EDISON 2 EEI

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see main for older
trumplandia
=</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">i'm confused , legal strat? jumped the shark?</font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">wow rep in shitter when eei bails? tho rep it what it's all about; interesting to see if 180 like corp pledge on sedition caucus</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">facing so</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">The public outrage over the riot at the U.S. Capitol is hurting RAGA's fundraising. Popular Information&nbsp;</span><a href="https://popular.info/p/after-riot-major-corporations-suspend?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMTA3OTEwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMTMwNTU4OCwiXyI6InVTU2pvIiwiaWF0IjoxNjEwNTU2Njc4LCJleHAiOjE2MTA1NjAyNzgsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNjY0Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.OrAb-C9IBWc_sZoajg4PQbo_crIZfDPmijpB4vjyohg" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box">reports</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;that the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;University of Phoenix is demanding its $50,400 donation back</span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, while&nbsp;</span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">DoorDash, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Edison Electric Institute</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Facebook</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, Lyft, RIAA, and Smithfield Foods&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">said they are suspending further contributions to RAGA. The</span></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;Cherokee Nation</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;has also&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.newson6.com/story/5ffcebdad22b0d0bcdf42070/cherokee-nation-withdraws-donation-to-republican-ag-assoc-after-robocalls-promoting-dc-rally--" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box">announced</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;it's withdrawing its $150,000 donation to the group. And Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, and Smile Direct&nbsp;</span><a href="https://popular.info/p/after-riot-major-corporations-suspend?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMTA3OTEwLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMTMwNTU4OCwiXyI6InVTU2pvIiwiaWF0IjoxNjEwNTU2Njc4LCJleHAiOjE2MTA1NjAyNzgsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xNjY0Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.OrAb-C9IBWc_sZoajg4PQbo_crIZfDPmijpB4vjyohg" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box">told</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">&nbsp;Popular Information they're reviewing their contribution policies in light of RAGA's messaging.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/21/oreskes-conway-the-big-myth-free-market-capitalism-climate-change-mont-pelerin-society/">https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/21/oreskes-conway-the-big-myth-free-market-capitalism-climate-change-mont-pelerin-society/</a></font></div><div style=""><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, authors of the classic 2010 book&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2010/06/10/oreskes-conway-exposing-merchants-doubt/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming</span></a>, have released a new book placing that doubt machine into a longer arc of U.S. business and political history.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market</span></a>&nbsp;explores an even more ambitious history dating from the dawn of the 20th century to the present day.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The book documents how today’s prevailing anti-regulatory and anti-government postures that deride Big Government and cheer for Big Business did not arise simply from grassroots demands. Instead, they arose from well-funded industry campaigns creating what Oreskes and Conway have called a manufactured consensus “quasi-religious belief” in deregulated markets and an accompanying diehard opposition to governmental solutions to public policy problems.&nbsp;</font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fighting Public Utilities, Child Labor Laws</font></span></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of the first campaigns in that spirit occurred within the electricity utility industry via an organization which eventually became known as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/edison-electric-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Edison Electric Institute</a>.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">What is now colloquially called</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);">&nbsp;EEI, was launched in 1885 as the National Electric Light Association, or NELA</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. At the time, it “represented more than five hundred of the largest privately owned electrical utilities, accounting for more than 90 percent of U.S. kilowatt output,” according to the book.&nbsp;</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the 1920s, according to Oreskes and Conway, “electricity industry leaders organized one of the largest propaganda campaigns in the history of the United States.” The campaign aimed to persuade the public that<b>&nbsp;municipal-owned electricity was a bad thing,</b>&nbsp;advocating instead for investor-owned utilities. In the end, though, it resulted in higher rates for homeowners and small businesses and bigger profits for company owners and their bankrollers.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The initially unpopular campaign framed its activities under the guise of freedom and market efficiency. NELA’s influence operation — involving rewriting K-12 and university textbooks, courting and funding industry-friendly professors, utilizing astroturf campaigns, deploying sophisticated lobbying techniques to facilitate regulatory and legislative capture, and other deceptive practices —&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2015/12/28/miracle-american-oil-continental-resources-corporate-media-oil-exports/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">resembles</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/10/29/lng-exports-comments-copy-paste/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">much</a>&nbsp;of the fossil fuel industry’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2023/02/13/exxon-shell-bp-api-concerns-carbon-capture/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">political pressure</a>&nbsp;that DeSmog has&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/01/31/three-states-pushing-alec-bill-climate-change-denial-schools/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">covered</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/09/16/frackademia-people-money-behind-edf-fracking-methane-emissions-study/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">uncovered</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2017/06/14/your-energy-america-ddc-advocacy-atlantic-coast-pipeline/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">week-in</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2019/06/06/enbridge-minnesotans-line-3-front-group-oil-pipeline/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">week-out</a>&nbsp;for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3dyyx/how-a-small-blog-became-a-thorn-in-the-side-of-corporate-climate-denial" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">over a decade and a half</a>.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the time, it was th<b>e first of its kind industrial-scale full-court press, and it provided a roadmap for other corporate hegemons in subsequent decades. And NELA’s goal went far beyond merely winning a PR campaign, Oreskes and Conway conclude; it had much deeper ideological underpinnings.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“[U]nlike conventional PR, the aim was not simply to create a positive impression of a particular business or even of the whole industry,” they write. “Rather, the goal—expressed outright in numerous documents—was to change the way Americans thought about private property, capitalism, and regulation” altogether.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Core to NELA’s campaign, Oreskes and Conway wrote, was the idea “that free-market capitalism was the embodiment of freedom, writ large, and that any restriction on the freedom of any business would put us on a slippery slope to tyranny.”&nbsp;</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Private ownership of the electricity industry was, up until then, relatively rare in the United States and even more so throughout the industrializing world. But as of 2017,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40913" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">72 percent&nbsp;</a>of U.S. electricity customers got their power from investor-owned utilities. NELA’s campaign, in other words, changed history as we know it.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, its successor EEI and its member companies continue to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.energyandpolicy.org/eei-campaign-institute/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">wage</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.energyandpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ratepayers-funding-Edison-Electric-Institute-and-other-organizations.pdf" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">deceptive</a>&nbsp;PR campaigns to fight renewable energy and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2018/05/23/koch-edison-electric-institute-wooing-interior-department-vincent-devito/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">bolster</a>&nbsp;the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/07/12553/utility-trade-group-funds-alec-attack-americans-who-use-solar" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">continued consumption</a>&nbsp;of fossil fuels.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The NELA campaign’s legacy, however, goes far beyond its sector alone, according to Oreskes and Conway. “Perhaps most importantly, NELA pioneered a strategy of insisting that these claims were true, regardless of the facts,” they wrote.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Broadening their view beyond the fossil fuel industry, Oreskes and Conway also detail how the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/national-association-manufacturers/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">National Association of Manufacturers</a>&nbsp;(NAM) propelled similar efforts across other industries during the same era. Like EEI, fast-forwarding to the present-day, NAM has served as a key node of climate denialism</span>.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But in its earliest days,<b>&nbsp;NAM maintained a different sinister focus, according to&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em>: advocating against child labor laws amid what the authors described as a “pandemic” of workplace deaths both among young workers and the adult workforce.&nbsp;</b>The sheer volume of such deaths served as one of the first major wakeup calls in the need for a more active regulatory state, the book maps out.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In making its case for child labor and against regulations protecting children, NAM espoused “that the federal government had no business interfering in business” and called such a notion “socialistic in its origin, philosophy and associations.”</font></p><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Libertarian Fringe to (Neo)Liberal Mainstream</font></span></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While both NELA and NAM laid the groundwork for a paradigm that’s alive and well today, their ideas were not adopted globally until the formation of the<b>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/mont-pelerin-society/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Mont Pelerin Society</a>,&nbsp;</b>a group created in 1947 that like EEI and NAM has received close scrutiny from DeSmog for years. Oreskes and Conway devote a whole chapter of&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em>&nbsp;to Mont Pelerin.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Like NELA and NAM, Mont Pelerin’s roots lay in anti-regulatory and business-funded ideology.&nbsp;<b>But unlike them, Mont Pelerin came out of academia a</b>nd via professors committed to the now globally pervasive neoliberal ideology they created. Mont Pelerin inspired similar groups that are, like it, still active today, such as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/koch-industries-inc/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch Industries</a>-funded&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/institute-humane-studies-george-mason-university/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Institute for Humane Studies</a>&nbsp;at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/george-mason-university/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">George Mason University</a>&nbsp;and the University of Chicago’s free market-oriented Economics Department.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oreskes and Conway point to a legion of like-minded groups arising by the 1970s, riding the momentum of an academic community devoted to neoliberal ideology, and reacting to the gains made in environmental protection and other areas. Formation of these groups accelerated after the metaphorical call-to-arms made in a memo written to the<b>&nbsp;U.S. Chamber of Commerce by the then-tobacco industry attorney and soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.&nbsp;</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Known today as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2011/08/23/40th-anniversary-lewis-powell-memo-launching-corporate-propaganda-infrastructure/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Powell Memo</a>, the 1972 letter called for Big Business to undergo “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Powell Memo, Oreskes and Conway concluded, spearheaded free market fundamentalist groups such as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/cato-institute/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Cato Institute</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/koch-family-foundations//#!/stream" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch Family Foundations</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/scaife-family-foundations/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Scaife Family Foundations</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2016/01/21/beyond-koch-brothers-scaife-olin-bradley-jane-mayer-dark-money/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Olin Foundation</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/heritage-foundation/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Heritage Foundation</a>, and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/federalist-society-law-and-public-policy-studies/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Federalist Society</a>, among others. All of these entities, and the groups they fund or work alongside in coalitions, remain powerful forces within U.S. and global politics.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</span>&nbsp;further highlights how those think tanks and companies also played a<b>&nbsp;key role in defeating the 2009 and 2010 congressional push, led by then-President Barack Obama, to pass a federal, market-oriented climate bill known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act</b>. Critics would charge that the policy approach taken in the bill, emblematically, embodies the very “market fundamentalist” ethos reigning over U.S. politics for the past 100-plus years.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">During the congressional debate over a bill that would have<b>&nbsp;enshrined the policy lever of cap-and-trade, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/02/11/study-confirms-tea-party-was-created-big-tobacco-and-billionaires/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Koch-funded Tea Party network</a>&nbsp;also ascended</b>[</font><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">vid]</span></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">previous congressional pushes in the 2000s for what was ultimately a business-friendly climate policy, had enjoyed bipartisan support. But&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em>&nbsp;explains how as the&nbsp;<b>Tea Party</b>&nbsp;network took flight, Republican Party support for the climate bill — and broader climate action — eroded to a near-zero level. It has mostly remained there since.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At the same time, the reality of climate change had and has continued to become all the more clear. That reality though, Oreskes and Conway wrote, clashes with the&nbsp;<b>religion of market fundamentalism.&nbsp;</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“[H]ad the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market-place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale?” the authors asked of the legion of climate-change deniers who helped to kill the bill. “To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, but now.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Although this “quasi-religious belief” in the power of the market holds the greatest sway with conservatives, Oreskes and Conway argue that belief in the “magic of the marketplace” has become an intoxicating ideology within<b>&nbsp;liberal circles too, including within climate policy debates.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Even in supposedly liberal enclaves like Cambridge, Massachusetts,” where&nbsp;<a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Oreskes teaches at Harvard</a>, “many people think climate change will be best addressed by technological innovation in the marketplace,” the co-authors surmise, perhaps in alluding to the prototypical&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2020/05/24/ernest-moniz-labor-fracking-clean-coal-geoengineering/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">industry-friendly</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2021/07/18/doe-moniz-blueprint-carbon-capture-pipelines/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">policies</a>&nbsp;pushed by former Obama Administration U.S. Secretary of Energy&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2013/04/09/ernest-moniz-keystone-xl-contractor-american-petroleum-institute-fracked-gas-exports/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">Ernest Moniz</a>&nbsp;— a professor at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The rise of right-wing think tanks helped spread the pro-market, antigovernment gospel across the country and insert what had been decidedly niche views into the mainstream,” the authors explained of the ideology’s spread. Other scholars have referred to this as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/2016/01/21/beyond-koch-brothers-scaife-olin-bradley-jane-mayer-dark-money/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">“force field” effect</a>, moving the gravitational pull of what’s possible within U.S. politics further and further toward right-wing, corporate-created policy solutions.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ideological roots of anti-democracy, anti-environmental, and anti-regulatory campaigning explored in&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em>&nbsp;also serve as the heart and soul of the book&nbsp;<a href="https://www.desmog.com/climate-cover-up/" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming</span></a>, written by DeSmog co-founders James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If you have learned from DeSmog’s reporting shedding light on the climate change denial machine, you’ll love&nbsp;<em style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</em>, an excerpt from which follows below. The book is a must-read for all students of the sordid history of public relations and governmental capture.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Go&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">grab a copy</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/naomi-oreskes" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">check</a><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/widening-the-lens-of-accountability-with/id1439735906?i=1000581948495" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">&nbsp;out</a>&nbsp;some&nbsp;<a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-november-16-2022/" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">recent</a>&nbsp;interviews on the book, as well, for further background. A&nbsp;<a href="https://vimeo.com/727392720" data-wpel-link="external" target="blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: none;">video</a>&nbsp;of Professor Oreskes discussing the book can also be seen below.</font></p><h2 id="h-excerpt-from-the-big-myth" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem; line-height: 1.2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Excerpt from&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">The Big Myth</span></font></h2><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">In the 1990s,</span>&nbsp;as capitalism was being declared triumphant in many quarters, scientists had proved that man-made climate change was under way.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="1" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">1</a></span>&nbsp;Climate change was textbook market failure. It arose from everyday economic activity— using fossil fuels—but was about to impose a huge external cost, inundating major coastal cities around the globe, making hurricanes and cyclones even more deadly than they already were, and dislocating tens or even hundreds of millions of people. It was also textbook environmental injustice, as poor people would almost certainly bear the brunt of a problem created by the rich.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But it also had a textbook answer: putting a price on carbon</b>. Economists called this solution a “Pigouvian tax”—after the Cambridge economist Arthur Pigou, who in the early twentieth century had helped develop the concept of negative externalities. (Pigou also suggested it would be reasonable for governments to subsidize activities that had “positive externalities,” such as education.) The idea of pricing social and environmental costs of carbon was hardly radical; Pigou was firmly mainstream, a respected scholar at Cambridge University, a leading figure in what came to be known as the Cambridge school of economics.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="2" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">2</a></span>&nbsp;The obvious benefit of the Pigouvian approach was that it remedied the market failure directly by embedding information—in this case scientific information—into the price of fossil fuels. Then consumers could decide for themselves whether or not to buy more expensive fossil fuels, and producers of alternatives could compete on a level playing field.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The Clinton administration proposed to address climate change through a Pigouvian tax, the so-called “BTU” tax</b>&nbsp;(referring to the heat content of fuels as measured in British Thermal Units).<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="3" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">3</a></span>&nbsp;But it was opposed—indeed, ridiculed—by a broad coalition of conservatives, including, the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, and virtually every right-wing think tank in Americ</span>a.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="4" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">4</a></span>&nbsp;</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The notorious Global Climate Coalition, a network of fossil fuel producers and users that in the 1990s successfully prevented the U.S. Congress from ratifying the Kyoto protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, was originally established as a committee of the National Association of Manufacturers. Even though the idea of putting a price on carbon was a mainstream economic approach to market failure, Republicans framed it as just another example of Democrats’ penchant to “tax and spend.” The Wall Street Journal mocked it as Al Gore’s “favorite tax</span>.”<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="5" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">5</a></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In his 1979 paper on nonmarket failure, economist Charles Wolf had slipped into his conclusion the idea that one cause of nonmarket failure was “premature but politically effective demands for government action.”<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="6" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">6</a></span>&nbsp;In the 1990s, many Republicans picked up on this theme, arguing that it was premature to act on climate change. Even at the time, that was wrong: scientists already had a consensus that man-made climate change was under way and likely to be very costly.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="7" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">7</a></span>&nbsp;To act in the 1990s would have been appropriate. It would have been timely. But Clinton was unable to generate congressional support for action; Republican opposition made it clear that any proposal to put a price on carbon would be dead on arrival. In 1999, when Vice President Al Gore ran for president on a platform prioritizing climate change, journalist Gregg Easterbrook (brother of Judge Frank Easterbrook) embarrassed him on the campaign trail with a false story that his mentor—climate champion Roger Revelle—had experienced a deathbed conversion and died thinking climate change was not a serious problem.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="8" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">8</a></span>&nbsp;(He had not.)</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>As the 1990s became the 2000s—and scientists declared the evidence “unequivocal”—market fundamentalist did not adjust their views. To the contrary, their opposition hardened.</b><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="9" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">9</a></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2006, Lord Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, concluded on behalf of the UK government that, yes, fixing climate change would be expensive—perhaps as much as 1 percent of global GDP per annum—but not fixing it would cost much more: at least 5 percent and perhaps as much as 20 percent.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="10" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">1</a><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; box-shadow: none;">0</a></span>&nbsp;Here was a solid argument from a man who could scarcely be accused of being any kind of -ist other than an economist.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In response, conservatives dug in deeper. Senator Ted Cruz promoted the canard that global warming had stopped; Senator James Inhofe called it a liberal conspiracy to bring down capitalism.</span><span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="11" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">11</a></span>&nbsp;No matter what solutions were proposed—market-friendly or not—the right wing found reasons to oppose them. The science wasn’t settled (they claimed). It would be too expensive to fix. We could just adapt. It was all a hoax. Often these claims were couched in libertarian terms, as when in 2011 former House Speaker Newt Gingrich deemed the push to address climate change “the newest excuse to take control of lives.”<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="12" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">12</a></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The singular exception to climate denial in Republican Party leadership was Senator John McCain. He and conservative Democrat Joe Lieberman introduced Climate Stewardship acts in 2003, 2005, and 2007 to address the carbon dioxide emissions&nbsp;</b>that drive climate change by creating an emissions trading system—a proven mechanism, albeit more complicated than a Pigouvian tax. But when given the chance to use it to address climate change, Republicans refused.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="13" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">13</a></span>&nbsp;The 2003 bill failed on mostly party lines, with a few Democrats and nearly all Republicans in opposition. But it was a closer call than many expected, and soon Congress faced intense lobbying pressure against climate legislation,&nbsp;<b>particularly from NAM and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce</b>. The 2005 version came to a vote and failed 60–38, with only a handful of Republicans voting yea.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="14" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">14</a></span>&nbsp;Two years after that, McCain could not even persuade Republican leaders to bring a climate bill to the Senate floor.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="15" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">15</a></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2009, Congress tried once more, with the American Clean Energy and Security Act (better known as&nbsp;<b>Waxman-Markey,&nbsp;</b>for its primary sponsors, Massachusetts representative Ed Markey and California representative Henry Waxman). For the fourth time in a decade, Congress had the opportunity to address climate change using a market mechanism, and for the fourth time rejected it.</span>&nbsp;The bill barely passed the Democratic-led House; nearly all Republicans voted against, as did Democrats from fossil-fuel-producing states (and a few Democrats who found the bill too weak). The Senate never brought it to a vote. Democrats concluded they could not overcome the “wall of opposition” they faced from their Republican colleagues, opposition fortified by fierce lobbying.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="16" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">16</a></span>&nbsp;One analysis concluded that, in the eighteen months between January 2009 and June 2010, electric utilities, oil and gas companies, trade associations, and think tanks spent at least $500 million against climate change legislation.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="17" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">17</a></span>&nbsp;Another study tracing anti-climate lobbying back to 2003 places the figure at closer to $1 billion.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="18" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">18</a></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;" /><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;" /><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 600;">The fossil fuel</span>&nbsp;industry’s economic interests in preventing climate action have always been obvious; less understood is how it has camouflaged those interests. No one ever said, “I am denying climate change to protect corporate profits.” They said they were protecting jobs, protecting the economy, and protecting free markets from government “encroachment.” They said they were&nbsp;<b>fighting for capitalism and freedom</b></span><b>.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But historically, capitalism has never been just one thing: Adam Smith’s eighteenth-century vision of a democratic, distributed marketplace populated by small bankers and businessmen was a far cry from the industrial capitalism that developed in early nineteenth-century England and Germany—with its cruel “Satanic mills”—or the monopolies and managerial capitalism that came to dominate America in the late nineteenth century, much less the globally financed capitalism that emerged at the end of the twentieth century</span>. China has liberalized its markets while continuing to oppress and even murder its ethnic and religious minorities. There are many capitalisms. American market fundamentalists fight for a form of capitalism that is both brutal and ignorant: that brushes aside market failure, anticompetitive practices, and external costs, in part by denying the facts of science, the facts of history, and the necessary role of government in making capitalism work.<span class="modern-footnotes-footnote modern-footnotes-footnote--hover-on-desktop " data-mfn="19" data-mfn-post-scope="0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: initial; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline; top: -0.5em; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px;"><a role="button" aria-pressed="false" aria-describedby="mfn-content-0000000069385b1600000000164185f1_52111" data-wpel-link="internal" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; box-shadow: none;">19</a></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The question is not whether government should set limits that prevent individual autonomy from producing collective harm, the question is where we draw the lines. That is not an economic question, it is a political one. Market fundamentalists have managed to distract from the political aspects of these decisions and frame them as questions of “economic freedom.” Thus, a reasonable response to climate change is rejected as unreasonable “government encroachment.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 1.5rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">All this may make one wonder: was this ever&nbsp;<b><span style="box-sizing: border-box;">really</span>&nbsp;</b>about capitalism? Or freedom? Or was it all just one long, semi-continuous, shape-shifting defense of the prerogatives of big business? Of freedom for capital and capitalists? Or had the market fundamentalists spent so much time defending the magic of the market- place that they simply couldn’t accept market failure on a global scale? To accept the enormity of what climate change portended for civilization was to accept that capitalism, as practiced, was undermining the very prosperity it was supposed to deliver. And not just in some distant future, but<b>&nbsp;<span style="box-sizing: border-box;">now.</span></b></font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ref bib...</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ucs 2018?</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="textwidget custom-html-widget" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="article-content" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 866px; clear: both;"><h3 style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.2em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Legislative Exchange Council: Fossil fuel industry ‘bill mill’</font></h3><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; line-height: 30px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On July 12, ExxonMobil&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/2018/07/12/stories/1060088919" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">announced</a>&nbsp;it had ended its longtime membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council after a disagreement over the corporate lobby group’s climate policy. From 1998 through last year — when Exxon Mobil reported it gave the group $60,000 — ALEC received $1.93 million from the oil company.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; line-height: 30px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Over the last two decades, ALEC has routinely featured climate science deniers at its conferences and supplied state lawmakers with a range of fossil fuel industry-drafted sample legislation, including bills that would restrict investment in renewables, eliminate incentives for electric vehicles, and hamper the solar industry from selling electricity directly to residential and business customers.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; line-height: 30px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since 2012, more than 100 corporations, including BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell and electric utilities Entergy, Pacific Gas & Electric and Xcel Energy, have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Corporations_that_Have_Cut_Ties_to_ALEC" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">severed ties</a>&nbsp;with ALEC, in many cases because of its regressive policy positions.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; line-height: 30px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">ExxonMobil’s exit from ALEC came just months after the company fought to defeat a&nbsp;<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/363389-exxon-opposes-alecs-attempt-to-fight-epa-climate-policy" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">draft resolution</a>&nbsp;sponsored by the&nbsp;Heartland Institute</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;— an ExxonMobil grantee from 1998 through 2006 — calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to “reopen and review” its “flawed” conclusion that climate change poses a threat to human health.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;The</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">&nbsp;EPA’s “endangerment finding”&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">requires the agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions as hazardous pollutants under the Clean Air Act.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; line-height: 30px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>After ExxonMobil and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a utility trade group, objected to the resolution, the Heartland Institute withdrew it and accused the two of being in league with the likes of Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; line-height: 30px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Big corporations like ExxonMobil and trade groups like EEI have long been members of the discredited and anti-energy global warming movement,” Heartland’s president, Tim Huelskamp, said in a December 7&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/heartland-institute-statement-on-alec-endangerment-finding-resolution" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">press release</a>. “They’ve put their profits and ‘green’ virtue signaling above sound science and the interests of their customers.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; line-height: 30px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Huelskamp’s ludicrous assertion notwithstanding,&nbsp;</b>some might construe ExxonMobil’s exit from ALEC as a welcome change in direction. The company’s money trail, however, clearly shows that it is still financing climate science denier groups that denigrate any and all climate policy options and&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/exxonmobils-climate-disinformation-campaign-is-still-alive-and-well" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">provide cover</a>&nbsp;for Congress and the current administration to do nothing. Until ExxonMobil stops funding these groups, its avowed support for a carbon tax, the Paris agreement and other climate initiatives can’t be seen as anything more than a cynical PR ploy.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; line-height: 30px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Posted in:&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/category/energy" rel="category tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Energy</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/category/global-warming" rel="category tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Global Warming</a>&nbsp;Tags:&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/tag/carbon-tax" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">carbon tax</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/tag/climate-denier" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Climate Denier</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/tag/climate-science" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Climate Science</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/tag/exxonmobil" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">ExxonMobil</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/tag/fossil-fuel" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">fossil fuel</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://blog.ucsusa.org/tag/global-warming-2" rel="tag" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Global warming</a></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">a trade assoc which is a member of another trade assoc int'l?</font></div><div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oil-industry-bigwigs-given-platform-at-cop26-despite-organisers-claims/">https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oil-industry-bigwigs-given-platform-at-cop26-despite-organisers-claims/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></font></font></font></div><div><b>Oil industry bigwigs given platform at COP26 despite organisers’ claims</b></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Exclusive: UK government hosts said Big Oil companies wouldn’t be welcome, but BP’s CEO is among fossil fuel lobbyists at the heart of the conference</span></div><div>
</div><div>Adam Ramsay</div><div><b>2 November 2021,&nbsp;</b></div><div><b>
</b></div><div>The CEO of BP is among those from Big Oil speaking at COP26 | SOPA Images Limited/Alamy Stock Photo]</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Representatives of major oil companies including BP will be speaking at COP26, despite reassurances from organisers that they wouldn’t be welcome,&nbsp;</b>a programme from inside the venue reveals.</div><div>
</div><div>Last month, it was revealed that oil companies including BP were being excluded from official roles at COP26, with organisers casting doubt on the firms’ claimed ambitions to eliminate carbon emissions.</div><div>
</div><div>At the time, the exclusion was seen as a victory for environmental campaigners, who have long called for major polluters to be excluded from UN climate conferences.</div><div>
</div><div>However, a programme of events obtained by openDemocracy reveals that representatives of Big Oil have been allowed into the conference under the umbrella of a trade association that has a stall at the heart of COP26.</div><div>
</div><div>“These companies are the greatest perpetrators of the climate crisis, and none of them have committed to rapidly phase out their oil, gas and coal extraction in line with the 1.5°C target.<b>&nbsp;But BP and Chevron still get a platform</b>&nbsp;and the industry still gets access to influential decision-makers behind the scenes,” Jess Worth, a Culture Unstained co-director, told openDemocracy.</div><div>
</div><div>“While so many vital voices from frontline and Indigenous communities around the world have been excluded from the summit, this clearly demonstrates the injustice baked into the heart of the process,” she added.</div><div>
</div><div>BP and Chevron get a platform and the industry gets access to influential decision-makers</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The events are organised by the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), which lists oil company Chevron and mining firm Rio Tinto among its partners.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Speakers hosted by the IETA include Bernard Looney, the chief executive of oil firm BP,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">who will take part in a ‘high level dialogue on business, human rights and the just transition’ along with Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and former UN commissioner for human rights.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last month, MPs criticised BP after openDemocracy revealed the&nbsp;<b>oil company had paid a firm founded by an ex-MI6 officer to snoop on climate activists.</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>Norwegian oil company Equinor is also listed as a partner, while speakers include those from Malaysian oil company Petronas and Delta Air Lines, another major polluter.</div><div>
</div><div><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Another member of IETA, the Edison Electric Institute (EEI),&nbsp;</span>i</b>s an umbrella body for energy companies in the US. Over the past decade, the EEI has been accused of holding back climate legislation in the US, including campaigning against distributed solar power, according to research by the investigative outlet Desmog.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Although the EEI officially acknowledges climate change as “one of the biggest energy and environmental policy challenges this country has ever faced”, in 2017, its then chair Tom Fanning denied the science of climate change in an interview with CNBC.</span></div><div>
</div><div>[COP26: How the UK started the climate crisis</div><div>8 October 2021 | Adam Ramsay]</div><div>
</div><div>Boris Johnson will soon take on the role of the bombastic host at the UN s climate conference in Glasgow. Don t let him pretend we’re the good guys</div><div><b>“The so-called business hub, the route by which BP, Chevron, Equinor, Rio Tinto and many other mega polluters have snuck into COP26, is really just a front for dodgy emission trading and offsetting schemes,” Mary Church, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said</b>.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“Market-based mechanisms like those promoted under the IETA's COP26 programme are a dangerous distraction from the real solutions to the climate crisis.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>A BP spokesperson told openDemocracy that “We’re not official participants, but there are a number of side events,” which it confirmed senior figures from the company would be speaking at.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Responding to criticism of the company’s approach to climate change, he said: “We’re very clear about what our net zero targets are.” He added that these include “targets we have set for 2025 and 2030: we’ve set out a very clear set of ambitions, aims and targets, and that’s what we’re focussed on delivering”.</span></div><div>
</div><div>The Edison Electric Institute, ITEA and Chevron did not respond to openDemocracy’s request for comment.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/joe-manchin-2654895078/</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style=""><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx an 921</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>&nbsp;League of Conservation Voters gives scorecards to members of Congress based on their environmental records, and LCV's National Environmental Scorecard gives Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia a 54% favorable score for 2020 and an overall<b>&nbsp;lifetime score of 49%</b>&nbsp;— compared to the 96% lifetime score LCV gives Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City or the embarrassing 3% lifetime score LCV gives Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. Manchin, who receives neither AOC's stellar rating from LCV nor the abysmal rating given to Jordan, has had a friendly relationship with the coal industry than many other Democrats — and that relationship is the focus of an article published by The Intercept on September 3.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">Journalist Daniel Boguslaw's article notes what Manchin has had to say about fossil fuels versus green energy and examines, in great detail, his relationship to the coal industry in West Virginia. The centrist Democrat told CNN, "If you're sticking your head in the sand and saying that fossil (fuel) has to be eliminated in America — and they want to get rid of it, and thinking that's going to clean up the global climate — it won't clean it up all. If anything, it would be worse."</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Boguslaw explains, "Manchin's claim that climate pollution would be worsened by the elimination of fossil fuels — or by the resolution's actual, more incremental climate provisions — is highly dubious, if not outright false. What would unquestionably be impacted, however, is Manchin's own personal wealth."</b></div><div>
</div><div>The journalist goes on to offer elaborate details about Manchin's relationship with coal.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">"For decades, Manchin has profited from a series of coal companies that he founded during the 1980s," Boguslaw notes. "His son, Joe Manchin IV, has since assumed leadership roles in the firms, and the senator says his ownership is held in a blind trust. Yet between the time he joined the Senate and today, Manchin has personally grossed more than $4.5 million from those firms, according to financial disclosures. He also holds stock options in Enersystems Inc., the larger of the two firms, valued between $1 and $5 million."</span></div><div>
</div><div>Boguslaw continues, "Those two companies, Enersystems Inc. and Farmington Resources Inc., the latter of which was created by the rapid merging of two other firms, Manchin's Transcon and Farmington Energy, in 2005.&nbsp;<b>Enersystems purchases low-quality waste coal from mines and resells it to power plants as fuel, while Farmington Resources provides 'support activities for mining' and holds coal reserves in the Fairmont area."</b></div><div>
</div><div>The 74-year-old Manchin has been a fixture in West Virginia politics for decades. After serving in the West Virginia State Senate in the 1980s and 1990s, Manchin served as governor of West Virginia before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010. West Virginia is a deep red state, but being a Democrat didn't prevent Manchin from getting reelected to the U.S. Senate in 2012 and 2018.&nbsp;<b>And during the Barack Obama era, Boguslaw notes, he fought against stricter Environmental Protection Agency rules.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">"Manchin's advocacy for relaxing environmental regulations on the coal industry extends well beyond coal ash," Boguslaw observes. "In at least one instance, that advocacy was linked to the interests of the E<b>dison Electric Institute, or EEI — an energy producer trade group tied directly to Manchin coal,</b>&nbsp;as Sludge reported in July. In 2012, Manchin was one of the loudest voices opposing the Obama-era EPA rules limiting mercury and aerosolized acid emissions from power plants like Grant Town, which supplies power to an EEI member."</span></div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES</div><div>What do Manchin and Sinema want to cut from Biden's plan? 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They've installed the technology to reduce pollution that MATS required. Aging reactors that shut down rather than add the costly kit aren't coming back</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">(</span><a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060095439" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;"><em style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Greenwire</em></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, Aug. 29).</span></font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But a clutch of coal-saturated utilities see an avenue for avoiding "Armageddon," according to an industry attorney.</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Those utilities want to move regulations for mercury and other pollution out of one section of the Clean Air Act and into another — the one EPA is using to set limits for carbon — to avoid more stringent future regulations that could signal a death knell for the nation's most coal-intensive reactors.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>"Legally what he's suggesting is bonkers, but it's fascinating,"</b>&nbsp;John Walke, director of the federal clean air, climate and clean energy program with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the case being raised by those attorneys.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At issue is what's known as the "Risk and Technology Review" under the Clean Air Act's Section 112, a provision that requires a check-in eight years after developing pollution standards to see whether initial controls have done enough to eliminate or reduce the risks of cancer, heart and lung ailments, and other public health problems. There's no negotiating; that review comes in 2020 for power plants so long as the MATS rule developed in 2012 remains in effect.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What concerns coal-saturated power operators is that environmental groups will use the findings from those reviews to press for stricter standards on a host of pollutants. That would include particulate matter — tiny soot particles — the reduction of which generated a significant amount of benefits for the Obama administration's now-defunct climate rule, the Clean Power Plan.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Officially, those utilities are arguing that re-evaluating MATS and placing it under Section 111(d) — which the Trump and Obama administrations used to impose carbon emissions rules for power plants — would satisfy the "112 exclusion."</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>That argument claims EPA cannot regulate power plants under Section 111(d) if those facilities also face rules under Section 112</b>. They see EPA's move yesterday to reassess whether the Obama administration's determination to regulate mercury and air toxins was "appropriate and necessary" as the starting point for shifting the program from 112 to 111(d).</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"The EPA has an excellent opportunity now to streamline its regulatory approach</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;under Section 111(d), encourage the states to play a meaningful role in the regulatory process, and allow the kind of flexibility and sensitivity to local needs that the Clean Air Act was intended to promote,"&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Andrew Grossman, an attorney with BakerHostetler, said in an email.</span></font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Unofficially, the situation is a little different.</b></font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"It's about what the environmental groups will use those reviews to do and what D.C. Circuit Court judges would do to EPA," the utility attorney said. "The first war on coal was about [sulfur dioxide]. And the second will be on particulate matter."</b></font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In fact, many utilities want EPA to keep the MATS rule. Because most have complied with the rules — chalked up as the costliest in EPA history — there's little upside to ditching it now.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Trade groups Edison Electric Institute</b> and <b>National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, along with labor unions</b>, wrote a July letter urging EPA air chief Bill Wehrum to<b> maintain the rule and to "complete the statutorily mandated Residual Risk and Technology Review (RTR) for power plants as expeditiously as possible"</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;(</span><a href="https://www.eenews.net/greenwire/stories/1060088801/" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: bold;"><em style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Greenwire</em></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, July 11).</span></font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The developing strategy from those looking to squash the 112 program exposes a subtle division among utility industry lawyers, Walke said.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some attorneys who represent utilities that have spent billions of dollars complying worry that undoing and rewriting the MATS rule would take too long. That means it could park the Risk and Technology Review squarely within a Democratic administration rather than a more sympathetic Trump EPA.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"That July letter strongly promotes moving straight to that process, to the residual risk process," Walke said of the letter from utility organizations and labor unions. "They want the Trump EPA to complete it. They want Bill Wehrum to say, 'We don't want you to do any more.'"</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But industry attorneys on the other side of that argument worry about the effects the reviews would have on power plants that use only electrostatic precipitators to remove pollutants rather than scrubbers, the latter of which Walke said are more effective.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Those are the types of facilities that could come under greater pressure from actions resulting from that review.</span></font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"The issue going forward is there is a future round of standards," the utility attorney said.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Proponents of that legal opinion argue that the section the Obama administration used for MATS was always imperfect for power plants. That part of the Clean Air Act was intended for a national program, but power plants use different types of coal for various reasons and compete regionally, not across the whole country.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"This claim is valid. In general, coal plants that burn eastern coal had a much more expensive compliance pathway than coal plants that burn [Powder River Basin] coal," Brian Potts, an environmental and energy attorney and partner at Perkins Coie, said in an email, though he wasn't commenting on the overarching legal play.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Still, doing what those utilities envision — shifting the regulatory program from Section 112 to Section 111(d) — is no easy task, Potts said.</font></p><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That, essentially, is what EPA tried to do under President George W. Bush, Potts said. Courts struck down the Clean Air&nbsp;<b>Mercury&nbsp;</b>Rule because they said the agency lacked authority to simply delist power plants from Section 112 and replace it with a cap-and-trade program.</font></p><p style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Plants are already complying with the current standards now. Certainly if the current standards are made more stringent, that could impact some plants," Potts said. "But it seems a bit odd to me to preemptively revoke standards in order to avoid the possibility of a future administration making them more stringent — especially when the current administration is in its first term."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">PRESS RELEASE:&nbsp;<b>HEARTLAND INSTITUTE STATEMENT ON ALEC ENDANGERMENT FINDING RESOLUTION</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">DECEMBER 7, 2017</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>By Tim Huelskamp, Ph.D.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">‘Heartland thanks&nbsp;<b>Rep. Piscopo</b>&nbsp;for taking the lead on this important issue, and thanks ALEC for allowing this debate to take place.’ – Tim Huelskamp, Ph.D.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ALEC logo</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Yesterday, a task force of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) debated a resolution calling for a review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding.” After a lively debate and straw vote, the sponsor of the resolution, Rep. John Piscopo (R-CT), along with Bette Grande, a research fellow for The Heartland Institute who helped draft the resolution, withdrew it for now, saying “the final decision on this issue will be made by the Trump Administration.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Background links:</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Resolution to review the Endangerment Finding [click here]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Coalition letter in favor of the resolution [click here]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Letter withdrawing the resolution [click here]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Rep. Piscopo and Ms. Grande agreed to withdraw the resolution after corporate members of ALEC, led by<b>&nbsp;ExxonMobil and Edison Electric Institute (EEI</b>), packed the meeting room with lobbyists and allies and indicated they would vote against the resolution.</span>&nbsp;Heartland’s discussions with state legislators on the task force, as well as a straw vote of elected officials attending the committee meeting, showed a majority of them supported the resolution.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The following statement from Tim Huelskamp, Ph.D., president of The Heartland Institute – may be used for attribution. For more comments or to book Dr. Huelskamp on your radio or television program, please contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at jlakely@heartland.org and 312/377-4000 or (cell) 312/731-9364.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">[OMFG]</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“This result is disappointing, but not surprising. Big corporations like ExxonMobil and trade groups like&nbsp;<b>EEI have long been members of the discredited and anti-energy global warming movement. They’ve put their profits and ‘green’ virtue signaling above sound science and the interests of their customers.</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“Heartland thanks Rep. Piscopo for taking the lead on this important issue, and thanks ALEC for allowing this debate to take place. The debate will continue both inside ALEC, where a majority of legislative members and policy advisors agree that the Endangerment Finding ought to be reviewed, as well as outside the organization. We will continue to work with scientists, economists, policy experts, and allies at ALEC to strengthen the case for rescinding the Endangerment Finding.</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“This discussion&nbsp; at ALEC changes nothing at the federal level, where action to repeal the Endangerment Finding will take place. President Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt have rejected unscientific alarmism, embraced sound science, and are implementing pro-energy, pro-America policies.&nbsp;<b>Rescinding the Endangerment Finding is the logical and necessary next step.&nbsp;</b>We are optimistic that the self-serving regulatory capture and green preening of big corporations like ExxonMobil may delay but will not prevent that step.”</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Heartland Institute is a 33-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our website or call 312/377-4000.</font></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Blocking the Sun': New Report Documents Efforts to Undermine Rooftop Solar</font></h1></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="js-scroll-trigger" data-target="body" data-triggers="render-rebelbar" data-toggle-class="with-floating-shares" data-loaded="true" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></span></font><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2505417548" data-authors="Environment America" data-headline="'Blocking the Sun': New Report Documents Efforts to Undermine Rooftop Solar" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px;"><div class="body-description"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While nearly 9 in 10 Americans&nbsp;<a href="https://environmentamerica.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ce23fee8c5f1232fe0701c44e&id=992ffcaf44&e=694606f76f" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">support</a>&nbsp;the development of more&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/solar" style="text-decoration-line: none;">solar</a>&nbsp;energy, electric utilities and fossil fuel-backed special interests are trying to hold off the inevitable renewable-energy future by promoting policies that would make rooftop solar harder to obtain.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A new&nbsp;<a href="https://environmentamerica.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ce23fee8c5f1232fe0701c44e&id=3f324e03db&e=694606f76f" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">report</a>&nbsp;released Thursday by&nbsp;<a href="https://environmentamerica.org/home" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Environment America</a>&nbsp;Research & Policy Center documents 20 entities, across 12 states, who sought to roll back key policies driving solar power over the past year.</b>
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's completely clear that Americans want more solar power, for the good of our environment, our health and our local economies," said Bret Fanshaw, solar program coordinator with Environment America and report co-author. "We cannot allow for a narrow set of interests to block the ability of everyday citizens to tap into clean and renewable solar power on the roofs of our homes and businesses."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fueled by strong public policies, solar energy is growing by leaps and bounds, with enough solar capacity installed in the U.S. to power 1 in 14 American homes. The American public has demanded solar power because it is clean and increasingly affordable, with costs down two-thirds over the past decade.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The "Blocking the Sun" report shows, however, that electric utilities and special interests are actively undermining access to solar energy across the country.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to a Frontier Group analysis of the most recent N.C. Clean Energy Technology Center '50 States of Solar' report, at least 90 policy actions in U.S. states could affect the growth of rooftop solar generation as of mid-2017. They include limits on net metering or new utility fees that make solar power less affordable.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We're seeing a continued, concerted effort to knock down some of the best solar policies out there by some of the most powerful state utilities and fossil fuel actors" said Hye-Jin Kim, policy associate at Frontier Group and report co-author. "We've done this study three years in a row, and despite overwhelming public approval of solar power, the industry attacks on pro-solar policies continue."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Often operating in dense regulatory proceedings, electric utilities like Duke Energy, Rocky Mountain Power and Arizona Public Service have urged state officials to lower credits to solar users,&nbsp;</b>add special charges to rooftop solar owners and force customers into rate plans that would reduce the benefits rooftop solar can provide on your electricity bill.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Efforts by electric utilities to stall solar progress have been coupled with, and in some cases, orchestrated by, fossil fuel front groups such as the Consumer Energy Alliance and utility trade groups such as the Edison Electric Institute.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In many cases, it's working.&nbsp;</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Indiana Energy Association, an industry group, successfully lobbied on behalf of the state's biggest electric utilities to phase out Indiana's key rooftop solar program this year, replacing it instead with a new policy that limits compensation for generating rooftop power.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/trump-watch/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Trump</a>&nbsp;administration has appointed allies of the electric utilities and fossil fuel companies to key positions within the Department of Energy and other federal agencies. Those appointees are making a concerted effort to undermine solar power at the national level. Studies put forth by Energy Sec.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rick-perry" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Rick Perry</a>&nbsp;question the value of rooftop solar and attempt to justify support for&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal" style="text-decoration-line: none;">coal</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/nuclear" style="text-decoration-line: none;">nuclear</a>&nbsp;plants over&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">renewable energy</a>.</span>

</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The "Blocking the Sun" report recommends state and national decision-makers resist utility and fossil fuel industry attempts to reduce the economic viability of distributed solar energy, and reject policies to limit the use of this clean, renewable and increasingly economical source of power.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"To meet our major environmental challenges and reach 100 percent renewable energy, we must harness the power of the sun on exponentially more rooftops across America," said Fanshaw. "The people want this to happen—it's up to our public officials to stand up to powerful interests and make going solar easier, not harder."</font></p></div></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/utilities-climate-change_us_597673e0e4b0c95f375dd60d">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/utilities-climate-change_us_597673e0e4b0c95f375dd60d</a></font></strong></p><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil giants like&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tillerson-exxon-knew_us_5876606ee4b092a6cae45010" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" exxon="Exxon" mobil="Mobil" corp="Corp" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.huffingtonpost.com="www.huffingtonpost.com" entry="entry" tillerson-exxon-knew_us_5876606ee4b092a6cae45010="tillerson-exxon-knew_us_5876606ee4b092a6cae45010" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">Exxon Mobil Corp.</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/shell-climate-change-film-1991_us_58b5e9ade4b0a8a9b786d428" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" royal="Royal" dutch="Dutch" shell="Shell" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.huffingtonpost.com="www.huffingtonpost.com" entry="entry" shell-climate-change-film-1991_us_58b5e9ade4b0a8a9b786d428="shell-climate-change-film-1991_us_58b5e9ade4b0a8a9b786d428" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">Royal Dutch Shell</a>&nbsp;aren’t the only corporations that understood what was happening to the climate decades ago and covered that knowledge up.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Utility companies recognized that emissions from burning fossil fuels warmed the planet as far back as 1968, according to a report released Tuesday.</b></font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That year, a top science adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson warned utility executives gathered at an industry conference that the federal government feared the projected increase in carbon dioxide emissions over the coming decades could wreak havoc on the environment.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Carbon dioxide is not toxic, but it is the chief heat-absorbing component of the atmosphere,” Donald F.&nbsp;Hornig said at the&nbsp;<b>1968 annual convention of the Edison Electric Institute</b>, according to the trade group’s newsletter from that year. “Such a change in the carbon dioxide level might, therefore, produce major consequences on the climate ― possibly even triggering catastrophic effects such as have occurred from time to time in the past.”</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new report, published by the watchdog Energy & Policy Institute, contains dozens of internal documents unearthed from the archives of utility industry associations that initially funded research into climate change, but later opposed efforts to stop it.&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The research paints a picture of how the utility sector transformed from financier to foe of climate science at a critical point when carbon emissions could have been addressed.&nbsp;</span></font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Less than two years ago,&nbsp;documents unearthed by&nbsp;<a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" insideclimate="InsideClimate" news="News" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" insideclimatenews.org="insideclimatenews.org" content="content" exxon-the-road-not-taken="Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">InsideClimate News</a>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;<a href="http://graphics.latimes.com/exxon-research/" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" los="Los" angeles="Angeles" times="Times" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" graphics.latimes.com="graphics.latimes.com" exxon-research="exxon-research" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">Los Angeles Times</a>&nbsp;similarly revealed that Exxon Mobil had understood climate change in the late 1970s. But by the late 1980s, the oil company deliberately covered up the evidence to protect its financial interests, funding a Big Tobacco-style disinformation campaign to discredit climate scientists with a network of research institutes pumping out pseudoscience. State attorneys general are&nbsp;<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/exxon-mobil-block-new-york-climate-investigation_us_580526a4e4b0dd54ce3472fb" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" now="now" investigating="investigating" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.huffingtonpost.com="www.huffingtonpost.com" entry="entry" exxon-mobil-block-new-york-climate-investigation_us_580526a4e4b0dd54ce3472fb="exxon-mobil-block-new-york-climate-investigation_us_580526a4e4b0dd54ce3472fb" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">now investigating</a>&nbsp;Exxon Mobil for allegedly fraudulently misleading its investors about the risks posed by climate change.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokesman for Exxon Mobil insisted in an email to HuffPost that the reporting on the company’s climate record “is not credible” and an “easily discredited talking point.”</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Earlier this year, Shell was dragged into the controversy when an internal corporate film from 1991 was surfaced by the Dutch news outlet&nbsp;<a href="https://thecorrespondent.com/6286/if-shell-knew-climate-change-was-dire-25-years-ago-why-still-business-as-usual-today/692773774-4d15b476" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" the="The" correspondent="Correspondent" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" thecorrespondent.com="thecorrespondent.com" if-shell-knew-climate-change-was-dire-25-years-ago-why-still-business-as-usual-today="if-shell-knew-climate-change-was-dire-25-years-ago-why-still-business-as-usual-today" d15b476="d15b476" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">The Correspondent</a>. It demonstrated Shell’s long-ago grasp of the science behind climate change.&nbsp;</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Utilities followed a similar arc</b>.<b> By the 1970s and ’80s, the Edison Electric Institute and the industry-backed Electric Power Research Institute </b>had sponsored cutting-edge climate research looking at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3552745-EPRI-One-Pager-From-1977.html" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" surge="surge" of="of" carbon="carbon" dioxide="dioxide" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.documentcloud.org="www.documentcloud.org" documents="documents" epri-one-pager-from-1977.html="EPRI-One-Pager-From-1977.html" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">surge of carbon dioxide</a>&nbsp;in the atmosphere, the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3540305-EEI-Bulletin-1971.html#document/p14/a360144" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" rise="rise" in="in" global="global" temperatures="temperatures" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.documentcloud.org="www.documentcloud.org" documents="documents" eei-bulletin-1971.html="EEI-Bulletin-1971.html" document="document" p14="p14" a360144="a360144" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">rise in global temperatures</a>&nbsp;and the risk that&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3883509-EPRI-1978-Journal-No-6.html#document/p25/a362830" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" melting="melting" polar="polar" ice="ice" caps="caps" would="would" flood="flood" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.documentcloud.org="www.documentcloud.org" documents="documents" epri-1978-journal-no-6.html="EPRI-1978-Journal-No-6.html" document="document" p25="p25" a362830="a362830" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">melting polar ice caps would flood</a>&nbsp;coastal cities. In 1988, the two organizations co-sponsored research into “the potential effects of climate change on electric utilities.” In a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3540318-EPRI-1988-Journal-No-3.html#document/p43/a360254" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" report="report" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.documentcloud.org="www.documentcloud.org" documents="documents" epri-1988-journal-no-3.html="EPRI-1988-Journal-No-3.html" document="document" p43="p43" a360254="a360254" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">report</a>&nbsp;released that April, the&nbsp;<b>Electric Power Research Institute concluded that “climate changes possible over the next 30 years may significantly affect the electric utility industry.”</b></font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There are “striking parallels” between the recent investigations of the oil industry and the utility companies,&nbsp;Dave Anderson, a researcher at the Energy & Policy Institute who uncovered the documents, told HuffPost. “We can now show utilities knew about climate change as far back as the oil industry did.”</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But in 1989, the industry’s response to the emerging science took a turn. That year, investor-owned utilities backed the formation of the&nbsp;<b>Global Climate Coalition</b>, a lobbying group that sought to torpedo any governmental action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The coalition&nbsp;<b>disbanded in 2001 after successfully pressuring President George W. Bush to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol,&nbsp;</b>the United Nations-brokered deal to reduce planet-warming emissions in rich countries.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The evidence suggests they were very much involved in the deliberate deception [about the dangers of carbon emissions] going on at that time,” said Anderson, who previously worked on the Greenpeace-led Exxon Knew campaign. “Scientists had been warning for years that they could be a problem, and by the late 1980s, it was pretty clear there was an emerging consensus among scientists.”</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anderson noted that the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.eei.org/issuesandpolicy/environment/climate/Pages/default.aspx" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" edison="Edison" electric="Electric" institute="Institute" s="s" website="website" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.eei.org="www.eei.org" issuesandpolicy="issuesandpolicy" environment="environment" climate="climate" pages="Pages" default.aspx="default.aspx" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">Edison Electric Institute’s website</a>&nbsp;traces the industry’s involvement in climate change issues back only 30 years, to 1987, and that&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">details of the institute’s current work on the issue are locked in a password-protected “Climate Workshop.”</span></font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">In a short statement,&nbsp;Edison Electric Institute said the industry has slashed its carbon footprint.&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The electric power industry has reduced carbon emissions by 25 percent below 2005 levels as of the end of 2016,”&nbsp;Jeffrey Ostermayer, an EEI spokesperson, told HuffPost in an email.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Electric Power Research Institute did not respond to a request for comment.&nbsp;</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Industry efforts to undermine regulations on carbon emissions had real impact.&nbsp;In 2015, utility sector emissions were higher than in 1989, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl=T12.06#/?f=A&start=1989&end=2016&charted=0-1-6" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/index.php?tbl%3DT12.06%23/?f%3DA%26start%3D1989%26end%3D2016%26charted%3D0-1-6&source=gmail&ust=1501024157120000&usg=AFQjCNERkFqfynDre5ITs2o8LRUuRxbZ4w" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" data="data" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" https="https" www.eia.gov="www.eia.gov" totalenergy="totalenergy" browser="browser" index.php="index.php" tbl="T12.06#/?f=A&start=1989&end=2016&charted=0-1-6" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">data</a>. Totals fell slightly in 2016, although they are likely to increase again as coal use ticks up in response to rising natural gas prices.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To be sure, utilities have made strides in recent years by building up their renewable energy infrastructure and converting smog-spewing coal plants to natural gas, which burns cleaner. But corporations like&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Atlanta-based Southern Company, a $49 billion giant with more than 9 million customers, continue to publicly deny the basic science behind climate change.</span></font></span></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">Asked on CNBC</span><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;in March if carbon dioxide is the primary cause of climate change, Southern Company CEO Tom Fanning said, “<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/28/like-the-new-epa-chief-southern-companys-ceo-doesnt-see-co2-as-main-reason-for-climate-change.html" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" no="No" certainly="certainly" not="not" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.cnbc.com="www.cnbc.com" like-the-new-epa-chief-southern-companys-ceo-doesnt-see-co2-as-main-reason-for-climate-change.html="like-the-new-epa-chief-southern-companys-ceo-doesnt-see-co2-as-main-reason-for-climate-change.html" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">No, certainly not</a>.”</span></font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">“Is climate change happening? Certainly. It’s been happening for millennia,” Fanning said, promoting a&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/charles-koch-climate_us_59514436e4b05c37bb7847ef" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" commonly="commonly" used="used" albeit="albeit" widely="widely" debunked="debunked" argument="argument" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.huffingtonpost.com="www.huffingtonpost.com" entry="entry" charles-koch-climate_us_59514436e4b05c37bb7847ef="charles-koch-climate_us_59514436e4b05c37bb7847ef" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;"><span class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit;">commonly used, albeit widely debunked, argument</span></a><span style="box-sizing: inherit;">&nbsp;by climate science deniers that the warming seen in the last few decades is a mostly natural occurrence.</span></font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a brief phone interview, a Southern Company spokesman said: “We’re meeting or exceeding all regulations in terms of climate.”</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Southern Company is committed to a leadership role in finding solutions that make technological, environmental and economic sense,” he added in an email. “The focus of this effort must be on developing and deploying technologies that reduce [greenhouse gases]&nbsp;while making sure that energy remains reliable and affordable.”</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The utility has&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/fight-misinformation/whos-fighting-clean-power-plan-and-epa-action-climate#.WXdGydPyu9Y" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" urged="urged" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.ucsusa.org="www.ucsusa.org" global-warming="global-warming" fight-misinformation="fight-misinformation" whos-fighting-clean-power-plan-and-epa-action-climate="whos-fighting-clean-power-plan-and-epa-action-climate" wxdgydpyu9y="WXdGydPyu9Y" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">urged</a>&nbsp;the Trump administration to reverse&nbsp;<a href="http://www.myajc.com/news/national-govt--politics/southern-company-lobbying-powerhouse-fights-new-carbon-rules/asjXSzcKsnYDRSuoFxmBJJ/" rel="nofollow" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" lnid="lnid" power="power" plant="plant" rules="rules" mpid="mpid" plid="plid" http="http" www.myajc.com="www.myajc.com" news="news" national-govt--politics="national-govt--politics" southern-company-lobbying-powerhouse-fights-new-carbon-rules="southern-company-lobbying-powerhouse-fights-new-carbon-rules" asjxszcksnydrsuofxmbjj="asjXSzcKsnYDRSuoFxmBJJ" data-beacon-parsed="true" class="bn-clickable" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(13, 190, 152) 0px -2px 0px inset;">power plant rules</a>&nbsp;enacted by President Barack Obama to cut back emissions. It funds groups like the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, which argues that the benefits of carbon dioxide outweigh the environmental costs.</font></p></div><div class="content-list-component bn-content-list-text text" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" citation="citation" data-beacon-parsed="true" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; width: 705px; max-width: 720px; min-width: initial;"><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.75rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Southern Company would seem to be the individual company that’s the most Exxon-like,”</span>Anderson said. “The move Trump is making is very much in line with what lobbyists at that company have been doing in recent years.”</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ENERGY AND POLICY INSTITUTE&nbsp;</font></span></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref rep intro:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Introduction</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In this report, the Energy and Policy Institute presents the findings of its investigation into</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">what electric utilities knew about climate change in the years before the issue emerged firmly</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">onto the public stage in 1988,</span> along with information about the industry’s role since then in</div><div>
</div><div>ongoing efforts to spread disinformation about climate science and block legal limits on heat-</div><div>trapping carbon dioxide emissions.</div><div>
</div><div><b>It is a story with striking parallels to the ongoing investigations into what ExxonMobil</b> and</div><div>the oil industry knew decades ago, long before they joined with electric utilities, automakers,</div><div>and manufacturers to sow doubt about the causes and risks of climate change. It is also a</div><div>story that is analogous to the investigations into the tobacco industry’s early knowledge</div><div>about the health risks of smoking, and its deliberate decision to mislead the American people</div><div>about those risks.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Long forgotten and overlooked documents reviewed for this report reveal that by 1968,</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">scientists had begun to directly warn the electric utility industry about the possibly</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">catastrophic effects that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels could one day</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">have on the Earth and its climate.</span> Scientific understanding of climate change then was</div><div>limited compared to what we know today, but by 1971 electric utilities knew enough to</div><div>include a modest budget for research into the climatological “effects of CO2” and other</div><div>power plant emissions in the industry’s long-term national research and development goals</div><div>for through the year 2000.</div><div>
</div><div>The documents also show that electric utilities, through the largely customer-funded Edison</div><div>Electric Institute (EEI) and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), sponsored cutting-edge</div><div>climate research during the 1970s and early 1980s. For example, starting in 1982, EPRI</div><div>sponsored research by influential scientist Charles Keeling and the Scripps Institution of</div><div>Oceanography that documented “virtually all that we knew at the time from measurements</div><div>of atmospheric CO2.”</div><div>The work of EEI, the trade association of investor-owned utilities, and EPRI, the utilities’</div><div>research and development organization, during the 1970s and early 1980s carried early</div><div>
</div><div>warnings about the possible future rise in atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperatures. It</div><div>echoed early scientific predictions about future climate change impacts, including the</div><div>eventual melting of sea ice and coastal flooding. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1977, a senior EPRI official warned</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Congress about the possible need to one day curtail the use of fossil fuels in order limit CO2</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">emissions. </span>Utility-sponsored research confirmed that a global effort could be required to</div><div>address the problem. Some experts cautioned the industry that waiting too long to act risked</div><div>locking in harmful levels of climate change.</div><div>
</div><div>During the same time period, electric utilities pushed coal - the largest emitter of CO2 among</div><div>fossil fuels - as a solution to the energy crisis, and made significant long-term investments in</div><div>new coal-fired power generation. One EPRI official expressed uncertainty about the</div><div>environmental and health impacts associated with increased use of coal. American Electric</div><div>Power paid for a 1976 ad in The New York Times that claimed, “We must expand our use of</div><div>coal.”</div><div>
</div><div>“The problems generally associated with the mining and burning of coal have been solved,”</div><div>the 1976 AEP ad said. “Except - the destructive, regressive actions of a small minority... the</div><div>fanatical environmentalists.”</div><div>
</div><div>In 1988, EPRI acknowledged that “There is growing consensus in the scientific community</div><div>that the greenhouse effect is real.” After 1988, when the issue of climate change emerged</div><div>firmly onto the public stage, internal documents show that the electric utility industry</div><div>coordinated with fossil fuel interests on early disinformation campaigns that targeted climate</div><div>science. For example, the Edison Electric Institute and Southern Company spearheaded the</div><div>1991 Information Council on the Environment ad campaign, which aimed to “reposition</div><div>global warming as theory (not fact).”</div><div>
</div><div>Largely as a result of the electric utility industry’s years of over-reliance on fossil fuels and</div><div>opposition to legal limits on CO2 emissions from power plants, annual CO2 emissions from</div><div>the electricity sector in the U.S. did not peak until around 2007. As of 2016, the electricity</div><div>sector’s annual CO2 emissions remained higher than they were in 1989. Documents show</div><div>that in 1989, electric utilities joined forces with other industrial interests to launch the Global</div><div>Climate Coalition, which would wage war on climate science until 2002.</div><div>
</div><div>6</div><div>
</div><div>Nearly 50 years has passed since a science advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson warned of</div><div>the possible climate risks of burning fossil fuels at EEI’s 1968 Annual Convention. Some</div><div>electric utilities, such as Southern Company, still continue to fight against legal limits on CO2</div><div>emissions from power plants. Many continue to fund special interest groups that attack</div><div>climate science, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where one senior official recently</div><div>claimed that climate concerns are based on “religion” and not “scientific facts.” In 2017, major</div><div>electric utilities - including AES Corp., Dominion Energy, DTE Energy, Duke Energy, PPL,</div><div>and Southern Company - also resisted growing calls from investors to develop plans to align</div><div>their business models with the global Paris agreement goal of limiting global warming to 2°C</div><div>or less.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Research has shown that electric utilities could face serious financial repercussions if ever</b></div><div><b>held liable for the climate change damages incurred by their power plant emissions.</b> The New</div><div>York State Office of the Attorney General has reached settlements with three major electric</div><div>utilities and coal producer Peabody Energy after investigations into whether these companies</div><div>adequately disclosed financial risks related to climate change to investors. It is also</div><div>investigating ExxonMobil on similar grounds. A former Department of Justice attorney who</div><div>prosecuted tobacco companies believes that fossil fuel interests should also be investigated</div><div>based on evidence that they similarly misled the public about climate change.</div><div>The evidence compiled by the Energy and Policy Institute shows that the electric utility</div><div>industry knew about the possible climate change risks of burning fossil fuels as far back as</div><div>1968, and likely earlier. But today EEI’s website only traces the industry’s involvement in the</div><div>issue back 30 years to 1987, and details about its current work on climate change are locked</div><div>away in a password protected “Climate Workroom.” In 2014, EPRI claimed that it “has been</div><div>involved in global climate change-related research for more than 20 years” in comments</div><div>delivered to the Environmental Protection Agency.</div><div>
</div><div>This report documents the nearly 50-year long history of electric utilities and climate change.</div><div>It’s a history that the electric utility industry apparently believed and perhaps wished to be</div><div>long forgotten, but is now resurrected.</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.ecowatch.com/rooftop-solar-2457456703.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div class="headline-container" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="headline h1" style="margin: 10px; padding: 0px; position: relative; line-height: 31px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Utilities Are Trying to Slow Down Rooftop Solar</font></h1></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="js-scroll-trigger" data-target="body" data-triggers="render-rebelbar" data-toggle-class="with-floating-shares" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></span></font><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="article-body body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-url="https://www.ecowatch.com/rooftop-solar-2457456703.html" data-headline="How Utilities Are Trying to Slow Down Rooftop Solar" data-elid="2457456703" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px;"><div class="article-description body-description" style="margin-bottom: 10px;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By David Pomerantz</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The New York Times&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/08/climate/rooftop-solar-panels-tax-credits-utility-companies-lobbying.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">reported</a>&nbsp;earlier this month about how utilities around the country, and their trade group the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), have worked to weaken rooftop&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/solar" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">solar</a>&nbsp;policies in an attempt to stave off the threat to their business model.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The article featured some of&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.energyandpolicy.org/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Energy and Policy Institute's</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;reporting, including&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.utilitysecrets.org/brian-mccormack-doe-rooftop-solar/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">our&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">expose</span></a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;of Brian McCormack, former EEI executive and current Chief of Staff to Energy Secretary&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/rick-perry" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Rick Perry</a>, for his role in attacking rooftop solar while at EEI, as well as our uncovering of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.utilitysecrets.org/edison-electric-institute-state-policy-network-attack-rooftop-solar/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Florida utilities' deceptive</a>&nbsp;anti-solar ballot initiative in that state last year.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><span style="text-align: center;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some important aspects of the story of utilities' efforts did not make it into the Times coverage though:</font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Upset About EEI? There's a Good Chance You're Funding Them</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Times exposed the central role played by the Edison Electric Institute in driving the utility industry's anti-rooftop solar strategy:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At a January 2016 board meeting of the Edison institute, attended by chief executives of the country's largest utilities, Thomas R. Kuhn, the group's president, counseled against complacency.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Years, ago, I think a lot of people said, 'That's not going to come to our area,'" he said, according to a recording of his remarks made available by a participant. "And now we see it in each and every state," he said.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"EEI is happy to come to any state at any time," he added. "We have two dozen states we are working on."</b></font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>If you're angry about EEI, here's some bad news for you: there's a high chance that you're paying the salaries of the trade association's executives.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Our report&nbsp;<a href="http://www.energyandpolicy.org/utility-ratepayers-fund-the-edison-electric-institute/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;"><em>Paying for Politics</em></a>&nbsp;detailed how the nation's investor-owned electric utility customers are subsidizing EEI via their bills every month. Investor-owned utilities embed their EEI membership dues into rates, forcing their customers to pay for a policy agenda constructed primarily for the benefit of utilities' shareholders, not their customers. Since most customers have no choice about their utility, there's not much they can do about it.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite Efforts, Utilities Cannot Stop Distributed Solar Energy</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And here's some better news: The Times story focused on<b>&nbsp;Indiana, where utilities scored a victory when they lobbied to pass a law that would unravel net metering</b>, the policy that dictates how much a utility must pay solar owners for the excess electricity they sell back to the grid. But another state reveals how the utilities' strategy can, and often will, backfire.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In Nevada, utility&nbsp;<a href="http://www.utilitydive.com/news/lessons-from-nevadas-rooftop-solar-victory-consumer-demand-and-collaborat/446518/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">NV Energy succeeded in 2015</a>&nbsp;at lobbying regulators to reduce net metering payments. The industry perceived it as a victory that other utilities could learn from—in January 2017, EEI and NV Energy announced that&nbsp;<b>Tony Sanchez, an NV Energy senior vice-president who helped lead the utility's efforts in the net metering debates, was taking on a "<a href="http://www.eei.org/resourcesandmedia/newsroom/Pages/Press%20Releases/NV%20Energy%20and%20EEI%20Announce%20Key%20Industry%20Leadership%20Role%20for%20Tony%20Sanchez.aspx" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">key loaned executive</a>" role with EEI.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But while the utility industry celebrated what they thought was a big win for NV Energy,&nbsp;<b>Nevadans became furious at the lost solar jobs and the utility's influence at slowing down the growth of a technology that people from across the political spectrum love. The utility's victory was short-lived.</b>&nbsp;In June 2017, the legislature unanimously passed, and Republican&nbsp;<a href="https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/jun/15/dark-years-solar-sandoval-signs-bill-nevada-indust/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Gov. Brian Sandoval signed</a>, a bill to restore the old net metering rates.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Not only that, but last November, the state's voters passed by a large margin a ballot initiative to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.rgj.com/story/news/politics/2016/11/09/energy-choice-initiative-passes-nevada/93528566/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">break up NV Energy's monopoly entirely</a></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">—political observers in the state perceive the amendment's success in part as a referendum on NV Energy's unpopularity in the wake of the company's attacks on solar.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Nevada story should serve as a warning for utilities: In places where they try to attack popular pro-solar policies, a popular backlash risks weakening their political capital with regulators and legislators.</font></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the long run, utilities have even bigger problems than their political fortunes. Even where they win short-term victories on policies like net metering, the combination of rooftop solar panels plus batteries, which are getting cheaper faster than anyone expected, will enable more and more customers to buy less and less electricity from their utilities.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;<a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/7/7/15927250/utilities-rooftop-solar-batteries" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Dave Roberts of Vox</a>&nbsp;recently authored a piece on the topic aptly headlined:&nbsp;<em>Utilities fighting against rooftop solar are only hastening their own doom.</em></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Roberts writes, quoting a recent McKinsey study:</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px 10px 20px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"In a low-cost storage environment," McKinsey writes, the rate structures utilities are monkeying around with "are unlikely to be effective at mitigating load losses." In other words, customers are still going to keep generating more of their own power.
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 10px 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Times piece was important to expose how utilities are coming after solar. But it's worth remembering that in the long run, they won't stop distributed&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy/" style="text-decoration-line: none; word-wrap: break-word;">renewable energy</a>, and will be better served learning to co-exist with it than to keep fighting it.</font></p></div></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=
<em> guest post by Matt Kasper crossposted from&nbsp;<a href="http://www.energyandpolicy.org/edison-electric-institute-we-stand-for-energy/" target="blank">Energy and Policy&nbsp;Institute</a>.</em>

</font><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The nation’s largest electric utilities have been relying on a

political consulting shop to portray their efforts to attack rooftop

solar as having support from the “grassroots” for at least the

past&nbsp;year.</font>

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The consulting group, <span class="caps">DDC</span> Consulting, has

carved out a niche for itself at conjuring up “astroturf” — or faked

grassroots efforts. Indeed, the firm’s website says that it specializes

in designing, managing, and executing advocacy campaigns that “shape

public opinion, sway decision-makers, and affect outcomes in the

legislature, the press, the board room, and the public eye.”&nbsp;<span class="caps">DDC</span> was just exposed as the <span class="caps">PR</span> firm behind an effort to portray imagined support for natural gas pipelines, this time funded by the American Gas&nbsp;Association.</font></p>

<div class="views-field views-field-disqus-comment-count"> <font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="field-content"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/20/pr-firm-ddc-american-gas-association-front-group-member-consultant-edison-electric-institute#disqus_thread" data-disqus-identifier="node/11874">2 Comments</a></span> </font></div>

<div class="views-field views-field-view-node"> <font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="field-content"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/06/20/pr-firm-ddc-american-gas-association-front-group-member-consultant-edison-electric-institute">Read more</a></span> </font></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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