div><div>
</div><div><b>“This is essentially the PR front for the defendants in climate litigation,</b>” Daynard said, adding that MAP is also working to discourage municipalities from filing future suits.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“This is all part of a long history of <b>tort reform </b>propaganda,” he said, adding that NAM has worked for decades to reign in all types of liability litigation, including against the tobacco industry.</span></div><div>
</div><div>So perhaps it’s not surprising that NAM’s defense of fossil fuel companies has begun to look increasingly like its support for the tobacco industry in the 1980s. Similar tactics were used when tobacco companies were facing hundreds of lawsuits and were charged with racketeering by the federal government for deceiving the public about the catastrophic health hazards of smoking. NAM has even hired the same law firm that defended the tobacco industry to launch an assault on the climate liability lawsuits.</div><div>
</div><div>NAM recently named Phil Goldberg, a former coal lobbyist as special counsel for MAP. Goldberg is a managing partner in the Washington office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, which gained notoriety for defending the tobacco industry, and is the co-chair of the firm’s public policy group. </div><div>
</div><div><b>Some say Shook, Hardy & Bacon went beyond defending tobacco companies, actively coordinating efforts by its clients to deliberately deceive the public about the ruinous health effects of smoking.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Judge Gladys Kessler, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who found 10 tobacco companies guilty of violating racketeering laws in 2006, said the company’s lawyers “played an absolute central role in the creation and perpetuation” of the companies’ “fraudulent schemes,” calling it a “sad and disquieting chapter” in the legal profession.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Even before Goldberg was hired, MAP had launched an offensive against climate suits, filing friend-of-the-court briefs and intervening in a landmark constitutional suit brought by 21 young people against the U.S. government. MAP has also submitted public records requests and coordinated a public relations campaign to discredit the municipalities behind the liability lawsuits.</div><div>
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</div><div>Sharon Eubanks, a former Department of Justice lawyer who led the government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, said MAP is launching a direct attack on climate litigation suits.</div><div>
</div><div>“It’s very similar what they’re doing, only the tobacco industry at least didn’t come right out and say ‘We’re going to target these lawsuits directly,’” Eubanks said. “They did so indirectly. But NAM and MAP, they’re like, ‘We’re targeting the lawsuits.’” </div><div>
</div><div>Michael Barnett, a professor of management & global business at Rutgers Business School who has studied trade associations, said groups like NAM exist to defend the interests of their industry. </div><div>
</div><div>“It’s sort of an outsourced arm of those firms, rather than doing it all on their own, there’s strength in numbers,” Barnett said. “There’s some efficiency to having one centralized legal defense that attacks on behalf of the whole industry in addition to each of the individual firms taking on these issues.”</div><div>
</div><div>No Stranger to the Liability Battlefield</div><div>
</div><div>The addition of Goldberg to MAP’s legal team indicates a continuing commitment to defending NAM’s fossil fuel defendants. In addition to being the go-to law firm for tobacco companies, Shook, Hardy & Bacon has a long history with NAM, partnering as far back as 2007 to support firms facing product liability suits. The firm worked so closelywith the tobacco industry to attack the science showing the dangers of smoking it was named in several cases along with their clients, charging them with deceiving the public by fraudulently concealing the health effects of smoking. Oklahoma’s attorney general called Shook, Hardy & Bacon an “aider and abettor” of fraud in one suit.</div><div>
</div><div>“[The Department of Justice] considered suing them and making them defendants because they were so much a part of the RICO violations we alleged,” Eubanks said.</div><div>
</div><div>“They’re not even hiding from anything, they’re just saying ‘we want to influence what’s happening in these cases the best way that we can.’” </div><div>
</div><div>She said she’s seen no evidence that MAP’s tactics are illegal, but they are similar to some of what was alleged in the tobacco cases.</div><div>
</div><div>Goldberg did not respond to a request for comment. In a NAM press release he said, “The NAM and its Manufacturers’ Accountability Project are the tip of the spear in the fight against the wave of unfounded public nuisance lawsuits targeting America’s manufacturers.” </div><div>
</div><div>Goldberg said climate liability suits get in the way of finding real solutions and “are more about politics than addressing the global challenge of climate change.” He did not elaborate on what the solutions are or how municipalities will pay for the infrastructure needed to protect their residents, costs that are projected to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide.</div><div>
</div><div>A History of Advocating for Fossil Fuel Members</div><div>
</div><div>NAM, which was founded in 1895, describes itself as the largest manufacturing association in the United States. It doesn’t publicly disclose its membership list, but its board includes some of the oil and gas industry’s most powerful executives. </div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Exxon</b> senior vice president and management committee member Neil Chapman joined NAM’s executive committee in 2015, taking over the position vacated by current Exxon chief executive Darren Woods. Chapman, who donated $10,000 to NAM’s political action committee during the 2018 election cycle, also serves as NAM’s southwest regional vice chair. </span></div><div>
</div><div>Chapman and Exxon did not respond to a request for comment. </div><div>
</div><div>For decades, the association has promoted climate denial, founding the Global Climate Coalition in 1989 and sharing offices until 1992 while the Global Climate Coalition and its members — primarily energy companies and automobile manufacturers — worked to cast doubt on what was fast becoming overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels drives climate change. The goal was to change the public’s perception and cast doubt on climate science.</div><div>
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</div><div><b>The Global Climate Coalition was disbanded in 2002 after several of its largest corporate members pulled out under public pressure to accept that climate change — and the projected catastrophic effects — was an undeniable global threat.</b></div><div>
</div><div>More recently, NAM’s focus has shifted from promoting climate deception to defending member companies from efforts to hold them accountable for years of deceiving the public and damaging the climate.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Along with the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, NAM in 2015 joined the landmark youth climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States as an intervenor on the side of the federal government. </span></div><div>
</div><div>Calling the suit a “direct threat to businesses,” the trade associations said the “significant reduction in [greenhouse gas] emissions would cause a significant negative effect on [their] members by constraining the sale of the product they have specialized in developing and selling.” When the court asked intervenors to explain their views on climate change, NAM quickly backed out.</div><div>
</div><div>When the liability lawsuits began — and now total more than a dozen from communities across the country and one state (Rhode Island) — NAM responded by launching MAP to “set the record straight and highlight foundations and other activists who have sought to undermine and weaken manufacturing in the United States” by engaging in climate change-related litigation. </div><div>
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</div><div>MAP came out swinging, claiming that then-New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s use of the Martin Act to investigate Exxon for possible climate change-related fraud was “politically motivated.” It demanded New York Mayor Bill de Blasio apologize to New Yorkers for using an outside firm to file its suit against five major oil companies and launched a campaign to highlight what it called de Blasio’s “politically-motivated attacks on manufacturers.”</div><div>
</div><div>Eubanks said that rhetoric doesn’t add up.</div><div>
</div><div>“Lawsuits are to enforce the law, to ensure that people are following the law and it takes you out of a political process and puts you before a neutral person, a judge,” she said, adding that Shook, Hardy & Bacon also does a good bit of political lobbying. </div><div>
</div><div>“They say, ‘We think these matters should be handled by legislation, not litigation, and by regulations that will come out of any statutes that are enacted,” she said. “Then they fight real hard to make sure there are no statutes that come down the pike because regulations come out of regulatory authority, so it sounds real good, but that’s wholly inconsistent with their approach.” </div><div>
</div><div><b>NAM and MAP have made a big deal out of the potential for future RICO charges against the fossil fuel industry </b>— the same racketeering laws that ultimately ensnared the tobacco industry — and contend that a conspiracy is being waged on the other side by a “group of politically motivated activists” who are “trying to take down America’s energy manufacturers.” </div><div>
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</div><div>“Right now, there are groups of trial lawyers slinking around the country tantalizing elected officials in cities and states with unrealistic promises of jackpot justice if they will only agree to sue energy manufacturers over climate change,” said NAM president and chief executive Jay Timmons in NAM’s State of Manufacturing Address last week in Houston. “These lawyers — they want to get rich at the expense of manufacturing workers.”</div><div>
</div><div>Daynard said this type of messaging is used in an effort to control the narrative around — and media coverage of — climate litigation.</div><div>
</div><div>“They have this notion that if they can get continue to get news coverage and establish themselves, they can make sure when cases are filed journalists will look, go to them and they can then get in some comment on how this is all worthless crazy stuff stirred up by ‘greedy lawyers’ or ‘ideologically driven NGO’s,’” Daynard said.</div><div>
</div><div>To try and substantiate its view that litigation is part of a vast conspiracy — and in what some say is an attempt to have a chilling effect on municipalities that file lawsuits — MAP has also submitted extensive public record requests to plaintiffs in the suits, seeking documents and communication between the municipalities and their attorneys, prior records requests that include those attorneys, certain communication regarding the defendant companies and communication between the municipalities and billionaire Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen, a progressive organization working to stem the risks of climate change for future generations.</div><div>
</div><div>When Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin filed the first state-level suit last July, MAP denounced it. </div><div>
</div><div>Eubanks said ensuring manufacturers abide by state law is exactly what attorneys general should do.</div><div>
</div><div>“We have consumer protection statutes, we have consumer protection agencies, that’s part of what makes this country great,” Eubanks said. “You can’t just come in and roll over people with deceptive and unfair methods of competition, you can’t just lie about things without consequences and we have organizations to protect that. That’s what I find so alarming about this — the whole idea that there’s something wrong with enforcing the law.”</div><div>
</div><div>NAM did not respond to a request for comment. De la Torre could not be reached for comment.</div><div>
</div><div>Perhaps NAM’s biggest attack on liability suits thus far has been its accusations against several California municipalities. </div><div>
</div><div>Not long after the suits were filed, <b>Exxon went on the offensive, </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">accusing plaintiffs of failing to disclose climate risks to their bond investors. </span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">To try to bolster that allegation, NAM — along with the industry ally Competitive Enterprise Institute — asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether several cities and counties that filed climate suits misled investors when they stated in bond offerings that they couldn’t predict the impacts of climate change.</span> </div><div>
</div><div>A report by the former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal bonds division later found the municipalities did not mislead potential investors.</div><div>
</div><div>In another instance, NAM partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to back Exxon, filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the oil giant’s quest to stop investigations by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York. </div><div>
</div><div>New York has since filed a lawsuit against Exxon based on that investigation, alleging the oil giant for years deceived investors by deliberately downplaying the climate risks to its business and long-term financial health. The Supreme Court recently ruled against Exxon’s attempt to stop Massachusetts’ investigation, which now continues.</div><div>
</div><div>This is the first in a series of articles on the trade group coordinating opposition to climate liability suits.</div></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see evang2</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030_full.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030_full.html</a></font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="super opaque-guts" role="main"><div class="super-inner"><article class="content layout-story"><div class="content-group story-core sticky-wrapper"><div class="story-text has-drop-cap"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the<b> National Association of Manufacturers. </b>The program promised an impressive slate of speakers: titans at General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Mutual Life, and Sears, Roebuck; popular lecturers such as etiquette expert Emily Post and renowned philosopher-historian Will Durant; even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Tucked away near the end of the program was a name few knew initially, but one everyone would be talking about by the convention’s end: Reverend James W. Fifield Jr.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, the 41-year-old Congregationalist minister bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart.</b> Addressing the crowd of business leaders, Fifield delivered a passionate defense of the American system of free enterprise and a withering assault on its perceived enemies in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Decrying the New Deal’s “encroachment upon our American freedoms,” the minister listed a litany of sins committed by the Democratic government, ranging from its devaluation of currency to its disrespect for the Supreme Court. Singling out the regulatory state for condemnation, he denounced “the multitude of federal agencies attached to the executive branch” and warned ominously of “the menace of autocracy approaching through bureaucracy.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It all sounds familiar enough today, but Fifield’s audience of executives was stunned. Over the preceding decade, as America first descended into and then crawled its way out of the Great Depression, the these titans of industry had been told, time and time again, that they were to blame for the nation’s downfall. Fifield, in contrast, insisted that they were the source of its salvation.</font></font></p><div id="widgetMagazineGlobalSponsoredContent" class="p3Global"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They just needed to do one thing: Get religion.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fifield told the industrialists that <u>clergymen</u><i> </i>would be crucial in regaining the upper hand in their war with Roosevelt. As men of God, ministers could voice the same conservative complaints as business leaders, but without any suspicion that they were motivated solely by self-interest. They could push back against claims, made often by Roosevelt and his allies, that business had somehow sinned and the welfare state was doing God’s work. The assembled industrialists gave a rousing amen. “When he had finished,” a journalist noted, “rumors report that the N.A.M. applause could be heard in Hoboken.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was a watershed moment—the beginning of a movement that would advance over the 1940s and early 1950s a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Fifield and like-minded ministers saw Christianity and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, and argued that spreading the gospel of one required spreading the gospel of the other. The two systems had been linked before, of course, but always in terms of their shared <em>social</em> characteristics. Fifield’s innovation was his insistence that Christianity and capitalism were political soul mates, first and foremost.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before the New Deal, the government had never loomed quite so large over business and, as a result, it had never loomed large in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. But in Fifield’s vision, it now cast a long and ominous shadow.He and his colleagues devoted themselves to fighting the government forces they believed were threatening capitalism and, by extension, Christianity. And their activities helped build a foundation for a new vision of America in which businessmen would no longer suffer under the rule of Roosevelt but instead thrive—in a phrase they popularized—in a nation “under God.” In many ways, the marriage of corporate and Christian interests that has recently dominated the news—from the <em>Hobby Lobby</em> case to controversies over state-level versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—is not that new at all.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><strong>For much of the 1930s, </strong>organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) had been searching in vain for ways to rehabilitate a public image that had been destroyed in the Great Depression and defamed by the New Deal</span>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In 1934, a new generation of conservative industrialists took over NAM with a promise to “serve the purposes of business salvation.” The organization rededicated itself to spreading the gospel of free enterprise, vastly expanding its expenditures in the field. As late as 1934, NAM spent a paltry $36,000 on public relations. Three years later, it devoted $793,043 to the cause, more than half its total income. NAM now promoted capitalism through a wide array of films, radio programs, advertisements, direct mail, a speakers bureau and a press service that provided ready-made editorials and news stories for 7,500 local newspapers.</span></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ultimately, though, industry’s self-promotion was seen as precisely that. Jim Farley, chairman of the Democratic Party, joked that another group involved in this public relations campaign—the American Liberty League—really should have been called the “American Cellophane League.” “First, it’s a DuPont product,” Farley quipped, “And second, you can see right through it.” </span>Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt took his shots. “It has been said that there are two great Commandments—one is to love God, and the other to love your neighbor,” he noted soon after the Liberty League’s creation. “The two particular tenets of this new organization say you shall love God and then forget your neighbor.” Off the record, he joked that the name of the god they worshiped seemed to be “Property.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Roosevelt’s quips made clear, the president shrewdly used spiritual language for political ends. In the judgment of his biographer James MacGregor Burns, “probably no American politician has given so many speeches that were essentially sermons rather than statements of policy.” His first inaugural address was so laden with references to Scripture that the National Bible Press published an extensive chart linking his text with the “Corresponding Biblical Quotations.” In a memorable passage, Roosevelt reassured the nation that “the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore the temple to the ancient truths.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>When Roosevelt launched the New Deal, politically liberal clergymen echoed his arguments, championing his proposal for a vast welfare state as simply the Christian thing to do.</b> The head of the Federal Council of Churches, for instance, claimed the New Deal embodied basic Christian principles such as the “significance of daily bread, shelter, and security.” When businessmen realized their economic arguments were no match for Roosevelt’s religious ones, they decided to beat him at his own game.</font></font></p><p id="page_02" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;" /><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That’s where Revered Fifield came in. Nicknamed “The Apostle to Millionaires” by a friendly writer, Fifield took over the elite First Congregational Church in Los Angeles in 1935. </span>The minister was well matched to the millionaires in his pews. Politically conservative but doctrinally liberal, he crafted an interpretation of the Bible that catered to his congregation. Notably, Fifield dismissed the many passages in the New Testament about wealth and poverty, and instead assured the elite that their worldly success was a sign of God’s blessings.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Soon after his arrival in Los Angeles, Fifield founded Spiritual Mobilization, an organization whose mission was “to arouse the ministers of all denominations in America to check the trends toward pagan stateism, which would destroy our basic freedom and spiritual ideals.” The organization’s credo reflected the common politics of the millionaires in his congregation: Men were creatures of God imbued with “inalienable rights and responsibilities,” specifically enumerated as “the liberty and dignity of the individual, in which freedom of choice, of enterprise and of property is inherent.” Churches, it asserted, had a solemn duty to defend those rights against the encroachments of the state.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fifield quickly brought the organization into national politics, gaining attention from leading conservatives across America who were eager to enlist ministers in their fight against the New Deal. Former President Herbert Hoover, deposed by Roosevelt and disparaged by his acolytes, advisedand encouraged Fifield in personal meetings and regular correspondence. “If it would be possible for the Church to make a non-biased investigation into the morals of this government,” Hoover wrote the minister in 1938, “they would find everywhere the old negation of Christianity that ‘the end justifies the means.’<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">” In October 1938, Fifield sent an alarmist tract to more than 70,000 clergymen across the nation, seeking to recruit them in the revolt against Roosevelt. “We ministers have special opportunities and special responsibilities in these critical days,” it began.<b>“America’s movement toward dictatorship has already eliminated checks and balances in its concentration of powers in our chief executive.” Finding the leaflet to his liking, Hoover sent Fifield a warm note of appreciation and urged him to press on</b>.</span></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Within a few years, the minister had the support of not just Hoover but an impressive array of conservative figures in politics, business and religion—“a who’s who of the conservative establishment,” in the words of one observer. As Spiritual Mobilization’s national ambitions grew, Fifield searched for more sponsors to finance the fight. In the mid-1940s, he won a number of powerful new patrons, but none was more important than J. Howard Pew Jr., president of Sun Oil.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tall and stiff, with bushy eyebrows, Pew had a stern appearance that matched his attitude. He had previously been involved in anti-New Deal organizations like the Liberty League and now believed the postwar era would witness a renewed struggle for the soul of the nation. Looking over some material from Spiritual Mobilization, Pew decided the organization shared his understanding of what was wrong with America and what needed to be done. But to his dismay, the material offered no agenda for action whatsoever, merely noting that Spiritual Mobilization would send clergymen bulletins and place advertisements but ultimately “leave details” of what to do “to individual ministers.” Pew thought this was no way to run a national operation. “I am frank to confess,” he wrote a confidant, “that if Dr. Fifield has developed a concrete program and knows exactly where he is going and what he expects to accomplish, that conception has never become clearly defined in my mind.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Pew felt Fifield’s touch had been too light, he knew a more forceful approach would fail as well. In February 1945, famed industrial consultant Alfred Haake explained to Pew why NAM’s own outreach to ministers had failed. “Of the approximately thirty preachers to whom I have thus far talked, I have yet to find one who is unqualifiedly impressed,” Haake reported. “One of the men put it almost typically for the rest when he said: ‘The careful preparation and framework for the meetings to which we are brought is too apparent. We cannot help but see that it is expertly designed propaganda and that there must be big money behind it. We easily become suspicious.’”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If they wanted to convince clergymen to side with them, industrialists would need a subtler approach. Rather than treating ministers as a passive audience to be persuaded, Haake argued, they should involve them actively in the cause as participants. The first step would be making ministers realize that they, too, had something to fear from the growth of government. “The religious leaders must be helped to discover that their callings are threatened,” Haake argued, by realizing that the “collectivism” of the New Deal, “with the glorification of the state, is really a denial of God.” Once they were thus alarmed, they would readily join Spiritual Mobilization as its representatives and could then be organized more effectively into a force for change both locally and nationally.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Reverend Fifield worked to</strong> make Spiritual Mobilization out of the ranks of the clergy. The growing numbers of its “minister-representatives” were found in every state, with large concentrations in industrial regions like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. They were overwhelmingly Protestant, though a scattering of priests and rabbis allowed the organization to present itself as part of the new spirit of “Judeo-Christianity.” In the previous decade, this innovative “interfaith” approach had taken shape as a way for liberal clergymen to unite in common social causes. Now, in the postwar era, conservative organizations such as Spiritual Mobilization shrewdly followed suit.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The organization grew rapidly. In February 1947, Fifield reported that in three years he had expanded the mass of their minister-representatives from an initial 400 members to more than 10,000 in all. He set them to work spreading arguments against the “<b>pagan stateism” of the New Deal. </b>“It is time to exalt the dignity of individual man as a child of God,” he urged. “Let’s redouble our efforts.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Clergymen responded enthusiastically. Many wrote the Los Angeles office to request advertised copies of Friedrich Hayek’s libertarian treatise <em>The Road to Serfdom </em>and anti–New Deal tracts by Herbert Hoover and libertarian author Garet Garrett. Armed with such materials, the minister-representatives transformed secular arguments into spiritual ones and spread them widely. “Occasionally I preach a sermon directly on your theme,” a Midwestern minister wrote, “but equally important, it is in the background of my thought as I prepare all my sermons, meet various groups and individuals.” Everyday activities were echoed by special events. In October 1947, for instance, Spiritual Mobilization held a national sermon competition on the theme “The Perils to Freedom,” with $5,000 offered in prize money. The organization had more than 12,000 minister representatives at that point, but it received twice as many submissions for the competition—representing roughly 15 percent of the entire country’s clergymen.</font></font></p><p id="page_03" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;" /><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pleased with his progress, Fifield’s backers doubled the annual budget. Pew once again set the pace, soliciting donations from officials at 158 corporations, including longstanding supporters of Spiritual Mobilizationsuch as General Motors, Chrysler, National Steel, Firestone Tire and Rubber and Gulf Oil. “A large percentage of ministers in this country are completely ignorant of economic matters and have used their pulpits for the purpose of disseminating socialistic and totalitarian doctrines,” Pew wrote in his appeal. “Much has already been accomplished in the education of these ministers, but a great deal more is left to be done.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The success of Spiritual Mobilization brought increased funding, but also scorn from progressives. In February 1948, the<em> Nation </em>ran an acidic cover story. “A major battle for the minds of the clergy, particularly those of the Protestant persuasion, is now being waged in America,” it read. “For the most part the battle lines are honestly drawn and represent a sharp clash in ideologies, but now and then the reactionary side tries to fudge a bit by backing movements which mask their true character and real sponsors. Such a movement is Spiritual Mobilization.” The article detailed the scope of its operations, noting its high-rent offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as the hundreds of thousands of pamphlets by pro-business authors it distributed for free. <b>But no one knew who was funding the operation, the<em> Nation</em> warned. In this withering account, Fifield came off as a charlatan who prostrated himself before the “apostles of rugged individualism” to secure his own fame and fortune and, in return, prostituted himself for their needs.</b></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In response, Spiritual Mobilization redoubled its efforts, taking an even more aggressive approach to public relations.</b> In 1949, it launched <em>The Freedom Story, </em>a 15-minute<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> radio program consisting of a dramatic presentation and brief commentary from Fifield. In the original scripts, Fifield made direct attacks on Democratic programs at home, but his lawyer warned him they would lose the “public service” designation that gave them free airtime if he were “too plain spoken” with partisan attacks. Instead, he advised, the minister should make use of foreign examples to illustrate the spreading menace of “creeping socialism” at home. Fifield’s financial backers helped secure free airtime for these programs across the nation. In 1950, <em>The Freedom Story </em>was broadcast on over 500 stations; by late 1951, it aired on more than 800.</span></font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, Spiritual Mobilization launched a monthly magazine, <em>Faith and Freedom</em>, showcasing the work of prominent libertarian authors, including Ludwig von Mises, leader of the Austrian School of economics; Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education; and Henry Hazlitt, a founding member of the future American Enterprise Institute. Even though laymen dominated the pages of <em>Faith and Freedom</em>, the journal purposely presented itself as created <em>by </em>ministers <em>for </em>ministers. Spiritual Mobilization had long operated on the principle that clergymen could not be swayed through crude propaganda. “The articulation should be worked out beforehand, of course, and we should be ready to help the thinking of the ministers on it,” Haake noted in one of his early musings, “but it should be so done as to enable them to discover it for themselves.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em>Faith and Freedom </em>thus presented itself as a forum in which ministers could disagree freely. But for all of its claims about encouraging debate, the journaldid little to hide its contempt for liberal ministers. The magazine repeatedly denounced the Social Gospel and, just as important, clergymen who invoked it to advocate for the establishment and expansion of welfare state programs. In a typical article, Irving Howard, a Congregationalist minister, darkly noted the “pagan origin of the Social Gospel” in 19th century Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, claiming it was part of a larger “impetus to a shift in faith from God to man, from eternity to time, from the individual to the group, [from] individual conversion to social coercion, and from the church to the state.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>With the Republican gains in the midterm elections of 1950, the forces behind Spiritual Mobilization felt emboldened. In an upbeat letter to Alfred Sloan,</b> the head of General Motors and one of his ardent supporters, Fifield reflected on the recent returns. “We are having quite a deluge of letters from across the country, indicating the feeling that Spiritual Mobilization has had some part in the awakening which was evidenced by the elections,” he wrote. “Of course, we are a little proud and very happy for whatever good we have been able to do in waking people up to the peril of collectivism and the importance of Freedom under God.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For Fifield and his associates, the phrase “freedom under God”—contrasted with what they saw as oppression under the federal government—became an effective new rallying cry in the early 1950s. The minister pressed the theme repeatedly in the pages of <em>Faith and Freedom </em>and in his radio broadcasts of <em>The Freedom Story, </em>but he soon found a more prominent means of spreading the message to the American people.</font></font></p><p style="text-align: left; margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">*</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>In the spring of 1951,</strong> Spiritual Mobilization’s leaders struck upon an idea they believed would advance their cause considerably. To mark the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they proposed for the week surrounding the Fourth of July a massive series of events devoted to the theme of “Freedom Under God.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To that end, in June 1951, the leaders of Spiritual Mobilization announced the formation of a new Committee to Proclaim Liberty to coordinate their Fourth of July “Freedom Under God” celebrations. Despite its apparent spiritual emphasis, the true goal of the Committee was advancing political conservatism.<b> Its two most prominent members had been brought low by Democratic administrations: Hoover, driven from the White House two decades earlier by Franklin Roosevelt, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, removed from his command in Korea two months earlier by Harry Truman</b>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> These conservative icons were joined by military leaders, heads of patriotic groups, conservative legal and political stars, right-wing media figures and outspoken conservatives from the realm of entertainment, such as Bing Crosby, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan. But the majority came from corporate America. J. Howard Pew was joined by other business giants, including household names such as Harvey Firestone, Conrad Hilton, James L. Kraft, Henry Luce, Fred Maytag and J.C. Penney, as well as lesser-known leaders at giant corporations including General Motors, Chrysler, U.S. Steel and Gulf Oil.</span></font></font></p><p id="page_04" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;" /><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The committee’s corporate sponsors took out full-page newspaper ads to promote a pinched version of the Declaration. Dropping the founding fathers’ long list of grievances about the absence of effective government in the colonies, the sponsors reprinted just the preamble alone. This approach allowed them to reframe the Declaration as a purely libertarian manifesto, dedicated solely to the removal of an oppressive government.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The San Diego Gas & Electric Company, for instance, encouraged its customers to reread the preamble, which it presented with its editorial commentary running alongside:</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These words are the stones upon which man has built history’s greatest work—the United States of America. Remember them well!</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>“ </strong>… <strong>all men are created equal </strong>… <strong>” </strong>That means you are as important in the eyes of God as any man brought into this world. You are made in his image and likeness. There is no “superior” man anywhere.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>“ </strong>… <strong>they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights </strong>… <strong>” </strong>Here is your birthright—the freedom to live, work, worship, and vote as you choose. These are rights no government on earth may take from you.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>“ </strong>… <strong>That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men </strong>… <strong>” </strong>Here is the reason for and the purpose of government. Government is but a servant—not a master—not a giver of anything.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>“ </strong>… <strong>deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed </strong>… <strong>” </strong>In America, the government may assume only the powers you allow it to have. It may assume no others.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Committee to Proclaim Liberty also enlisted the nation’s ministers to promote the “Freedom Under God” festivities. Those on Spiritual Mobilization’s mailing list received a prefabricated press release that merely needed clergymen to fill in the blanks with their personal information (“‘The purpose of the Committee,’ the Reverend _ declared, ‘is to revive a custom long forgotten in America—spiritual emphasis on the 4th of July’”). The committee also established a sermon contest, modeled on the wildly successful “Perils to Freedom” competition of 1947. The 17,000 minister-representatives of the organization were encouraged to compete for cash prizes and other rewards by writing an original sermon on the theme of “Freedom Under God” and delivering it to their congregations on “Independence Sunday,” July 1, 1951.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These sermons were amplified by a program broadcast that same evening over CBS’s national radio network. Cecil B. DeMille worked with his old friend Fifield to plan the production, giving it a professional tone and attracting an impressive array of Hollywood stars. Jimmy Stewart served as master of ceremonies, while Bing Crosby and Gloria Swanson offered short messages of their own. The preamble to the Declaration was read by Lionel Barrymore, who had posed for promotional photos holding a giant quill and looking at a large piece of parchment inscribed with the words “Freedom Under God Will Save Our Country.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The broadcast featured choral performances of “America” as well as “Heritage,” an epic poem composed by a former leader of the US Chamber of Commerce. Gen. Matthew Ridgway</b> interrupted his duties leading American forces in Korea to send a keynote address from Tokyo. He insisted that the founding fathers had been motivated, in large part, by their religious faith. “For them there was no confusion of thought, no uncertainty of objectives, no doubt as to the road they should follow to their goals,” he said. “Theirs was a deep and abiding faith in God, a faith which is still the great reservoir of strength of the American people in this day of great responsibility for their future and the future of the world.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “Freedom Under God” festivities reached a crescendo with local celebrations on the Fourth of July. The Committee to Proclaim Liberty coordinated the ringing of church bells across the nation, timed to start precisely at noon and last for a full 10 minutes. Cities and small towns across the country scheduled their own events around the bell ringing. In Los Angeles, for instance, the city’s civil defense agency sounded its air raid sirens in the first test since their installation, resulting in what one newspaper described as “a scream as wild and proud as that of the American eagle.” As bells chimed across the city, residents were encouraged by the committee “to open their doors, sound horns and blow whistles and ring bells, as individual salutes to Freedom.” After the bell ringing, groups gathered in churches and homes to read the preamble together. Both Mayor Fletcher Bowron and Gov. Earl Warren, like their counterparts in many other cities and states, issued official proclamations that urged citizens, in Warren’s words, to spend the day reflecting upon “the blessings we enjoy through Freedom under God.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That night, 50,000 residents attended a massive rally at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Organized under the theme “Freedom Under God Needs You,” the night featured eight circus acts, a jet plane demonstration and a fireworks display that the local chapter of the American Legion promised would be the largest in the entire country. Fifield had the honor of offering the invocation for the evening ceremonies, while actor Gregory Peck delivered a dramatic reading of the Declaration’s preamble.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the end, the Committee to Proclaim Liberty believed, rightly, that its work had made a lasting impression on the nation. “The very words ‘Freedom Under God’ [have] added to the vocabulary of freedom a new term,” the organizers concluded. “It is a significant phrase to people who know that everybody from Stalin on down is paying lip service to freedom until its root meaning is no longer apparent. The term ‘Freedom Under God’ provides a means of identifying and separating conditions which indicate pseudo-freedom, or actual slavery, from those of true freedom.” Citing an outpouring of support for the festivities, the committee resolved to make them an annual tradition and, more important, keep the spirit of its central message alive in American life. The entire nation, its members hoped, would soon think of itself as “under God.”</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And indeed, it did. The Christian libertarianism that propelled this religious rhetoric into American politics proved short-lived, but its slogans thrived long after it was gone. Ironically, language designed to discredit the federal government was soon used to sanctify it instead.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Throughout the 1950s, a new trend of what the Senate chaplain called “under-God consciousness” transformed American political life. In 1953, the first-ever National Prayer Breakfast was convened on the theme of “Government Under God.” In 1954, the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance was amended to include the phrase “under God” for the first time, too. A similar slogan, “In God We Trust,” spread just as quickly. Congress added it to stamps in 1954 and then to paper money in 1955; in 1956, the phrase became the nation’s first official motto.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As this religious revival swept through American politics, many in the United States began to believe their government was formally and fundamentally religious. In many ways, they’ve believed it ever since.</font></font></p><div class="story-share"><div class="interrupt-item social-share-btns"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div></div><footer class="author-bio"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton and the author, most recently, of One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, from which this article has been adapted.</font></font></p></footer></div></div></div></article></div></div><div class="super opaque-guts"><div class="super-inner"><div class="content layout-unequal-extended"><div class="content-primary"><section class="content-group story-categories"><div class="related-categories"><h6><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This story tagged under:</font></font></h6><ul class="related-categories-list"><li><font color="#000000"><a href="http://www.politico.com/p/magazine/tag/history-dept" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">History Dept.</font></a></font></li><li><font color="#000000"><a href="http://www.politico.com/p/magazine/tag/evangelicals" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Evangelicals</font></a></font></li><li><font color="#000000"><a href="http://www.politico.com/p/magazine/tag/new-deal" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">New Deal</font></a></font></li><li><font color="#000000"><a href="http://www.politico.com/p/magazine/tag/christian-conservatives" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Christian Conservatives</font></a></font></li></ul></div></section></div></div></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/one-nation-under-god-by-kevin-m-kruse.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/one-nation-under-god-by-kevin-m-kruse.html</a></font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kazin</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Did <span style="font-family: nyt-imperial, georgia, " times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" rem="rem" font-style="font-style" inherit="inherit" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" font-weight="font-weight" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" color="color">you ever wonder how “In God We Trust” came to be quoted on every American coin and dollar bill? Or why the Pledge of Allegiance to the most revered symbol of the nation includes an explicit declaration of confidence in the Almighty? Or why the president and members of Congress host a National Prayer Breakfast the first Thursday of each February?</span></font></font></div><div class="css-18sbwfn StoryBodyCompanionColumn" style="margin: 0px auto 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" display="display" flex="flex" height="height" px="px" width="width" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><div class="css-1h6whtw" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px calc((100% - 630px) / 2); padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 630px; max-width: 630px;"><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">These now utterly commonplace markers of public piety were almost all created during the same decade — the 1950s. Their initial enthusiasts, as described by the Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse, were conservative Protestant ministers and businessmen who hoped Americans would not take their handiwork for granted. They believed the nation badly needed a religious awakening to reverse the depredations of a godless federal state.</font></font></p><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Every Christian should oppose the totalitarian trends of the New Deal,” asserted James W. Fifield Jr., an eloquent Congregationalist pastor from Los Angeles who, during the 1930s, created Spiritual Mobilization, a publicity offensive that joined megachurches like his with vocal, anti-liberal magnates like the Hollywood producer Cecil B. De Mille and J. Howard Pew Jr., the president of Sun Oil. They all believed religiosity, if widely and officially deployed, would be a mighty weapon in the battle against collectivist liberals at home and Communists abroad. As their ally, Billy Graham, preached in 1951 at one of his ever popular crusades, Americans urgently needed to rededicate themselves to “the rugged individualism that Christ brought” to the world.</font></font></p><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But a funny thing happened on the road to spiritual and political redemption. By the mid-1950s, officeholders and social activists from every point on the ideological spectrum had signed on to the same righteous platform. In 1952, just before moving into the White House, Dwight Eisenhower (who was named after Dwight Moody, the renowned Gilded Age evangelist) told a gathering at the Waldorf Astoria: “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” Only a hardened atheist could object to such an ecumenical bromide. Under Eisenhower, Kruse writes, “the state no longer seemed ‘pagan,’ . . . and liberals could present themselves as acting in accord with God’s will too.” Two years later, when Congress agreed to add “one nation under God” to the Pledge, not even the American Civil Liberties Union objected. One lone Jewish representative from Brooklyn, Abraham Multer, did argue that putting God’s name on the currency would not stimulate “one single person to be more religious.” But even he didn’t dare vote against the bill.</font></font></p></div><aside class="css-14jsv4e" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; display: flex; width: 160px; -webkit-box-align: center; align-items: center;" /></div><div class="css-18sbwfn StoryBodyCompanionColumn" style="margin: 0px auto 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" display="display" flex="flex" height="height" px="px" width="width" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><div class="css-1h6whtw" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px calc((100% - 630px) / 2); padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 630px; max-width: 630px;"><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Faith-based conflict did not disappear from American politics, of course. During the 1960s and early 1970s, battles over religion in public life were fought with no less vigor and nastiness than those waged over civil rights, feminism and war. Kruse provides a deft narrative about the movement to overturn the Supreme Court’s ban on prayer and Bible readings in public schools, President Richard Nixon’s attempt to make approval of his Vietnam policy seem a sacred duty and the Republican Party’s wooing of white evangelicals. Only the last of those endeavors was successful.</font></font></p><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 1966, Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois spearheaded an aggressive campaign to add a Constitutional amendment permitting school prayer. “They teach the little children sex in the schools,” the Republican leader growled. “They teach them about Communism. They even teach them ballet! Why not God Almighty?” Opinion polls strongly favored his stand. But clergymen from a variety of faiths contended that encouraging children to pray violated the First Amendment and might confuse a faith in God with obedience to their teachers. The Dirksen amendment failed to receive the necessary two-thirds margin in the Senate.</font></font></p><div data-testid="inline-message" class="InlineMessage-inline--2ysnq" style="margin: 25px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.1875rem; vertical-align: baseline; box-sizing: border-box; width: calc(100% - 40px); max-width: 630px; text-align: center;"><div class="css-10klw3m vi_inline" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; height: 0px;"><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The main event in Nixon’s pro-war religious revival took place on Independence Day in 1970. Billy Graham led a joint rally and prayer service at the Lincoln Memorial to “Honor America.” Graham assured the crowd of 15,000 — and a national television audience — that the Republic’s founding was “rooted in a book called the Bible”; Kate Smith belted out “God Bless America.” But several hundred chanting, mocking, underclad demonstrators managed to distract and anger the crowd, and the occasion did nothing to firm up support for the debacle in Indochina.</font></font></p><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite the argument Kruse makes beginning with his subtitle, “corporate America” played no significant role in conceiving any of these initiatives — although the hotelier J. Willard Marriott did persuade fellow businessmen to finance Honor America Day. Devout lawmakers like Dirksen and preachers like Graham were quite capable of mustering a God-fearing constituency by themselves. And Graham was not the stalwart right-winger that Kruse, echoing many of his contemporary critics, describes. As Grant Wacker reveals in his excellent new biography of the man, “America’s pastor” admired and was as close to President Lyndon Johnson, an archliberal, as he was to the wily Republican who succeeded him.</font></font></p><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kruse tells a big and important story about the mingling of religiosity and politics since the 1930s. Still, he oversells his basic premise. Americans easily accepted placing God’s name on their currency and in the oath children recite every school day because similar invocations were already routine in public discourse — from the Declaration’s reference to the “unalienable Rights” endowed by the “Creator” to the official chaplains who have opened sessions of the House and Senate with a prayer since 1789. Following the attacks of 9/11, we’ve added the ubiquitous “God Bless America” to bumper stickers, to the ends of political speeches and to many a seventh-inning stretch. As features of what the sociologist Robert Bellah called “civil religion” (a term he borrowed from Rousseau), the familiarity of these practices comforts some without making particular demands on anyone else. Even back in the age of Eisenhower, the A.C.L.U. understood that. </font></font></p><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="text-align: left; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I<span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant-ligatures: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit;">n recent years, those who claim to have inside knowledge of what the Creator wants us to think and do have been more common on the right than on the left. Conservatives blasted President Obama for comparing, at this year’s National Prayer Breakfast, the people who “committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ” with those contemporary Muslims who slaughter in the name of Allah. No serious competitor for the 2016 Republican nomination would quarrel with Ronald Reagan’s 1984 statement that “as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. . . . If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we’ll be a nation gone under.”</span></font></font></p></div></div><div class="css-18sbwfn StoryBodyCompanionColumn" style="margin: 0px auto 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" display="display" flex="flex" height="height" px="px" width="width" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><div class="css-1h6whtw" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px calc((100% - 630px) / 2); padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; width: 630px; max-width: 630px;"><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But which leading progressive in American history would have disagreed with those sentiments? Surely not William Lloyd Garrison or Jane Addams or the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As Kruse points out, Franklin Roosevelt, that alleged collectivist foe of God, sprinkled biblical references into many of his speeches. In his Second Inaugural Address, Roosevelt even “portrayed himself, rather unsubtly, as a modern-day Moses leading his people out of the wilderness.” In the United States, spiritual mobilization has long been anyone’s game.</font></font></p><p class="css-1i0edl6 e2kc3sl0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For that very reason, the presence of four little words of reverence on the currency is quite unremarkable. I doubt any of the long-dead white men whose portraits appear along with the words would have found them objectionable. They may, however, have wondered why they were necessary.</font></font></p></div><aside class="css-14jsv4e" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; display: flex; width: 160px; -webkit-box-align: center; align-items: center;" /></div><div class="bottom-of-article" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><div class="css-rxpi2" style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline; width: 630px; max-width: 630px;"><div class="story" style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><h4 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="nitf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ONE NATION UNDER GOD</font></font></p></h4><h5 style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><p class="nitf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Corporate America Invented Christian America</font></font></p></h5><p class="summary" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Kevin M. Kruse</font></font></p><p class="summary" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3rem; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Illustrated. 352 pp. Basic Books. $29.99.</font></font></p></div></div><div class="css-1hc8e7p" style="margin: 1rem auto 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: italic; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.6rem;" times="times" new="new" roman="roman" serif="serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" width="width" px="px" max-width="max-width"><div class="css-k8fkhk" style="margin: 2rem auto 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.1625rem; vertical-align: baseline; width: 630px; max-width: 630px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1rem; padding: 0px; border: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and is a co-editor of Dissent. His most recent book is “American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.”</font></font></p></div></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style=""><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/1501238213">https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/1501238213</a></font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">k kruse</font></font></div><div><h1 id="title" class="a-size-large a-spacing-none" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0px !important; line-height: 1.3 !important;"><font color="#000000"><span id="productTitle" class="a-size-large" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; line-height: 1.3 !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America</font></span></font></h1></div><div><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162368">https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162368</a></font></font></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> briley</font></font></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> 2016 annual meeting for the Organization of American Historians (OAH) will feature a session focusing upon the provocative book <i>One Nation Under God</i> by Princeton history professor Keven M. Kruse. In <i>One Nation Under God</i>, Kruse argues that the idea of the United States as a Christian nation does not find its origins with the founding of the United States or the writing of the Constitution. Rather, the notion of America as specifically consecrated by God to be a beacon for liberty was the work of corporate and religious figures opposed to New Deal statism and interference with free enterprise. The political conflict found in this concept of Christian libertarianism was modified by President Dwight Eisenhower who advocated a more civic religion of “one nation under God” to which both liberals and conservatives might subscribe. </font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kruse concludes that with the polarization of America in the 1960s over such issues such as school prayer and the war in Vietnam, politicians such as Richard Nixon abandoned the more inclusive civic religion of the Eisenhower era. Kruse writes that by the 1970s “the rhetoric of ‘one nation under God’ no longer brought Americans together; it only reminded them how divided they had become” (274). Arguing that public religion is a modern invention that has little to do with America’s origins, Kruse maintains that contemporary political discourse needs to better recognize the political ideology being perpetuated by the advocates of America as a Christian nation. Needless to say, Kruse’s arguments will antagonize many on the Christian right, as well as many on the left who have employed Christianity as the means through which to implement principles of equality and opportunity as extolled by Jesus of Nazareth, the working-class carpenter.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Drawing upon extensive archival research, the first part of Kruse’s book documents the alliance between religious leaders such as Congregationalist minister James W. Fifield Jr. and businessman<b> J. Howard Pew Jr., president of Sun Oil</b> and a major figure with the <b>National Association of Manufacturers</b>. Working out of his affluent Los Angeles community and congregation, Fifield formed a national organization called Spiritual Mobilization that attracted the support of big business while embracing unfettered capitalist traditions threatened by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The fertile ground plowed by Spiritual Mobilization and Fifield prepared the way for the influential prayer breakfasts of Methodist minister Abraham Vereide and the crusades of evangelist Billy Graham. While the insecurities of the Cold War contributed to the growth of postwar religious fervor, Kruse insists that the prayer movement and Graham “effectively harnessed Cold War anxieties for an already established campaign against the New Deal” (36).</span></font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The prayers of the Christian libertarians were answered with the ascendancy of Dwight Eisenhower to the Presidency. While Graham was given a cold shoulder by Harry Truman, the evangelist was welcomed to the White House by Eisenhower, who also supported the prayer breakfast movement bringing together Congressional leaders and members of the business community. While he lacked allegiance to any specific denomination, Eisenhower was a devout Christian who opened cabinet meetings with prayer. Kruse argues that the President endorsed a rather general sense of Christian principles that would unite the nation under a common understanding of its religious heritage. Thus, Eisenhower supported Congressional legislation that added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance while also embracing “In God We Trust” as the nation’s official motto that was included on the nation’s money supply. The Eisenhower administration also endorsed the National Association of Evangelicals call for a July 4, 1953 March of Freedom declaring that the American government was based upon Biblical principles. The concept of “One Nation Under God” was also championed in the popular culture by the creation of Disneyland and Cecil B. DeMille’s film epic <i>The Ten Commandments</i> (1956), while the National Council for Advertising championed Madison Avenue techniques that would bring the concept of God and free enterprise to all Americans on the local level.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eisenhower’s rather vague notion of a Christian America, however, did not quite coincide with the ideology of Christian libertarianism. Instead, Kruse suggests that actions such as adding “under God” to the pledge were examples of ceremonial Deism; establishing the idea that the First Amendment mandated the separation of church and state but not the separation of religion and politics. Thus, general support for the sacred was acceptable, but not active government intervention that might advance a particular sect. In addition, Eisenhower did not move to dismantle the New Deal; accepting programs such as Social Security and expanding government activity with legislation such as the Interstate Highway Act. Kruse, writes, “Unlike Christian libertarians, who had long presented God and government as rivals, Eisenhower had managed to merge the two into a wholesome ‘government under God.’ In doing so, he ironically undercut the key segment of many of his earlier backers, making their old claims about the ‘pagan’ origins of statism seems suddenly obsolete” (87). Here, Kruse seems to imply Eisenhower had inadvertently sanctified the state and government. Therefore, to criticize the government was both anti-patriotic and anti-religious. This is a fascinating argument, with considerable implications for contemporary politics, but Kruse fails to tease out this idea before moving on to other issues.</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kruse maintains that the religious unity sought by Eisenhower was challenged in the late 1950s and the 1960s as various faiths worried that state advocacy of religion might trample on traditional beliefs and practices. One of the most contentious issues was school-mandated prayer which was deemed unconstitutional in the <i>Engel v. Vitale</i> (1962) decision. Nevertheless, in his majority opinion, Justice Hugo Black insisted that ceremonial Deism, such as prayer before Congressional sessions, chaplains in the military, and “under God” in the pledge, was protected. To the surprise of many church members, a number of religious leaders and the National Council of Churches came to support the prayer decision as a means through which to protect religious traditions from state interference. This approach, however, led to considerable division between leadership and laity; undermining the concept of “one nation under God.”</font></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Seeking to mount a conservative movement against the religious establishment, evangelists such as Billy Graham joined forces with the administration of Richard Nixon to promote a religious perspective that would divide rather than unify Americans. Holding White House religious services officiated by leading evangelical ministers and sponsoring events such as the 1970 Fourth of July “Honor America Day,” featuring a religious service at the Lincoln Memorial led by Graham, Nixon attempted to employ religious nationalism as a means through which to brand those opposing his administration or the war in Vietnam as attacks upon American Christian values. Although Kruse includes an epilogue offering an overview of religion and American politics from the 1980s to the Obama Presidency, he assigns Nixon, rather than Ronald Reagan, primary responsibility for using religion to divide rather than bring Americans together.</font></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-left: 0px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); line-height: 26.88px; padding: 0em 2.5em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 0px !important;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><i>One Nation under God</i> is a provocative piece of historical scholarship that will be sure to engender considerable debate at the OAH. It is a work that will antagonize those on the political right who perceive American exceptionalism as a gift from God bestowed upon the framers of the Constitution, while those who embrace the opposing tradition of the social gospel and Christian socialism may also take offense. Religion has played an important role in American history, and some critics will make the case that Kruse downplays the role of the sacred in American life. However, Kruse makes a major scholarly contribution in his examination of how ministers cooperated with big business to formulate an ideology that the New Deal was a threat to traditional American Christian values of free enterprise and individualism while promoting the false pagan deity of statism. As Kruse moves into a discussions of ceremonial Deism with the Eisenhower administration and consideration of how Nixon employed religion to divide rather than unify, Kruse’s thesis regarding the role assigned to corporate America in creating a Christian America becomes somewhat lost, and this ambitious study may take on too much by attempting to survey the relationship between American politics and religion from the New Deal to the modern age. </font></font></p></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></font></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rev door pro publ</font></font></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></div><div style=""><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/staffers/jordan-stoick" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgba(33, 124, 227, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: 0.2s; text-decoration-line: none;">Jordan Stoick</a> worked as a senior adviser for the<b> Treasury Department </b>from April through December 2017. He left to <a href="http://www.nam.org/Newsroom/Press-Releases/2018/01/NAM-Adds-Jordan-Stoick-to-Head-Government-Relations-Team/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgba(33, 124, 227, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: 0.2s; text-decoration-line: none;">take a job as the lead lobbyist</a> at the National Association of Manufacturing, a trade group that regularly weighs in on immigration reform and labor issues.</font></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">
<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Stoick is now a <a href="https://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=getFilingDetails&filingID=AEFB867C-E7B6-40FD-BC3C-BE8D31287FC9&filingTypeID=51" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgba(33, 124, 227, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: 0.2s; text-decoration-line: none;">registered lobbyist working on everything from agriculture legislation to coal exports and oil and gas pipelines</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> with congressional leaders and staffers. Other members of his team direct their efforts at federal agencies and the White House. “Jordan is fully meeting his obligations under the ethics agreement he signed with the administration,” said </span><a href="https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/staffers/michael-c-short" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgba(33, 124, 227, 0); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; transition: 0.2s; text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Short</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, a spokesman for the manufacturing group. (Short himself is a former Trump political appointee, having worked in the White House as a senior assistant press secretar</span>
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</font></font></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/03/20/peabody-coal-lawyer-laurence-tribe-obama-law-professor-testifies-congress-epa-carbon-rule</font></font></div><div style=""><font color="#000000"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">
taking lead on ozone? ads?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/epa-to-propose-tougher-rules-on-smog-causing-ozone-setting-up-clash-with-gop/2014/11/26/0a4670ce-756a-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html
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