CEI2

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NO MERRI

see CEI3 720

capt/back 7/20

SEE FRED SMITH

SEE FORK 3 B43 ~ KYOTO

html end babies

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EVIL BUT

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https://theecologist.org/**2018/oct/**08/why-did-george-w-bush-pull-out-kyoto-protocol

Despite the huge amount of fossil fuel funding upon which George W. Bush was elected president in 2001, insiders in the monopoly-dominated oil industry remained unsure that he would fight for them - and against climate scientists.

Bush had suggested during his candidacy that CO2 should be treated as a pollutant and, therefore, subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act - even if the international Kyoto Agreement was not economically favourable for America.

Bush’s fence-sitting was strategic: swing states such as Florida were environmentally conscious and speaking out would likely give Democrat presidential candidate Al Gore the advantage.

But, optimistic environmentalists remained hopeful while wary oil-men were worried that it demonstrated a willingness to agree to the broad principles of the treaty.

A Rumoured Speech

Shortly after his inauguration, a rumour circulated that Bush planned to include a line reinforcing his earlier pledge in a forthcoming speech.

Word of the speech reached the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Koch- and Exxon-funded think tank that helped donate to Bush’s presidential campaign. CEI set to work. As their founder and president, Fred Smith latertold Newsweek: “We alerted anyone we thought could have influence and get the line, if it was in the speech, out.”

Despite the think tank’s best efforts, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman testified, on 27 February 2001 at a Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works subcommittee, that she was in favour of regulating CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act.

A week later, she signed a joint statement at the G8 Environment Ministers Meeting [ITALY?] which said: “We commit ourselves to strive to reach agreement on outstanding political issues and to ensure in a cost-effective manner the environmental integrity of the Kyoto Protocol.”

The President’s Position

At this, the denial machine set in motion.Haley Barbour, a lobbyist for a utility firm that stood to lose if greenhouse gases were regulated, urged Vice President Dick Cheneyin a March 1 memo to persuade Bush not to align with the “eco-extremism” of those who saw carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

A group of far-right Republican senators wrote an open letter to their new president. In light of Whitman’s testimony, they asked that Bush clarify his position on climate change, “in particular the Kyoto Protocol, and the regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act.”

Aware of the rising tide against her, Whitman went to the Oval Office to fight her case on the morning of March 13. But, Bush had already composed his response, shortly to be [ACUTALLY WRITTEN BY DC?] sent via Cheney to the senators, which he read to her.

“I do not believe,” read the letter, “that the government should impose on power plants mandatory emissions reductions for carbon dioxide, which is not a ‘pollutant’ under the Clean Air Act.”

Information from the Department of Energy had shown that consumers’ energy bills might be affected, and that this warranted a re-evaluation of his earlier pledge, “especially… given the incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of and solution to global climate change.”

Polluter Pull-Out

Whitman left defeated, just as the puppeteer Cheney arrived to hand-deliver the President’s response to the senators.

By the end of the month, the world’s biggest polluter had pulled out of Kyoto.

Whitman, who later said the decision was “the equivalent to ‘flipping the bird’ frankly to the rest of the world,” was the one to deliver the news. “We have no interest in implementing that treaty,” the former New Jersey Governor told assembled journalists.

Though the terms of the treaty would be finalised in Bonn that July, they would be made all but useless, with the world’s largest polluter out of the game.

Years later, freedom of information disclosures revealed the industry’s input to this decision.

A briefing note prepared for Paula Dobrianksy, Under-Secretary of State for Global Affairs, ahead of her meeting with Glenn Kelly of the Exxon-bankrolled Global Climate Coalition, states: “POTUS [President of the United States] rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you… Interested in hearing from you, what type of international alternatives to Kyoto would you support?”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press).He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.

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  two Koch foundations gave CEI $288,000 from 2014-17. DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund combined to give nearly $3.9 million to CEI since 2014, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust have all contributed over $1 million since then.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers gave $95,000 to CEI from 2015-17, and another industry trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, has donated $70,000 to CEI since 2015.

“No evidence that CO2 emissions are the dominant factor” in climate change

==

capt 818

see main and tag

ebell

 ==

2x?

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16112016/myron-ebell-climate-denier-epa-donald-trump

no lnx

Myron Ebell, the Climate Contrarian Now Plotting the EPA's Precarious Future

Donald Trump's choice to lead the EPA transition team has a long history of pushing climate denial, assailing environmental protections and trumpeting fossil fuels.

John H. Cushman Jr.

BY JOHN H. CUSHMAN JR.

NOV 16, 2016

Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute

Myron Ebell's profile on the Competitive Enterprise Institute's website includes links to his work casting doubt on climate change and urging resistance to climate action. Photo illustration by Paul Horn/InsideClimate News

Myron Ebell, chosen by Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, traces a long history as a determined conservative firebrand.

He rose through the ranks of the "wise-use" movement to land at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, pushing an ideology of private property and free markets reigning supreme. He led activists calling themselves the Cooler Heads Coalition, pushing a brand of no-holds-barred climate denial, putting himself at the center of divisive advocacy wars over fossil fuels and the environment.

For decades, he has pushed the radical insistence that the environmental left has it all wrong: the science, the ideology, the economics and the politics of climate change.

The same views apply across the landscape of environmental policy, from land and water conservation to energy production.

During an earlier transition from one administration to another, as the Bush-Cheney Republicans arrived to displace the Clinton-Gore Democrats in 2001, he shared his views in an online chat sponsored by the Washington Post. He said Gail Norton, a Reagan-era private-property-rights champion nominated for Interior Secretary, and Spencer Abraham, a founder of the Federalist Society who had voted to abolish the Energy Department but now would run it, were "superb choices." But he reckoned that Christine Todd Whitman, a moderate from New Jersey who was to head the EPA, "may turn out to be a good choice or may not."

It was a savvy move to damn Whitman with such vanishingly faint praise. It would not be long before she was a victim of intense maneuvering against forceful action on climate change during the opening Bush-Cheney years. Ebell thought Whitman should only be retained if her EPA would "stop claiming regulatory authorities far beyond its legal authority."

It's just like his view today, except that there are new Obama-era targets, like the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States rule.

Through all that ensued since 2001—the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol and the rise of the Paris Agreement; the Supreme Court decree that the EPA must control carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels; and the ensuing fight over regulations to do just that—Ebell has never wavered in his views.

So his ascendancy in the Trump camp alarms and exasperates people like Eric Schaeffer, former head of enforcement at EPA and now executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit watchdog group.

They know him as the author of a famous denialist alt-science memo in the 1990s, as an advocate who helped scuttle the Kyoto Protocol in the 2000s. He is also known as a happy warrior at CEI, funded generously by Exxon and by dark-money donors, that never concedes the field. They know that CEI remains engaged in a furious fight with state attorneys general over its own role in Exxon's record on climate change. They can only imagine how far he and the Trump team might go in de-funding and de-fanging the EPA.

"It tells me they are not approaching this analytically, logically, or even as economists," Schaeffer said. "They are approaching it as ideologues. And that's pretty dangerous. It used to be, even to some extent under 'W,' you talked in code or at least made some kind of showing of your interest in the environment and clean air and water, and having a credible EPA. They've completely thrown that overboard."

Already, CEI is getting very specific about the kinds of actions the Trump administration should take. This week it listed three executive orders exemplifying those that should be deep-sixed. (They involve energy conservation by the federal government, international development aid and protection of infrastructure from climate impacts.)

If the Clean Power Plan meets its demise, and particularly if the Paris Agreement goes down the same drain, the defeat for 21st century environmentalism would exceed the undoing of the Kyoto Protocol or the failure of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade climate bill early in the Obama years.

At its heart, it would be a victory for denial. And it would vindicate the long game plan of fossil fuel forces that recognized that financing the machinery of ideology was just as important as financing political campaigns—because Big Oil and Big Coal contributed relatively little this year to the Trump campaign, even as the fossil fuel camp scripted his thinly-embellished policy declarations.

One irony, said Jeremy Symons, associate vice president for climate policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, "is that Trump said he would 'drain the swamp,' but Ebell is a creature of the swamp. He has been taking money from years from industry to slow and stop climate change."

Robert Brulle, a sociologist who has extensively documented the industry's support of climate denial, said CEI's biggest funder, pouring in $9.1 million between 2002 and 2013, was the Florida-based Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking. Run by futures trader William Dunn, the foundation is a major donor to free market think tanks and advocacy groups like the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute.

The second largest funder, with $5 million since 2004, is Donors Trust, which has been called the "dark money ATM of the conservative movement." Its donors include the libertarian Koch brothers and other free enterprise philanthropists. Exxon also is among CEI's largest funders with $2 million between 2000 and 2005, but the big oil company hasn't given to CEI directly since 2006, when it began scaling back its funding of groups that deny climate science.

As far back as 1998, Ebell was among a group organized by the American Petroleum Institute and its allies proposing a denialist project to ''maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences,'' according to a memo they wrote.

During and after the election of 2000 and the transition from the Clinton-Gore administration to the Bush-Cheney regime, CEI fought to influence Washington's formal climate science assessments. Its lawyers sued to make sure that one major document, the National Climate Assessment, would not carry any policy weight.

In 2002, Ebell offered CEI's help to Philip Cooney, chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, to "clean up the mess." That was in the wake of the State Department filing a U.S. Climate Action Report that included the United Nations finding that global warming posed a significant risk and was caused by fossil fuel emissions.

Cooney, who joined the Bush administration after a decade as a lawyer for the American Petroleum Institute, had edited government reports to emphasize doubt about climate change. That was documented in 2005 by whistleblower Rick Piltz, a former senior official in the government's climate change science program. (Piltz resigned from the government and founded Climate Science Watch in 2005. He died in 2014. Cooney resigned from the Bush administration after Piltz's disclosures and took a job at Exxon.)

"Thanks for calling and asking for our help," Ebell said in an email to Cooney in 2002.

But true to form, his email had a badgering, even threatening tone, criticizing the Bush administration's handling of climate change reports and warning that CEI would fight any policies it viewed as errant. Ebell promised in the email "to do as much as we could to deflect criticism by blaming the EPA for freelancing."

Ebell said it was imperative to "drive a wedge between the President and those in the Administration who think that they are serving the president's interests by publishing this rubbish."

Whitman, he said, should go.

"It seems to me that the folks at EPA are the obvious fall guys, and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible," Ebell wrote.

Whitman, who now runs her own strategic planning and consulting group, said in an interview that she never had any personal dealings with Ebell. While at EPA, the pressures that concerned her the most came mainly from Cheney and his staff. "I suspect he had a little more pull than Myron," Whitman said. As for Ebell: "There's always going to be those kind of people out there. You just can't worry about it."

The incident prompted two state attorneys general to request a Justice Department investigation into any improper collusion, but that went nowhere.

Several Democratic attorneys general referenced possible collusion between Exxon and groups like CEI when they announced investigations of Exxon for potential climate fraud. That came after InsideClimate News and others published histories of Exxon's own climate research and its subsequent support for campaigns to undermine the scientific consensus.

The attorney general of the Virgin Islands went so far as to subpoena CEI's records from the Bush-Cheney transition era, but CEI fought back hard—as did Exxon and several Republican state attorneys general and Republicans on a House committee—and deflected the inquiry.

At a meeting of Republican state attorneys general this summer, Ebell lashed out at Exxon foes, saying the Democratic attorneys general and environmental organizations were colluding to "silence and defund the opponents of global warming alarmism."

An audio recording of the session "Climate Change Debate: How Speech is Being Stifled" was obtained and released by the Center for Media and Democracy.

Ebell set the tone by disparaging those who embrace the overwhelming scientific evidence that the Earth is warming.

"Why is the left so intent on trying to win the debate by silencing and de-funding their opponents? Well, they have a little problem, we've got reality on our side," Ebell said.

"So when you expose all of these arguments as phony, what is left but trying to win by silencing and defunding your opponents?" he said.

As CEI has done in legal filings and in newspaper advertising, he called it a matter of constitutionally protected free speech.

Months before Trump emerged victorious, and before Ebell was named to play a big role in the new administration's agenda-setting, he declared confidently that "right now the climate inquisition is in retreat," he said. "It's in retreat because of what ExxonMobil has done. What CEI has done."

Now that Ebell is on the inside of an administration, though, his influence is likely to multiply. "That's what worries me," said Whitman. "Of all the promises Trump made during the campaign that now seem to be a little less certain, EPA is probably the one he'll stick with, because it is so universally thought of as being the source of all evil. And that is very troubling."

Neela Banerjee, Marianne Lavelle and David Hasemyer contributed reporting for this story.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

POLITICS REGULATION

DONALD TRUMP EPA CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE DENIAL

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horner climate lawsuits

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/01/26/competitive-enterprise-institute-climate-denial-target-nbc-cities-liability-suits

Competitive Enterprise Institute's Climate Denial Efforts Target Media, Cities Filing Liability Suits

By Guest • Saturday, January 26, 2019 - 03:47

Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Crossposted from Climate Liability News.

The conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute has been busily pressing forward with its mission to promote climate denial, using high-profile tactics like full-page ads in major newspapers. But it is also working behind the scenes, filing records requests to dig for information from cities filing climate liability suits and academics studying the topic.

As the science has grown definitive in tying global warming to the burning of fossil fuels, even oil companies have been forced to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus and back away publicly from climate denial efforts. But CEI continues to double down on their mission to claim the science is not settled.

CEI made a splash this week by purchasing full-page ads in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal taking issue with Meet the Press host Chuck Todd and NBC for refusing to give airtime to denialists during his Dec. 30 show about climate change.

The think tank has deep ties to the fossil fuel industry and has long worked to promote climate denial. And as municipalities have begun to sue fossil fuel companies, including Exxon, CEI has filed briefs and launched other campaignsdefending them.

According to Kert Davies, founder and director of the Climate Investigations Center, CEI’s most recent push is likely motivated by the increasing number of those lawsuits and investigations of the fossil fuel industry.

“CEI has a personal interest in how these lawsuits proceed because they had a contract with ExxonMobil Foundation from the 1990s — they got over $2 million through 2007 when Exxon abruptly dropped them,” said Davies, adding that he expects lawyers pressing suits against the company would want to see the contracts between CEI and Exxon during that period.

CEI’s tactics go beyond its attempts to sway public opinion.

Last year, CEIsued UCLA to obtain emails the organization said were exchanged between two UCLA climate law professors and state attorneys general offices involved in investigations of the oil giant.

An ethics complaint filed by another fossil fuel industry-backed group in December against then-New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood echoes areport written by CEI legal fellow Chris Horner. The report relied on public records requests to allege that attorneys general are involved in a coordinated scheme by private interests to hold oil giants responsible for climate change. That alleged conspiracy includes Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who is also investigating Exxon for possible fraud.

Horner has also filed information requests with municipalities filing suit against the oil and gas industry, including Richmond and San Francisco. In those requests, he is seeking records related to a climate litigation-related briefing he said took place at Harvard in 2016 between activists, private attorneys and public employees of various states’ attorney general’s offices.

In July, he requested communication belonging to staff members in the Rhode Island attorney general’s office, after it became the first U.S. state to attempt to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change by filing suit against 21 oil and gas companies.Horner’s request was for communication between special assistant attorney general Greg Schult, senior policy advisor Matthew Lenz and legal experts involved in climate litigation in other municipalities, including attorney Matthew Pawa, Niskanen Center chief counsel David Bookbinderand director of climate policy Joseph Majkut.

Horner is also on the board of directors of the non-profit Government Accountability and Oversight, the organization behind Climate Litigation Watch, which posts public records obtained in an attempt to “expose the network of influence involving the litigation surrounding climate change.”

CEI has used full-page ads in major newspapers in previous campaigns to try to discredit climate action.

In one ad that appeared in The New York Times in 2016, CEI — along with more than 40 signatories — claimed that attorneys general across the country were abusing their power by attempting to silence the “debate” on climate science.

Between 1997 and 2014, those signatories and the organizations they representreceived more than $10 million from Exxon and the ExxonMobil Foundation and theyreceived more than $21 million from the Koch brothers, who have long funded climate denial efforts in support of their fossil fuel businesses.

Today, full-page ads in theWashington Post can cost $100,000 and more. Ads in the Wall Street Journal can top $325,000.

In a press release, CEI said the ads push back on Todd and NBC’s decision to “exclude guests who disagree with alarmists and calls for a real and open debate about the impacts of climate alarmist policies.”

“Sometimes, journalists like Chuck Todd are persuaded to join the activists in shutting down legitimate debate about policy issues and in those cases, we feel a duty to push back in defense of our rights and our policy positions,” a CEI spokesperson said in an email, adding that the organization’s requests for public records are made on their own initiative, and as part of this body of work defending their principles.

“Americans of all political stripes tune into NBC’s Meet the Press with the expectation that the great political issues of the day will be debated vigorously by guests representing a full range of viewpoints,” said CEI PresidentKent Lassman.

Because CEI does not disclose its donors, it’s unclear who is funding the current ads, but it has previously received funding directly from David Koch, as well as coal giantsMassey Energy Company andMurray Energy Corporation.

ExxonMobil was a publicly-acknowledged contributor to CEI for a number of years.

“In 2006, however, ExxonMobil publicly announced that it would cease its support for CEI and a number of other groups,” a CEI spokesperson said in an email.

NBC did not respond to a request for comment.

The ads fit into a long-running strategy to cloud the issue of climate science to the public.

CEI was named in a 1998 email to the American Petroleum Institute’s global climate science communications team as a possible funding recipient in a campaign to implement a “Climate Action Plan.”

One conclusion of the “Global Climate Science Communications Plan,” a multi-million dollar proposal in 1998 to make climate change a “non-issue” by reaching out to media and the public. The plan was uncovered and documented by Greenpeace. Credit: Greenpeace

According to that plan, “victory will be achieved” when people and the media are convinced there is significant uncertainty in climate science and “media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognizes the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current ‘conventional wisdom.'”

Davies said in addition to potentially having to face an examination of its relationship with Exxon in the course of climate litigation, CEI has other concerns.

Davies pointed to a study published this week showing Greenland’s ice ismeltingfaster than previously thought and a recent Yalepoll showing that 73 percent of people in the U.S. understand climate change is occurring and 62 percent understand it is mostly human-caused.

“The evidence is in front of people, the weather‘s messed up, the climate’s messed up, the public opinion is moving away from CEI, and then they strike out at a national news broadcast for not including this extreme minority opinion that there’s nothing to worry about,” Davies said.

==

omfg coherent climate sci supp start nyt 619

...Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka made a well-publicized effort to talk him out of leaving the Paris accord in 2017. But after being vanquished by officials including Mr. Bannon, Mr. Pruitt, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former White House counsel Donald F. McGahn II, there is little evidence she has resisted his approach since then.

The president’s advisers amplify his disregard. At the meeting of the eight-nation Arctic Council this month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismayed fellow diplomats by describing the rapidly warming region as a land of “opportunity and abundance” because of its untapped reserves of oil, gas, uranium, gold, fish and rare-earth minerals. The melting sea ice, he said, was opening up new shipping routes.DISASTER CAP'LISM?!

“That is one of the most crude messages one could deliver,” said R. Nicholas Burns, who served as the NATO ambassador under George W. Bush.

Image

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismayed fellow diplomats by describing the Arctic as a land of “opportunity and abundance” as a consequence of global warming.CreditMandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images]

At the National Security Council, under Mr. Bolton, officials said they had been instructed to strip references to global warming from speeches and other formal statements. But such political edicts pale in significance to the changes in the methodology of scientific reports.

Mr. Reilly, the head of the Geological Survey, who does not have a background in climate change science, characterized the changes as an attempt to prepare more careful, accurate reports. “We’re looking for answers with our partners and to get statistical significance from what we understand,” he said.

Yet scientists said that by eliminating the projected effects of increased carbon dioxide pollution after 2040, the Geological Survey reports would present an incomplete and falsely optimistic picture of the impact of continuing to burn unlimited amounts of coal, oil and gasoline.

“The scenarios in these reports that show different outcomes are like going to the doctor, who tells you, ‘If you don’t change your bad eating habits, and you don’t start to exercise, you’ll need a quadruple bypass, but if you do change your lifestyle, you’ll have a different outcome,’” said Katharine Hayhoe, the director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University and an author of the National Climate Assessment.

Not all government science agencies are planning such changes. A spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, asked if its scientists would limit the use of climate models, wrote in an email, “No changes are being considered at this time.”

The push to alter the results of at least some climate science reports, several officials said, came after November’s release of the second volume of the National Climate Assessment.

While the Trump administration did not try to rewrite the scientific conclusions of the report, officials sought to play it down — releasing it the day after Thanksgiving — and discredit it, with a White House statement calling it “largely based on the most extreme scenario.”

Image

This summer, the E.P.A. is expected to finalize the legal rollback of two of President Barack Obama’s most consequential policies: regulations to curb planet-warming pollution from vehicles and power plants.CreditGeorge Etheredge for The New York Times]

Still, the report could create legal problems for Mr. Trump’s agenda of abolishing regulations. This summer, the E.P.A. is expected to finalize the legal rollback of two of President Barack Obama’s most consequential policies: federal regulations to curb planet-warming pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks.

Opponents say that when they challenge the moves in court, they intend to point to the climate assessment, asking how the government can justify the reversals when its own agencies have concluded that the pollution will be so harmful.

That is why officials are now discussing how to influence the conclusions of the next National Climate Assessment.

“They’ve started talking about how they can produce a report that doesn’t lead to some silly alarmist predictions about the future,” said Myron Ebell, who heads the energy program at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, an industry-funded research organization, and who led the administration’s transition at the E.P.A.

A key change, he said, would be to emphasize historic temperatures rather than models of future atmospheric temperatures, and to eliminate the “worst-case scenarios” of the effect of increased carbon dioxide pollution — sometimes referred to as “business as usual” scenarios because they imply no efforts to curb emissions.

:{:{}:

}:

Scientists said that eliminating the worst-case scenario would give a falsely optimistic picture. “Nobody in the world does climate science like that,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton. “It would be like designing cars without seatbelts or airbags.”

Outside the United States, climate scientists had long given up on the White House being anything but on outlier in policy. But they worry about the loss of the government as a source for reliable climate research.

“It is very unfortunate and potentially even quite damaging that the Trump administration behaves this way,” said Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “There is this arrogance and disrespect for scientific advancement — this very demoralizing lack of respect for your own experts and agencies.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Climate Fight, Trump Will Put Science on Trial

==

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---

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/10/25/exxon-faces-consequences-climate-denial

ExxonMobil, the $78 billion fossil fuel giant, has been lying to its shareholders about the threats of climate change, according to New York Attorney General, Barbara Underwood, following a multi-year investigation.

The New York state lawsuit, filed Wednesday, accuses Exxon of a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” to mislead investors on “the company’s management of the risks posed to its business by climate change regulation,” according to The New York Times. Citing messaging to the public that was inconsistent with internal practices, Underwood brought the lawsuit under the Martin Act, which empowers her to investigate and prosecute securities fraud.

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has reported on Exxon’s illegal and unethical efforts to undermine climate science and hide the global impact of its operations for years.

In 2016, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Common Cause complained to the IRS that Exxon was running an illegal scheme to use the American Legislative Exchange Commission (ALEC) to promote its climate denial policies and legislative agenda “in gross violation of ALEC’s 501(c)(3) charitable status.”

The Industry Plan to Sow Doubt over Climate Science

Evidence presented in the joint CMD/Common Cause IRS filing showed that Exxon had pumped more that $1.7 million into ALEC between 1998 and 2014 to finance lobbying activities that cast doubt on climate science and promoted public policies benefiting the corporation.

The Exxon/ALEC scheme arose from a 1998 “Global Climate Science Communications Action Plan,” authored by the American Petroleum Institute (API). The stated mission of the API plan was to “inform the American public that science does not support the precipitous actions Kyoto [International Climate Treaty] would dictate, thereby providing a climate for the right policy decisions to be made.” [emphasis added]

Exxon was listed as a source of funding for the plan, while ALEC was listed as a “potential fund allocator.” Public records show that Exxon’s funding of ALEC subsequently increased.

Exxon’s more recent efforts to rehabilitate its public image around climate change led the oil giant to split with ALEC in July 2018, reportedly over ALEC’s opposition to the EPA’s findings on greenhouse gases.

Collusion Between Republican AGs and Industry Lobbyists

In 2016, CMD exposed secret, closed-door meetings between state attorneys general and fossil fuel interests to coordinate push-back against New York’s investigation of Exxon.

CMD published an audio recording of a meeting where representatives of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) — organizations historically funded in part by Exxon — discussed strategies with Republican attorneys general.

The Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) facilitated the private sessions, a premium service that the pay-to-play organization provides to corporations that pay RAGA up to $125,000 per year.

“These documents reveal a serious conflict of interest: RAGA is facilitating secret meetings between the profit-motivated fossil fuel industry and attorneys general to engineer pushback on investigations of ExxonMobil — and then raising money from oil and gas companies to keep those same Republican attorneys general in office,” said Nick Surgey, CMD’s Research Director at the time.

History of Misinformation Campaigns

Numerous investigations have shown that Exxon was fully aware of the risks of climate change from burning fossil fuels as early as the 1970s, despite funding multiple groups like ALEC that denied climate science and humans’ contribution to climate change.

A Harvard University study of Exxon’s communications between 1977 and 2014 found that “ExxonMobil misled the public about climate change,” even as its private and academic research acknowledged serious climate risks.

In 2015, the year New York launched its investigation of Exxon, Inside Climate News reported that Exxon had been aware of climate change but “put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming.” Exxon warned top executives of possible climate catastrophe, but then “led efforts to block solutions.” The Los Angeles Times also published an article that year telling a similar story. Exxon dismissed those reports as “cherry picked.”

According to the New York Times, this most recent lawsuit “poses a financial risk to Exxon, as well as a potential reputational blow.”

If history is any indication, Exxon could face significant damages. Similar litigation against tobacco companies found in 2006 that the industry had engaged in “a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public,” and resulted in a $246 billion settlement

==

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compare names to paris ltr?

desmog

:{:{Derrick Hollie signed a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) letter supporting legislation that would cancel Schedule B on non-profit reporting to the IRS. This would reduce transparency by removing the identification of contributors. :(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:[19]}:

“This bill presents an opportunity to strengthen free speech protections in light of recent cases of intimidation and mishandling of private information by the IRS. It would be a win for organizations across the political spectrum,” the letter claimed. [19]

“CEI Joins Coalition to Support the 'Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act',”Competitive Enterprise Institute, June 13, 2016. Archived July 17, 2017. Archive.is URL: https://archive.is/mDw4I

june 2016

... organizations that represent the interests of millions of taxpayers across the country, we write in support of H.R. 5053, the “Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act,” sponsored by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.). This legislation would eliminate the Schedule B form for 501(c) organizations, which includes identifiable information of contributors to 501(c) organizations. Thisinformation is irrelevant to the routine handling of 501(c) organization tax filings and will help make tax compliance easier, as well as further curb the ability of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to hinder free speech and civic participation among the public.

This bill presents an opportunity to strengthen free speech protections in light of recent cases of intimidation and mishandling of private information by the IRS. It would be a win for organizations across the political spectrum.

Free speech has been under assault in recent years and the IRS has been at the center of the controversy. In several well-documented cases, the agency leaked private and sensitive Schedule B information that should never have been made public. For example, the agency settled a lawsuit with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) after an IRS official emailed NOM's Form 990, Schedule B to the Human Rights Campaign, which then published it.

The revelations of leaked information, as well as evidence proving that the IRS selectively grouped organizations based on their names, policy positions, and perceived ideology to deny or delay requests for non-profit status, show that the fight for free speech is alive and very real.

Lawmakers must take every opportunity to keep the IRS in check, as the agency has been both derelict in its oversight and abusive with its power. H.R. 5053 will reduce the risks of continued abuse.

Some officials at the IRS have even supported ending the Schedule B form requirement for some 501(c) classifications.  For example, in December of 2015_{,}_it was reported that Tamara Ripperda, IRS Director of Exempt Organizations, discussed the potential for elimination of Schedule B:

The IRS is considering eliminating Schedule B of the Form 990, which asks for the names and addresses of an exempt organization’s contributors and for certain information about contributions received.  Tax Analysts reported that, at a program sponsored by the Urban Institute, Tammy Ripperda (Director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS) questioned whether the IRS should ask for the names and addresses of contributors, given that this information is not made public, and whether there is a need for the information from a federal tax law enforcement standpoint.

It is clear that the Schedule B form requirement is not needed.  Therefore, we urge all members of the House of Representatives to support H.R. 5053 and eliminate the Schedule B form requirement for 501(c) groups.

Sincerely,

James L. Martin, Chairman

60 Plus Association

Melissa Ortiz, Founder & Principal

Able Americans

Dan Greenberg, President

Advance Arkansas Institute

Caleb Crosby, President and CEO

Alabama Policy Institute

Colby May, Director and Senior Counsel

American Center for Law and Justice

Phil Kerpen, President

American Commitment

Dan Schneider, Executive Director

The American Conservative Union

George David Banks, Executive Vice President

American Council for Capitol Formation

Dan Backer, Chairman

American Dream Foundation

Gary L. Bauer President

American Values

Mark J. Fitzgibbons, President of Corporate Affairs

American Target Advertising, Inc.

Ernest Istook, President

Americans for Less Regulation

Rick Manning, President

Americans for Limited Government

Coley Jackson, President

Americans for Competitive Enterprise

Brent Wm. Gardner, Vice President of Government Affairs

Americans for Prosperity

Grover Norquist, President

Americans for Tax Reform

Becky Gerritson, Founder

Born Free American LLC

Norm Singleton, President

Campaign for Liberty

Linwood Bragan, Executive Director

CapStand Council for Policy and Ethics

Alfred J. Lechner, Jr., President and CEO

Cause of Action Institute

Andrew F. Quinlan, President

Center for Freedom and Prosperity

Jeffrey Mazzella, President

Center for Individual Freedom

Matt Patterson, Executive Director

Center for Worker Freedom

Twila Brase, President and Co-founder

Citizens’ Council for Health Freedom

David Bossie, President

Citizens United

Michael Bowen, Co-Chairmen

Stephani Scruggs, Co-Chairmen Coalition for a Strong America

Nathan A. Benefield, Vice President of Policy

Commonwealth Foundation

Nick Dranias, President & Executive Director

Compact for America Educational Foundation, Inc.

Kent Lassman, President

Competitive Enterprise Institute

Jae Pak, President

Concerned Veterans for America

Herbert W. Titus, Senior Counsel

Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund

Shaun McCutcheon, Chairman

Coolidge Reagan Foundation

Tom Schatz, President

Council for Citizens Against Government Waste

Katie McAuliffe, Executive Director

Digital Liberty

Paul Weber, CEO

Family Policy Alliance

William J. Olson, Legal Counsel

Free Speech Coalition

Thomas P. Kilgannon, President

Freedom Alliance

Annette Meeks, CEO

Freedom Foundation of Minnesota

Mark V. Holden, Chairman

Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce

Adam Brandon, CEO and President

FreedomWorks

George Landrith, President

Frontiers of Freedom

Andrew Clark, President

Generation Opportunity

Andresen Blom, Executive Director

Grassroot Hawaii Action

Michael A. Needham, CEO

Heritage Action for America

Ambassador Henry F. (Hank) Cooper, Chairman

High Frontier

Mario H. Lopez, President

Hispanic Leadership Fund

Wayne Hoffman, President

Idaho Freedom Foundation

Kristina Rasmussen, Executive Vice President

Illinois Policy Action

Sabrina Schaeffer, Executive Director

Independent Women's Forum

Heather Higgins, President & CEO

Independent Women's Voice

Thomas Pyle, President

Institute for Energy Research

Andrew Langer, President

Institute for Liberty

Tom Giovanetti, President

Institute for Policy Innovation

Sal J. Nuzzo, Vice President of Policy

The James Madison Institute

Lisa B. Nelson, CEO

Jeffersonian Project

Dave Trabert, President

Kansas Policy Institute

Morton Blackwell, President

The Leadership Institute

Seton Motely, President

Less Government

Colin Hanna, President

Let Freedom Ring

Connor Boyack, President

Libertas Institute

K Carl Smith, Executive Director

Liberty Messenger USA

Daniel Garza, Executive Director

The LIBRE Initiative

Roman Buhler, Director

The Madison Coalition

Kyle Hauptman, Executive Director

Main Street Growth Project

L. Brent Bozell III, President

Media Research Center

Jason Jones, President

Movie to Movement

Willes K. Lee, President

National Federation of Republican Assemblies

Steve M. Antosh, General Counsel

National Pro-Life Alliance

Chris W. Cox

National Rifle Association

Pete Sepp, President

National Taxpayers Union

Paul Mero, President and CEO

Next Generation Freedom Fund

Alex-St. James, National Executive Director

One Day In America

Lorenzo Montenari, Executive Director

Property Rights Alliance

‪Rich Lowrie, Co-founder

Put Growth First

Andrew Moylan, Executive Director and Senior Fellow

R Street Institute

Derrick Hollie, President

Reaching America

Matthew Brooks, Executive Director

Republican Jewish Coalition

Paul Gessing, President

Rio Grande Foundation

Samantha Dravis, President

Rule of Law Defense Fund

Karen Kerrigan, CEO

Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council

Tracie Sharp, President

State Policy Network

David Williams, President

Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Judson Phillips, Founder

Tea Party Nation

Jenny Beth Martin, Co-Founder and President

Tea Party Patriots

Brooke Rollins, President

Texas Public Policy Foundation

C. Preston Noell III, President

Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.

Andrea S. Lafferty, President

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, Founder and Chairman Traditional Values Coalition

Michael Connelly, Executive Director

United States Justice Foundation

Christopher Prudhome, President

Vote America Now

Robert D. Thompson, Administrator

The Weyrich Lunch

Gerrye Johnston, Founder/CEO

Women for Democracy in America, Inc.

Signing on as an Individual:

Ted Baehr, Publisher, MOVIEGUIDE(R)

Hunter Lewis, co-founder of Cambridge Associates

Stephen Moore, Co-Founder

Committee to Unleash Prosperity

Nick Sorrentino, co-founder of Against Crony Capitalism

---

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/07/12/bradley-foundation-funds-web-climate-change-deniers/

Armiak

Bradley Foundation internal documents reviewed by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reveal a concerted effort by the organization to delegitimize climate science, while promoting fossil fuel energy development in the United States.

An analysis of Bradley’s climate-related activities shows that the foundation has made significant grants to support energy policy think tanks, attack-dog groups that target environmentalists, and efforts to discredit climate science.

A 2013 internal foundation document details how Bradley “instructed staff to explore options…to make more energy-related grants.” The document also notes that the Board gave a “terminal grant” of $263,591 to the Sand County Foundation (SCF), which previously administered the Bradley Fund for the Environment.

The documents do not reveal Bradley’s motivation in splitting from SCF, but they do outline a serious effort to promote fossil fuel industry interests at the expense of the environment.

CENTERS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL AND FOSSIL FUEL DEVELOPMENT

As part of its push to support studies and public relations to cast doubt on mounting scientific evidence on climate change, Bradley has focused its resources on “Energy Policy Centers,” many of which are housed in “Bradley-supported” State Policy Network (SPN) “think tanks.” SPN is a web of 156 right-wing groups in 49 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, and the UK that receives funding from the billionaire Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation, and the Roe Foundation, as well as many multi-national corporations.

The examined documents show that the Center for Energy Policy and the Environment (CEPE) at the Manhattan Institute**for Policy Research (MIPR), a member of SPN, received a total of $500,000 for its Center, with another $200,000 distributed in 2016. (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, February 23, 2016) CEPE works to promote fossil fuel development despite the devastating effects of climate change. A background document on CEPE states its goal clearly: “The Center’s research and public education activity aims at demonstrating that the United States is poised to reap substantial economic benefits in the form of job creation, lower gasoline and electricity prices, and increased productivity provided public policies allow companies to access valuable energy resources and distribute them at home and abroad.”

A recommendation by Bradley staff on the Manhattan Institute’s 2016 grant proposal specifically states that CEPE is worth funding because, “They have succeeded in identifying and publicizing so many of the falsehoods that surround energy and the environment.” (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, February 23, 2016) Anexample of this “success” can be found in the work of CEPE senior fellow Mark Mills, who is recognized as originating the idea that North America can surpass the Middle East as the largest energy supplier in the world. (Manhattan Institute for Policy Research GPR, November 12, 2013)

The Energy Policy Center (EPC) at another SPN “think tank”, the Independence Institute, received $195,000 from the Bradley Foundation between 2012 and 2016.

Bradley documents examined show that EPC’s purpose is to “consciously counter-balance former Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s environmental think tank” at Colorado State University, which promotes a “New Energy Economy.”

Bradley considers EPC to be highly successful in fighting local and federal environmental initiatives. The Bradley documents note that EPC was a “key coalition partner” in preempting local bans on fracking in Colorado, and that it “has developed a toolkit for policymakers, attorneys general, and other conservative state think tanks to help them push back against U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations.” (Independence Institute GPR, June 2, 2015)

In addition to these two centers, Bradley has funded the Center for Energy and Environment (CEE) at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), an “associate member” of SPN, and the Center for Energy Innovation and Independence at Consumers’ Research.

CEE is led by the prominent climate change denier Myron Ebell, who steered Trump’s EPA transition team. Ebell also chairs the Cooler Heads Coalition, which brings together right-wing activists and scholars for monthly meetings. The coalition was established on May 6, 1997, “to dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific and risk analysis.”

CEI was long tied to tobacco disinformation campaigns, but is now a leading organization in the movement to discredit climate science.

Bradley does not mention how much of its funding to CEI was designated for CEE operations. Between 1986 and 2015, Bradley Foundation gave $2.2 million to CEI, the majority of which was “to support general operations.” (Competitive Enterprise Institute GPR, June 2, 2015).

The Center for Energy Innovation and Independence received $250,000 from Bradley in 2013 to get the new group off the ground. According to a background document, the group “will closely monitor federal environmental regulations and potentially lay the foundation for multi-state litigation against them, similar to those actions in the Obamacare and Dodd-Frank lawsuits, of which aggressive (Scott) Pruitt was and is a part.” Pruitt is the former AG of Oklahoma and recently resigned as the EPA Administrator under Trump.

SMEAR CAMPAIGNS AND FUNDING EFFORTS TO DISCREDIT CLIMATE SCIENCE

At the same time Bradley rolled out funding for “Energy Policy Centers,” it was doling out cash to discredit environmental organizations and climate change science.

A grant proposal record for the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), a front group created by the close Bradley ally Rick Berman, details an organized effort to weaken the credibility of well-respected, national environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, the National Resources Defense Council, and Food and Water Watch. (The Center for Consumer Freedom GPR, November 12, 2013) Berman also founded Berman and Company, a notorious Washington, D.C.-based corporate lobbying and PR company known for creating numerous corporate “front groups” and astroturf propaganda campaigns.

Berman’s anti-environmental project at CCF was called Big Green Radicals and was seeded with a $150,000 “public education” grant from Bradley in 2013.

According to Bradley’s background document, the Big Green Radicals project would include the following components:

[N]ew, updated research profiles for NRDC, Food and Water Watch, and Sierra Club; standalone websites for all three organizations; a Facebook group seeded with several thousand fans to provide a base for the message; the production of two online videos to explain the real agenda of the environmental left; and Google keyword advertising for members of the media and the public searching for information about one of the targeted groups.

In addition to providing the start-up funding for Big Green Radicals, Bradley gave $85,000 to the Capital Research Center (CRC), a group led by former Berman and Company employee Scott Walter. The grant was designated for “general operations,” but it may have been used to support the publication Green Watch. A background document on CRC states that, “Green Watch tracks the money flow to environmental nonprofits and critiques their positions, and those of their allies, including their policymaking ones.” (Capital Research Center GPR, August 19, 2014)

Since 2014, the Bradley Foundation has distributed numerous grants to discredit the vast amount of scientific research demonstrating the harmful effects of climate change. In 2014, it gave $65,000 to the George C. Marshall Institute (GMI), a right-wing front group largely funded by oil and gas interests. Newsweek called GMI “a central cog in the denial machine” in 2007.

GMI folded in late 2015,so Bradley recommended $50,000 in “seed funding” the following year for its “successor organization,” the CO2 Coalition. The coalition is led by a Dr. William Happer, a well-known climate change denier. “We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant. It’s not a pollutant at all,” Happer said at a Heritage Foundation event on energy and climate.

Another $10,000 Bradley grant in 2014 for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (CSCDGC) went to support its Science & Public Policy Institute (SPPI). A staff recommendation notes that SPPI “has helped demonstrate that no real-world data confirms that floods, draughts [sic], or hurricanes are becoming more frequent or severe, as global-warming alarmists allege. Neither is there any real-world data that sea levels are about to rise precipitously, inundating the world’s coasted [sic] lowlands, as is also often alleged.” (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change GPR, June 17, 2014)

ENERGY ROUNDTABLES

Documents show that, beginning in 2013, Bradley provided funding to the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, also an SPN member, to host and organize two “energy roundtables” a year — one before the Heritage Foundation’s annual Resource Bank meeting, and the other before SPN’s annual fall meeting. (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 10, 2015)

The $50,000-per-year grant from Bradley for the meetings was matched “by staff arrangement” by the C:{onsumer Energy Alliance (CEA), a front group for the energy industry that promotes fossil fuel development and opposes efforts to regulate its activities.}:

“Planned and put on in close cooperation with the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), the roundtables allow state think tanks to better promote free-market energy and environmental policies,” one document states. (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 12, 2013)

Attendance has been high at the roundtables, with as many as “67 SPN leaders” attending the event in Denver in September 2014. The agenda for that meeting details presentations from a number of fossil fuel lovers including: Artic Power, Consumer Energy Alliance, Vital for Colorado, Devon Energy, GOPAC (a political action committee that backs and trains Republican candidates), and Freedom Partners. Freedom Partners, a funding conduit for the billionaire Koch brothers, delivered a talk on “Messaging and State Action.” (Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy GPR, November 11, 2014)

BRADLEY GRANTEES WORKED TOGETHER TO DEFEAT LOCAL REGULATIONS ON FRACKING IN COLORADO

In 2014, the Independence Institute and Berman’s Big Green Radicals worked in lockstep in Colorado to defeat local fracking bans, such as the one that passed by ballot measure in Longmont in November of 2013. A 2015 Bradley backgrounder on the Independence Institute praises the anti-fracking work of Independence Institute’s Energy Policy Center, saying, “It has also been a key coalition partner in the movement to stop local and statewide bans on hydraulic fracturing. Last year, current Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper crafted a delicately balanced compromise on local control of oil and gas drilling that removed all initiatives on the issue from the state ballot.”

Berman’s Big Green Radicals rolled out an attack campaign to discredit anti-fracking efforts in the state in May of 2014. Big Green Radicals assertedthat “extreme groups, mostly based far from Colorado in San Francisco, New York, or Washington D.C., are spending millions and spreading their anti-science message to scare voters into approving ballot measures in November to send the oil and gas industry (and the jobs and affordable energy it provides) packing from the Centennial State.”

The efforts by these two groups were successful in overturning local fracking bans. Bradley agreed and decreased its funding recommendation for EPC to $25,000 in 2016, saying, “it is unlikely that there will be any significant developments for EPC in the upcoming months, and therefore staff believes this reduced award is important.”

It is uncertain where the next battleground for energy development will be for Bradley, but the documents demonstrate that they have the funds to bankroll infrastructure in place to discredit climate science and smear the opposition.

OTHER NOTABLE BRADLEY GRANTS

Other significant Bradley grants to support fossil fuel development or dispute climate science in recent years include:

• $150,000 to Opportunity Ohio for “program activities.” (2016)
• $100,000 to Energy and Environment Legal Institute for “transparency practice general.” (2016) HORNER SCHNARE
• $20,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment for “general operations.” (2016)
• $200,000 to Competitive Enterprise Institute for “general operations” and “litigation.” (2013, 2015)
• $100,000 toThe Sand County Foundation for “energy resource development.” (2014)
• $100,000 to National Center for Policy Analysis for “general operations.” (2014)
• $20,000 to Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment for “general operations.” (2014)

==

==

https://cei.org/content/forty-four-free-market-groups-urge-trump-withdraw-paris-climate-agreement

We, the undersigned, write in enthusiastic support of your campaign commitments to withdraw fully from the Paris Climate Treaty and to stop all taxpayer funding of UN global warming programs. We were heartened by the comments you made at your 100-day rally in Harrisburg and agree that the treaty is not in the interest of the American people and the U. S. should therefore not be a party to it.

Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Treaty is an integral part of your energy agenda.  The Obama administration’s Nationally Determined Contribution (or NDC) to the Paris Climate Treaty commits the United States to take actions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025.  Paris then requires a more ambitious NDC every five years in perpetuity.

The NDC cites specific policies undertaken by the Obama administration as part of the NDC.  These include: the greenhouse gas emissions rules for existing (the “Clean Power” Plan) and new power plants; Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for vehicles; methane emissions rules for the oil and gas sector and for landfills; and energy efficiency and conservation standards for buildings and appliances.

Environmental pressure groups and several state attorneys general have begun to prepare lawsuits in federal court to block withdrawal of the “Clean Power” Plan and other greenhouse gas rules.  One argument that they have already put forward is that these rules cannot be withdrawn because they are part of our international commitment under the Paris Climate Treaty.  Failing to withdraw from Paris thus exposes key parts of your deregulatory energy agenda to unnecessary legal risk.  The AGs revealed in a recruiting letter that they also plan other lawsuits “ensuring that the promises made in Paris become reality.”

Some officials in your administration are relying on recent statements from former Obama administration officials that the U. S. can withdraw its NDC and submit a new NDC that makes far less ambitious commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  The clear language of Article 4 of the Paris Climate Treaty contradicts that claim.  Section 11 states: “A Party may at any time adjust its existing nationally determined contribution with a view to enhancing its level of ambition” (emphasis added).

Even if the U. S. were to be cleared by UN officials to submit a less ambitious NDC, this is not the end of the threats posed by the Paris Climate Treaty to your pro-energy agenda and to the economic future of our country.  Article 4 requires each party to submit a more ambitious NDC at least every five years in perpetuity.  This commitment to reduce fossil fuel use every five years cannot be wished away by those who argue that the U. S. should keep a seat at the negotiating table in order to advocate for fossil fuels.

In urging you to keep your campaign commitment, we recognize that there are several options for you to withdraw the U.S. from Paris.  Of the three options listed below, we think the first two are preferable to the third.

First, you could submit the Paris Climate Treaty to the Senate for its advice and consent with a recommendation that the treaty not be ratified.  Submitting the treaty to the Senate would return us to and restore the proper constitutional method for treaty-making and require a future administration to go through proper procedures if it were to attempt to rejoin the treaty.

Second, you could withdraw from the underlying UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  This action would also achieve your commitment to “stop all payments of the United States tax dollars to UN global warming programs,” including the Green Climate Fund, which is a part of the UNFCCC.

Third, you could announce your intention to withdraw the U. S. from the Paris Climate Treaty according to the four-year schedule specified in the treaty and continue the process of repealing the regulations that the previous administration submitted as part of its NDC.  This option is the least preferable because it runs the risk of legitimizing the Obama administration’s false claim that the treaty is merely an executive agreement.

The undersigned organizations believe that withdrawing completely from Paris is a key part of your plan to protect U.S. energy producers and manufacturers from regulatory warfare not just for the next four years but also for decades to come.  We will strongly support your decision to keep your campaign commitment to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty.

Sincerely,

Myron Ebell, Director, Center for Energy and Environment, Competitive Enterprise Institute

Thomas J. Pyle, President, American Energy Alliance

Joseph Bast, President, The Heartland Institute

Grover G. Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform

Chrissy Harbin, Vice President of External Affairs, Americans for Prosperity

Michael Needham, CEO, Heritage Action for America

Michael Costigan, Senior Advisor, Strategic Outreach, The Heritage Foundation

James L. Martin, Founder and Chairman, 60 Plus Association

Craig Rucker, Executive Director, Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

David Ridenour, President, National Center for Public Policy Research

Thomas Schatz, President, Citizens Against Government Waste

Craig Richardson, President, Energy and Environment Legal Institute

Tom DeWeese, President, American Policy Center

Richard Manning, President, Americans for Limited Government

Phil Kerpen, President, American Commitment

David Williams, President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Mario H. Lopez, President, Hispanic Leadership Fund

David Bozell, President, For America

Steven J. Allen, Vice President and Chief Investigative Officer, Capital Research Center

Kenneth Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Craig D. Idso, Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

William Happer, President, The CO2 Coalition

E. Calvin Beisner, Founder and National Spokesman, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation

John Droz, Jr., Founder, Alliance for Wise Energy Decisions

Timothy Lee, Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs, Center for Individual Freedom

Peter J. Thomas, Chairman, Americans for Constitutional Liberty

Ed Martin, President, Eagle Forum Education and Legal Defense Fund

Amy Oliver Cooke, Executive Vice President, Independence Institute (CO)

David T. Stevenson, Director, Center for Energy Competitiveness, Caesar Rodney Institute (DE)

Paul Gessing, President, Rio Grande Foundation

Kory Swanson, President and CEO, John Locke Foundation

Francis De Luca, President, Civitas Institute

Forest Thigpen, President, Mississippi Center for Public Policy

Eldon Alexander, President, Faith and Freedom Foundation

Lynne Roberts, President, Americans United for Freedom

Rich Johns, President, Liberty Tree Alliance

Aileen Milton, President, The Villages Tea Party

Debbie Gunnoe, President, Navarre Patriots

Sam Mullins, Co-Founder, Santa Rosa Tea Party Patriots

Hon. Mike Hill, Founder, Northwest Florida Tea Party

Stephani Scruggs Bowen, COO, Coalition for a Strong America

Alan Moran, Director, Australian Environment Foundation

Eunie Smith, President, Eagle Forum

Norm Singleton, President, Campaign for Liberty

=

http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-ebell-epa-advisor-2097121562.html

ref no link img

By Alex Formuzis and Sonya Lunder

Myron Ebell, head of President-elect Donald Trump's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team, is a notorious denier of global warming whose biography unashamedly notes that he's considered a "climate criminal" by activists and "a superstar of the denialosphere" by The Climate War author Eric Pooley. But he's also director of environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which touts "the life-enhancing value of chemicals"—chemicals like arsenic, DDT and PCBs.

One of the the Competitive Enterprise Institute's projects is SafeChemicalPolicy.org. The site is bursting with articles and reports that cast doubt on the dangers of toxic chemicals and pesticides in food, water and consumer products, and disparage the work of public health advocates, with Environmental Working Group (EWG) one of the site's favorite targets

Here are just a few examples:

SafeChemicalsPolicy.org downplays the risks of arsenic in drinking water and toxic pesticides found on foods young children love to eat.

An article on the site says it's wrong for schools to notify parents before pesticides are sprayed inside and around schools.

It disparages public health advocates' concerns over fetuses being exposed to endocrine disruptors in the womb, including Monsanto's notorious PCBs and the now-banned pesticide DDT.

It actually makes the claim that glyphosate—the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, which the World Health Organization considers probably carcinogenic to humans—has "liberated" children from having to work in corn fields, pulling weeds.

There's much more: Anti-BPA Packaging Laws Jeopardize Public Health, Silent Spring Was Wrong and Erin Brockovich's Toxic Fearmongering.

"The simple reality," says the site, "is that modern living means living with chemicals." We couldn't agree more. The problem is that too many of those chemicals are hazardous to our health. The EPA is supposed to protect us from dangerous chemicals, not defend them, as Ebell would almost certainly do if he ran the agency.

As it turns out, EWG is a popular target among Trump's other top advisers. Steve Bannon, the former campaign CEO and incoming chief White House strategist attacked us when he was running the alt-right website Breitbart News.

We're used to it. In fact, when science deniers like Ebell and Bannon regularly get worked up over something you've said or done, it usually means you've said or done something right.

==

==

trey son of bill kovacs?

==

OMG NOT CPP

• ### The New Congress Should Repeal All :{Energy Efficiency Mandates}:

Sam Kazman

November 17, 2016 9:45 AM

• ### Three Climate Policy Executive Orders the President-Elect Should Repeal

Marlo Lewis, Jr.

November 15, 2016 10:29 AM

• ### Free Market Opportunities for the Trump Administration

Fred L. Smith, Jr.

November 10, 2016 12:23 PM

==

omg

Three Climate Policy:{ Executive Orders:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}: the President-Elect Should Repeal

Marlo Lewis, Jr. • November 15, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to “cancel immediately” all of President Obama’s “illegal and overreaching executive orders,” and he strongly opposes Obama’s climate agenda. Will Obama’s climate policy executive orders be among the first on Trump’s chopping block?

Here are three prime targets for repeal, beginning with the most recent.

• Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade (March 19, 2015). This order requires federal buildings to obtain at least 30 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030. All new federal buildings constructed in that year must be “energy net-zero,” meaning their energy consumption must be “balanced by onsite renewable energy.” Also in 2030, 50 percent of all new passenger vehicles in agency fleets must be zero-emission and plug-in hybrid vehicles. To carry out those and many other requirements, agencies must establish “chief sustainability officers” to implement “green supply chain management” under the tutelage of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In addition to using our tax dollars to expand the federal trough for green special interests, the order is a consciousness-raising exercise. If kept in place, it will help perpetuate climate-centric groupthink in federal agencies.

• Climate Resilient International Development (September 23, 2014). “This order requires the integration of climate-resilience considerations into all United States international development work to the extent permitted by law.” The main problem here is that development is the best strategy for making poor countries more resilient, and affordable energy is critical to development. Elevating “climate-resilience considerations” too easily becomes an excuse to deny poor countries access to affordable energy, ignore the real causes of poverty (corruption, lack of strong property rights), and legitimize phony grievances against the fossil energy-rich United States.

• Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change (November 1, 2013). This order requires federal agencies to promote “engaged and strong partnerships and information sharing at all levels of government” to help “safeguard our economy, infrastructure, environment, and natural resources” from climate change impacts. Agencies are to “support and encourage smarter, more climate-resilient investments by States, local communities, and tribes, including by providing incentives through agency guidance, grants, technical assistance, performance measures, safety considerations, and other programs, including in the context of infrastructure development.” In other words, the order directs agencies to recruit, indoctrinate, bankroll, and coordinate climate activists at all levels of government. Perhaps a better title for the order is “Mobilizing the Long March through the Institutions.”

==

• ### Stealing You Blind

Iain Murray

July 11, 2011

• ### Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America

Christopher C. Horner

April 6, 2010  REGNERY

• ### Blue Planet in Green Shackles

Václav Klaus

May 30, 2008  CEI book

• ### The Really Inconvenient Truths

Iain Murray

April 22, 2008

• ### A Free Market Agenda for the 110th Congress

CEI Staff

January 9, 2007

• ### Review of Robert Nelson's 'Economics as Religion'

Fred L. Smith, Jr.

August 3, 2006

• ### Tom Smith and His Incredible Bread Machine

Fred L. Smith, Jr., R.W. Grant

April 11, 2006

• ### The Revolution Spins toward More Regulation

Clyde Wayne Crews

June 6, 2005

• ### The Environmental Source

Angela Logomasini

December 30, 2004

• ### The Role of Business in the Modern World: Progress, Pressures and Prospects for the Market Economy

David Henderson

November 17, 2004

• ### CEI's Twentieth Anniversary Report

CEI Staff

May 19, 2004

• ### Field Guide for Effective Communication

CEI Staff

January 25, 2004

• ### Cowboys Versus Cattle Thieves

Fred L. Smith, Jr.

July 9, 2003

• ### CEI Senior Fellow Publishes New Book On EPA's Regulatory Enforcement

James V. DeLong

September 18, 2002

• ### Excerpts from Solutions for an Environment in Peril

Fred L. Smith, Jr.

December 1, 2001

• ### Free Market Environmentalism: Protecting the Environment Via Private Property

Fred L. Smith, Jr.

November 30, 2001

• ### Economics As Religion

Robert H. Nelson

June 1, 2001

• ### CEI High Tech Briefing Book 2001

James V. DeLong

December 31, 2000

• ### A Burning Issue

Robert H. Nelson

August 6, 2000

• ### Ecology, Liberty & Property

Jonathan H. Adler

June 5, 2000

• ...
• grabbed from amazon:

Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death Hardcover – Bargain Price, June 15, 2002

by Ronald Bailey (Author), Competitive Enterprise Institute (Author)

==

unlike aei and cato, do not seem to publish books per se vs reportand and articles

7/16 grab:

• ### GOP Platform: It’s Time To Get Rid Of The EPA

Daily Caller

Clyde Wayne Crews

July 19, 2016

• ### Capito attacks coal regulations, Clinton’s emails at RNC

Charleston Gazette-Mail

Clyde Wayne Crews

July 19, 2016

• ### Free Market Groups Back Bill Nixing Obama’s ‘Wholly Arbitrary’ Enviro Regs

Daily Caller

July 19, 2016

• ### CEI Expert Warns Against Reviving Glass-Steagall

July 19, 2016

• ### CEI Applauds Court’s Decision to Stay EPA’s Regional Haze Takeover in Texas

July 18, 2016

• ### California Dem: Our Global Warming Plans Devastate The Poor

Daily Caller

Myron Ebell

July 18, 2016

• ### GOP divided over $500M for climate fund

The Hill

Myron Ebell

July 17, 2016

==

https://cei.org/blog/nyt-ad-abuse-power-free-speech

~RICO GW

Today, CEI sponsored a full-page advertisement in The New York Times highlighting abusive efforts by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, and a coalition of other “AGs United for Clean Power” to silence the speech of more than 100 businesses, nonprofits, and private individuals who question the AGs’ positions on climate change. Published as an open letter, the ad features signatures from 43 organizations, legal experts, and individuals who value Americans’ First Amendment rights and believe they should be protected.

Full text below. View the ad as a full color PDF here.

---

ABUSE OF POWER

All Americans have the right to support causes they believe in.

The right to speak out is among the most fundamental principles of American democracy. It should never be taken away.

Yet, around the country, a group of state attorneys general have launched a misguided effort to silence the views and voices of those who disagree with them.

Recently, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, and a coalition of other “AGs United for Clean Power” announced an investigation of more than 100 businesses, nonprofits, and private individuals who question their positions on climate change.

This abuse of power is unacceptable. It is unlawful. And it is un-American.

Regardless of one’s views on climate change, every American should reject the use of government power to harass or silence those who hold differing opinions. This intimidation campaign sets a dangerous precedent and threatens the rights of anyone who disagrees with the government’s position—whether it’s vaccines, GMOs, or any other politically charged issue. Law enforcement officials should never use their powers to silence participants in political debates.

We are standing up for every American’s First Amendment right to speak freely. We hope you will join us. This is a critical battle, and it will determine whether our society encourages spirited debate or tolerates only government-approved opinions.

Kent Lassman

President & CEO, Competitive Enterprise Institute

C. Boyden Gray

Former White House Counsel

Andrew C. McCarthy

Former Chief Assistant United States Attorney, Southern District of New York

Michael B. Mukasey

U.S. Attorney General, 2007-2009; U.S. District Judge, 1988-2006

Ross McKitrick

Professor of Economics, University of Guelph

Ronald D. Rotunda

Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, Chapman University

Richard S. Lindzen

Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT

William Happer

Emeritus Professor of Physics, Princeton University

Jim DeMint

President, The Heritage Foundation

James H. Amos, Jr.

President & CEO, National Center for Policy Analysis

John A. Baden

Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment

Lisa B. Nelson

CEO, American Legislative Exchange Council

Paul Driessen

Author & Energy Policy Analyst

Thomas J. Pyle

President, Institute for Energy Research

Steven J. Allen

Vice President & Chief Investigative Officer, Capital Research Center

David Ridenour

President, National Center for Public Policy Research

Steven J. Milloy

Publisher, JunkScience.com

Brooke Rollins

President & CEO, Texas Public Policy Foundation

Paul Gessing

President, Rio Grande Foundation

Ron Arnold

Researcher & Author

William Perry Pendley  

President, Mountain States Legal Foundation

Adam Brandon

President & CEO, FreedomWorks

Hank Campbell

President, American Council on Science and Health

Craig Rucker

Executive Director, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Tom McCabe

CEO, Freedom Foundation

Richard B. Belzer

Economist

Heather R. Higgins

President & CEO, Independent Women's Voice

Joseph G. Lehman

President, Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Sabrina Schaeffer

Executive Director, Independent Women's Forum

Joseph Bast

President, The Heartland Institute

John C. Eastman

Founding Director, The Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence

Robert Alt

President & CEO, The Buckeye Institute

Michael Pack

President & CEO, The Claremont Institute

Josh Blackman

Assistant Professor, South Texas College of Law

Lynn Taylor

President, Tertium Quids

David Rothbard

President, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow

Tracie Sharp

President & CEO, State Policy Network

Kenneth Haapala

President, Science and Environmental Policy Project

Tim Phillips

President, Americans for Prosperity

Myron Ebell

Director of the Center for Energy & Environment, Competitive Enterprise Institute

George Landrith

President, Frontiers of Freedom

John Tillman

CEO, Illinois Policy Institute

Craig D. Idso

Chairman, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change

Affiliations listed for identification purposes only.

==

icn

CEI!

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/08042016/think-tank-fossil-fuel-ties-competitive-enterprise-institute-subpoena-attorney-general-climate-change-exxon

Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank and one of the fossil fuel industry's most steadfast allies, disclosed on Thursday that the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands is demanding to see records of the group's donors and activities involving climate policy.

The subpoena represents a broadening of a multifaceted legal inquiry into whether fossil fuel companies broke any laws as they sought for decades to undermine the scientific consensus and head off forceful action to address the climate crisis.

For the first time, the investigation now appears to touch on the actions of third parties supported by the industry—and perhaps into their joint lobbying actions.

CEI said it "will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena."

The island territory is just one of several jurisdictions now looking into the actions of ExxonMobil Corporation and other fossil fuel companies. The investigations, first announced by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, are thought to be in their early stages, and the investigators have offered few details of their scope.

Attorney General Claude Walker of the Virgin Islands/Credit: ICN

Turning the spotlight on CEI is an assertive tactic from a surprising quarter. The Virgin Islands, while it may not have the legal muscle of New York with its powerful securities and consumer laws, is especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

CEI said the subpoena from Attorney General Claude E. Walker "attempts to unearth a decade of the organization's materials and work on climate change policy."

"The subpoena requests a decade's worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI's work on climate change and energy policy, including private donor information," the institute said. "It demands that CEI produce these materials from 20 years ago, from 1997-2007, by April 30, 2016."

"This is the latest effort in an intimidation campaign to criminalize speech and research on the climate debate, led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and former Vice President Al Gore," the institute said.

Schneiderman's subpoena of Exxon last year sparked an expanding inquiry by several Democratic attorneys general. A group of them held a press conference along with Gore last week to describe their coordinated actions on climate change, including the inquiries as well as support for the Obama administration's climate agenda. The attorneys general of Massachusetts and California are also investigating Exxon or other fossil fuel interests.

The investigations began after InsideClimate News, and later the Los Angeles Times, as well as other journalists reported on the history of Exxon's emerging understanding of climate change science in the 1970s and its subsequent efforts to undermine the scientific consensus, in part by financing research organizations including CEI.

CEI's general counsel, Sam Kazman, said it was "an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group. If Walker and his allies succeed, the real victims will be all Americans, whose access to affordable energy will be hit by one costly regulation after another, while scientific and policy debates are wiped out one subpoena at a time."

The inquiry's timeframe covers a crucial period beginning in 2000 and 2001, at the start of the Bush-Cheney administration, when lobbyists from ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies were pressing the new administration to reverse Clinton-Gore policies on global warming, reject the Kyoto Protocol and overhaul government research programs into climate change.

CEI was deeply involved in this campaign, according to multiple sources, including a detailed expose by a whistleblower named Rick Piltz.

For example, CEI filed a lawsuit against both the outgoing Clinton and the incoming Bush administrations, aimed at preventing a significant review of climate science, the 2000 National Climate Assessment, from forming the basis of federal policies and international negotiations. The lawsuit was dismissed, but the CEI had made its point with the Bush administration, which continued to resist the scientific consensus endorsed by the previous administration.

At the time the Bush administration was rewriting federal climate studies, a task carried out by a former oil company lobbyist who moved into the Council on Environmental Quality under Bush, and then went to work for Exxon when his role was publicly disclosed.

Much of the White House's engagement with the energy lobby during the early Bush-Cheney years still remains undisclosed. The administration refused to publish all its communications with the industry during its first year in office, when Vice President Dick Cheney ran an energy policy task force that consulted heavily with the industry behind closed doors.

The Virgin Islands subpoena suggests one way that some new details might be brought to light.

CEI is one of several organizations that have been repeatedly named over the years by those who have criticized Exxon and other fossil fuel companies for financing the climate denial work of third parties. After the Royal Society of the United Kingdom castigated Exxon in 2006 for giving money to groups misrepresenting climate science, Exxon said it had stopped financing the CEI.

In his remarks at last week's press conference, Walker said the fossil fuel investigation "is not an environmental issue as much as it is about survival. We try as attorneys general to build a safe community for all. But what good is that if, annually, everything is destroyed.

"It could be David versus Goliath—the Virgin Islands against a huge corporation," he said. "But we will not stop until we get to the bottom of this and make it clear to our residents as well as the American people that we have to do something transformational."

==

---

By Sam Kazman and Kent Lassman April 22

Sam Kazman is general counsel and Kent Lassman is president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

With seven state attorneys general and Al Gore sharing a New York City stage , there was no doubt about it: It was showtime for a whodunit. The crime being investigated? Dissent.

The March 29 news conference unveiled, according to New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, an “unprecedented” coalition to fight not only climate change but also allegedly deceptive speech about climate change. The group, which dubbed itself AGs United for Clean Power, promised to “use all the tools at our disposal” to battle for progress on “the most consequential issue of our time.”

Schneiderman was blunt about his goal of shutting down debate: “You have to tell the truth. You can’t make misrepresentations of the kinds we’ve seen here.”

This isn’t a law-and-order drama. It’s politics clothed in messianic garb, and its primary tools are censorship and intimidation.

The AGs are following a familiar script here: target an unpopular, deep-pocketed business, harass that business’s potential allies with overly broad investigations, run roughshod over the target’s First Amendment protections and settle once the politically weakened company tires of fighting the endless resources of the state.

ExxonMobil was singled out by name at the news conference, but the coalition appears to be following the script perfectly. Now it’s on to the fishing-expedition stage.

On April 7, our organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was subpoenaed by coalition member and U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker for all CEI material on climate change and energy policy, as well as information on our supporters, over 10 years beginning in 1997. The subpoena’s purported focus is on our contacts with ExxonMobil, a former CEI donor that publicly ended its support for us after 2005. Nonetheless, the subpoena calls for practically all of our material on climate change and energy policy, as well as information on any donors who directly or indirectly supported that work.[NOTE horner is still foiaing sci right now?]

[Opinions newsletter

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That’s one hell of a burden to slap on a nonprofit. The coalition’s purported justification is that the risks of global warming are so important and the scientific basis for them so settled that disputing them constitutes fraud. But the rhetoric of the AGs is blissfully oblivious to the First Amendment.

Court rulings make it clear that broad subpoenas aimed at restricting speech, especially in the context of policy debates, are invalid. Time and again, the Supreme Court has held that the remedy for unwanted speech is more speech in response. The chief law-enforcement officers of several states should know better, but their reaction to a dissenting policy position is punitive, coercive and unconstitutional.

As for breaching donor confidentiality, the obvious aims here are intimidation and to limit future use of the constitutionally protected right of anonymous donation. In 1958, in NAACP v. Patterson, the Supreme Court held that such attempts were illegal under the First Amendment’s right of association.

You might think that if the law is that clear, we have nothing to worry about. But fighting a subpoena is incredibly costly and time-consuming, especially when the attorneys general behind them have promised to “use all the tools” at their disposal, courtesy of their states’ taxpayers.

Regardless of where you stand on global warming policy, the notion of a multi-state campaign to end the debate ought to make you worry.After all, there are many science-driven policy debates out there, on topics ranging from genetically modified food to population control. It is not as if the government has a sterling reputation when it comes to science. From Galileo to today’s food plate, we know government politicizes science. It ought not to punish dissent, too.

Read more on this topic:

Robert J. Samuelson: The war against Exxon Mobil

The Post’s View: 2015: A year of progress and buffoonery on climate change

Sheldon Whitehouse: The fossil-fuel industry’s campaign to mislead the American people

==

AN

http://www.alternet.org/environment/exxon-using-tobaccos-failed-free-speech-defense-decades-deception-climate-change

he past week has seen a barrage of opinion pieces carrying water for the fossil fuel industry, defending against the ongoing fraud investigations. The Washington Post had two pieces, Newsweek had one and the Financial Times had an editorial, in addition to op-eds in a couple of other conservative outlets. Of those six, half were penned by groups funded at least in part by fossil fuel companies.

The arguments are all by and large the same, claiming that the investigations infringe on fossil fuels companies’ right to free speech while steadfastly ignoring the fact that ExxonMobil funded climate denial to protect their business model.Only the Financial Times editorial actually acknowledges the “misleading claims from fossil fuel interests and their allies” but concludes that it is “because the stakes [of the debate] are so high that all arguments must be heard.” While that sounds fair at first Glantz, it quickly sounds silly when applied to a recent example: the tobacco industry’s denial of the fact that its carcinogenic product is addictive.

All but one of the pieces similarly ignored the tobacco industry precedent and the only person who mentioned it was one of the few voices not plugged into the professional denial apparatus.

As for the pros, Newsweek ran a blog post from the Hoover Institution, which rambled on about climate science that’s supposedly still uncertain, lamenting that fair debate is impossible if one side can bring the other to court. Not mentioned is how a fair debate can be possible if one side launches multi-million dollar PR campaigns to mislead the public about the science.

Feds Refer Exxon #Climate Investigation to FBI: https://t.co/MS5BfY7PNp via @EcoWatch pic.twitter.com/mBWybUPmVb

— DeSmogBlog (@DeSmogBlog) March 7, 2016

Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky’s piece in the Washington Times misses the tobacco precedent, but went all the way back to the Spanish Inquisition for his First Amendment fear mongering. George Will used his column in the **Washington Post to offer a lesson on how this campaign is part of a larger progressive strategy to shut down debate. But apparently it’s Will that needs a history lesson, as he uses as evidence a story about a 2013 IRS investigation accusing the agency of targeting conservatives. But that investigation “found no evidence” that the IRS actions were politically motivated. No doubt his column is similarly bereft of evidence.

The Washington Postalso gave space to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)to defend itself by pretending it is being investigated for political dissent, not its years of Exxon funding for climate denial. Worth noting CEI’s careful phrasing about its relationship with Exxon, which CEI says “publicly ended its support for us after 2005.” With Donors Trust and others making it possible to anonymize giving, the key word is “publicly.”

Ironically, despite the admission that its Exxon funding is a perfectly legitimate reason to look into its communications, CEI considers its subpoena to be a fishing expedition. Meanwhile, CEI’s own coal-funded Chris Horner continues to engage in nuisance FOIAs for climate scientists.

Exxon’s defense is a hot topic in denierland, as it advances the narrative that the fossil fuel industry is an embattled population facing government persecution. But here’s a reality check: Before Honduran activist Berta Cáceres was murdered on March 2, she reported receiving 33 death threats after years of intimidation. Instead of investigating a man who had previously bragged about his plans to murder her, authorities claim the prime suspects are two of her fellow activists.

Heartbreaking! @GoldmanPrize Activist Berta Cáceres Murdered in Honduras https://t.co/Zj97cmwQi3 @FoEint @greenpeace pic.twitter.com/tAujvEGtMR

— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) March 3, 2016

Looks like the fossil fuel industry isn’t the one facing persecution after all.

---

---

4/16

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/the-truth-about-the-republican-war-on-caterpillars/255522/

In a statement widely taken as a metaphor, the chairman of the Republican National Committee on Thursday said his party is no more trying to hurt the nation's females than it is larval butterflies and moths.

"If the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars and every mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we'd have problems with caterpillars," Reince Priebus told Bloomberg Television, in response to a question about the party's supposed "war on women." "It's a fiction."

But the war on caterpillars and other innocent insects, it turns out, is not a fiction at all.

Under the guise of aiding the agriculture industry, Republicans and their allies in Washington have been waging a long-running campaign to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from limiting bug-killing pesticides. Last year, GOP Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas authored a letter,signed by several others in his party, calling on Democrats to "address the continued regulatory overreach by the Environmental Protection Agency that is a growing concern of farmers, ranchers, foresters and agribusinesses throughout the nation" by bringing up their bill to ease pesticide regulations. This obvious attempt to run roughshod over the rights of many-legged herbivores everywhere was laughably justified as a matter of "public health as we enter mosquito season."

In a similar gesture of outrageous insensitivity to the feelings of Creepy-Crawly-Americans, some conservatives also want to get the controversial insecticide DDT unbanned by the EPA. The free-marketCompetitive Enterprise Instituteruns a website, RachelWasWrong.org, devoted to beating the drum for bringing back DDT, whose banning it terms the "dangerous legacy" of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. But for the liberals and their "tree-hugging political correctness," one NewsMax commentator wrote, bedbugs -- largely voiceless in this whole debate -- might be eradicated.

Republicans may claim that they have no anti-caterpillar agenda -- that they're just trying to protect people and plants from being bitten, that they're merely the victims of a liberal media that sympathizes with the radical bugs'-rights lobby. But the truth is clear, and it's nothing new: Republicans just don't care about caterpillars.

Need any more proof? How about this: Tom DeLay, the onetime leader of the GOP House majority, began his career as an exterminator.

---

==

2x?

---

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Smoking_as_a_civic_duty

CSE smoking as civic duty

Only a tobacco-funded think tank would ever go so far as to describe smoking as a civic duty. The tobacco industry has been a regular funder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, (CEI) which in turn has gone to bat repeatedly and eagerly for tobacco in its battles with government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Following the 1993 release of EPA's risk assessment linking secondhand cigarette smoke to lung cancer, CEI cranked out opinion articles for major newspapers with titles such as "A Smoking Gun Firing Blanks," "EPA's Bad Science Mars ETS Report," and "Safety Is a Relative Thing for Cars; Why Not for Cigarettes?"

CEI policy analyst Alexander Volokh went even further. "Perhaps, in the fine tradition of civil disobedience championed by Thoreau, we should even think of smoking as a civic duty," he wrote in the July 1994 issue of the CEI Update. "Perhaps," he continued, "every January 11th -- the anniversary of the Surgeon General's original 1964 report on smoking -- we should all light up, giving a filter-tipped finger, as it were, to a health-obsessed government." Volokh admitted that the government's efforts to discourage smoking "may further the cause of health," but concluded that "there are things more valuable than health."

In 1996, CEI was one of eight think tanks named in a report by Ralph Nader's Public Citizen titled "A Million for Your Thoughts: The Industry-Funded Campaign by Conservative Think Tanks Against the FDA." The report identified $3.5 million that these think tanks had received in funding from pharmaceutical, medical device, biotechnology and tobacco companies to help them pump out a "steady stream of reports, fact sheets, op-ed articles and newspaper, radio and television advertisements purporting to document the FDA's deadly overcaution and bullying of manufacturers." CEI's Julie DeFalco responded to the Public Citizen report by claiming that its positions on government regulations were developed "years before we ever received tobacco or drug industry money. Our position on FDA reform -- that the FDA is inherently prone to 'deadly overcaution,' and its veto power over new therapies should be removed -- hasn't changed in the nine years since then. How, then, does the fact that our support base has grown to include tobacco and pharmaceutical companies affect the validity of our position?"

Subsequently, however, additional information has become public about CEI's ties to the tobacco industry (including funding from Philip Morris that was not mentioned in the Public Citizen report). The 1997 settlement between tobacco companies and U.S. state attorney generals obligated the tobacco industry to place millions of pages of its internal documents online at locations such as the Philip Morris documents website. Those documents show that there was a hidden tobacco agenda behind CEI's attacks on FDA policies for regulating pharmaceuticals. Those attacks came at the very same time that tobacco executives were scrambling to head off the possibility that the FDA might acquire jurisdiction to regulate cigarettes. During the mid-1990s, Philip Morris alone gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to CEI and other think tanks and front groups such as the Washington Legal Foundation, Newt Gingrich's Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Citizens for a Sound Economy, which then argued publicly against FDA regulation of tobacco. According to the Wall Street Journal, "antipathy toward David Kessler's Food and Drug Administration, which wants to regulate cigarettes," was a major common denominator among the think tanks and policy groups to which tobacco companies donated during that time period. Rather than acting independently, CEI and other tobacco-funded think tanks coordinated their activities closely with the tobacco industry's attorneys, lobbyists and PR firms.

In February 1994, FDA Commissioner David Kessler suggested that the agency might have "a legal basis on which to regulate [tobacco] products," based on evidence from internal industry documents and industry insiders that nicotine in cigarettes was being manipulated to cause addiction -- in essence acting as a drug. This was the backdrop to the now-infamous incident in April 1994 when top tobacco executives testified before Congress that nicotine is not addictive.

That same year, Philip Morris received a request for funding from CEI titled "The Human Cost of Regulation: Reframing the Debate on Risk Management." The proposal stated, "Risk has become the secular version of sin in our society, and risk management is the modern-day equivalent of religious crusades. ... From Superfund to indoor air quality to medical drug and device approval, bureaucratic initiatives on this front have ended up as incredibly costly failures whose only real achievement has been the creation of public alarm." To counter this purported threat, CEI proposed to raise "public recognition of the adverse public health effects of medical drug regulation and nutritional labeling" by demonstrating that "risk management by government can often have lethal effects."

Philip Morris had already given $50,000 to CEI on June 29, 1993, and it sent another check for $25,000 on July 27, 1994. The quid pro quo came a few months later. In the fall of 1994, notes an internal Philip Morris memorandum, the tobacco company approached CEI, along with the Washington Legal Foundation and Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE), seeking their help "to define the FDA as an agency out of control and one failing to live up to its congressional mandate regarding regulation of drugs and medical devices."

"To the extent FDA regulation was wrapped up in the youth smoking issue, it was hard to argue against," Steven C. Parrish noted in an August 1995 presentation to the Philip Morris board of directors. They therefore wanted CEI and the other think tanks to build a case against the FDA surrounding issues unrelated to tobacco. As Parrish explained, "Philip Morris representatives with scientific credentials were assigned the task of meeting with various 'think tanks' to discuss the issue of FDA regulation and encourage guest editorials and comments to the media." PM was "pleased," he said, "to see a chorus of rising criticism of Kessler and FDA." Beginning in December 1994, CEI joined CSE and the CEI in what Parrish described as "aggressive media campaigns ... through newspaper ads, policy papers, symposia, or by filing petitions directly with the FDA, and speaking directly to politicians." [1]

A January 26, 1995, attorney's memorandum by David P. Nicoli to Philip Morris, marked "privileged and confidential," details the company's behind-the-scenes role in a coordinated rollout of media attacks on the FDA by PM's "non-tobacco" allies. CEI began the attack on January 11, "running inside the Beltway anti-FDA radio and TV ads." The following day, CSE held a press conference with a sympathetic congressman and began running its own inside the Beltway ads. Simultaneously, the Washington Legal Foundation ran a full-page ad in the New York Times and a three-quarter-page ad in the Wall Street Journal. The FDA's first public response to these attacks occurred on January 17. This was followed, Nicoli noted, by an industry "counter attack that both AP and Reuters pick up. Further volleys fly between the two, as trade press, general media amplify the fight." Other voices began chiming in -- the drug industry, the Washington Post, Business Week. Nicoli added that further attacks were already in the works, organized by Jim Tozzi, one of PM's top lobbyists, in coordination with the Progress and Freedom Foundation and the blue-chip PR firm of Powell Tate. "Progress and Freedom Foundation, through Tozzi, set to release FDA piece on 2/1/95 with Powell Tate publicizing," Nicoli reported. [2]

==

cei eco terror

Greenpeace, **Earth** First!, PETA | Competitive Enterprise Institute

https://cei.org/op-eds-articles/greenpeace-earth-first-peta

Free Market Advocates Confront Eco-Terrorism | Competitive **...**

https://cei.org/news.../free-market-advocates-confront-eco-terrorism

How About People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans **...**

https://cei.org/blog/how-about-people-ethical-treatment-humans

Jan 25, 2007 ... PETA activists have a long history of association with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and a related underground organization, theEarth ...

Environmental Terrorists Deserve No Special Treatment **...**

https://cei.org/.../environmental-terrorists-deserve-no-special-treatment

Greenpeace, **Earth** First!, PETA

www.cei.org/pdf/3904.pdf

PETA or Medical Research? by Steven J. Milloy | Competitive **...**

https://cei.org/op-eds-and.../peta-or-medical-research-steven-j-milloy

Ecoterrorism Kills | Competitive Enterprise Institute

https://cei.org/op-eds-and-articles/ecoterrorism-kills

...

And she was right. Because DDT was widely used, mosquitoes evolved resistance. In Sri Lanka, for example, this lead to a worsening epidemic and hundreds of thousands of cases of malariaas DDT became ineffective. The ban on the agricultural use of DDT that Carson inspired saved lives by slowing the development of resistance.

In conjunction with their Carson hate-site the CEI are also offering their expert, Angela Logomasini (she has a degree in politics, not malariology) for interviews about Rachel Carson’s legacy. You just know that some lazy reporters will balance their stories about Carson by quoting an environmentalist about great Carson was and then quoting Logomasini screeching about how Carson killed millions of people. And you just know that they won’t check Logomasini’s claims for accuracy.

Meanwhile Senator Tom Coburn has blocked a resolution to honour Rachel Carson, accusing her of causing the death of millions of people. And CEI alumnus Ron Bailey joins the chorus with a post blaming Carson for the deaths of millions from insect-borne diseases like malaria. In his post and in his articles he links, nowhere does he mention insecticide resistance or what Carson wrote about it. What a surprise.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/05/23/rachel-carson-kills-babies-org/

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