Apparently the Koch brothers, the Heartland Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and their dirty energy cohorts
have reached the end of their patience with the movement toward green
and renewable energy sources in this country. Recognizing the economic
growth benefits
of renewable energy such as wind and solar technologies, not to mention
the health benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are
driving anthropogenic climate change, state after state passed
renewable energy standards with broad bipartisan support over the past
20 years. Now those renewable standards are falling at a record pace
killing jobs, the environment, and contributing to climate change.
The Koch brothers could not allow those efforts to
proceed any farther and over the past five years they have spent no
small amount of money tasking Americans for Prosperity and ALEC with repealing
renewable energy standards in states with Republican-dominated
legislatures. To complement their attack on renewable energy, the Kochs,
Heartland Institute, Americans for Prosperity, ALEC, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have declared war on President Obama’s Clean Power Plan proposal to reduce carbon emissions in coal-fired power plants.
It was exactly two months ago that Mitch McConnell sent a letter
to the National Governor’s Association warning the nation’s governors
that President Obama had no legal right to direct the Environmental
Protection Agency to set new rules on power plant emissions to combat
climate change because it is exactly what the Kochs told him to do.
McConnell told the governors that they had damn sure better “Think twice
before submitting a state implementation plan (to reduce carbon
emissions) because the administration is standing on shaky legal ground
and without your support, it (EPA) won’t be able to carry out such
political extremism. Refusing to go along at this time with such an
extreme proposed regulation would give Congress more time to fight back.
We’re devising strategies now to do just that.”
In guidelines to the EPA, the President gave
individual states the right to tailor their own implementation plans
based on their particular circumstances such as energy needs, the age of
the state’s power plants in question, and the cost considerations and
impact on their state’s economies. Without a state’s individualized
plan, the EPA designs a plan based on the best available information
according to individual state’s circumstances. Neither scenario
satisfies the Kochs’ vision of unrestricted carbon emissions regardless
the damage to the climate, environment, economy, or health of Americans
and they took immediate action against the President and the EPA.
The Koch-Republican plan included state’s suing the
EPA for interfering with state’s rights under “federalism,” and within
two months of the President’s announcement of “proposed rules” Alabama,
Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South
Dakota, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming filed a joint motion
to expedite their lawsuit challenging the EPA’s right to establish
emissions rules; rules not yet in place because they have yet to be
finalized according to individual states’ needs. In the interim, the
American Legislative Exchange Council quickly wrote a template
for Republican legislatures demanding that any state’s environmental
agency that dared defy the Kochs had to seek Republican approval before
submitting an implementation plan to the EPA.
The Heartland Institute has been instrumental
in assisting the Kochs by, among other things, using typical
fear-mongering and propaganda against the EPA such as publishing
comments from a North Dakota Republican claiming that “the proposed EPA
regulations will inevitably prove disastrous, and the federal government
should be responsible for the devastation they will cause to the
economy, especially to the poor who will suffer from higher prices or a
lack of power.” These are some of the same states the Kochs, Americans
for Prosperity, and ALEC are busy repealing renewable energy standards
that have relieved many states of the necessity for carbon-intensive
power plants driving climate change that another oil industry giant
revealed is nearing catastrophic proportions.
This week it was revealed that oil industry giant Shell admitted, and is planning on, a 4-degree C
short term rise in the Earth’s temperature it acknowledges eclipses the
climate-killing 2C threshold and will lead to a planet-wide catastrophe
of massive flooding, global famines, and desertification. Earth wide
famines and “desertification” are self-explanatory, but the “massive
flooding” is of sea water as sea levels will rise between 2.5 and 3.5
feet leading to widespread coastal flooding, animal and plant
extinctions, and near-decimation of global agriculture.
The internal document acknowledged a global
temperature rise of 4C is twice the level considered safe for the
planet’s ability to sustain human life and will rapidly increase to a 6C
rise in the medium to long term. The Arctic, and western and southern
Africa would experience warming up to 10C that Shell’s planning
document accepts as a condition of continued governmental resistance to
curb carbon emissions; this according to the International Energy Agency
(IEA) that Shell’s internal document drew conclusions from and used for
its long term business plan. Shell also used data provided by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to guide the multinational oil
giant’s “future business planning to account for planet-wide flooding,
famine and desertification.”
At
least Shell admitted that “We do not see governments taking steps now
that are consistent with 2 degrees C threshold scenario,” but like the
Koch brothers they intend to do nothing but add to the coming climate
catastrophe. Even though Shell is not taking the extraordinary steps of
waging war on the climate on two fronts of funding anti-regulatory
legislation in the states and funding efforts to repeal renewable energy
standards, they are no better than the Kochs because they are not
making any efforts to combat what they acknowledge is a coming climate
catastrophe. Where they are exactly like the Kochs is they reliably
contribute to Republicans who are in the trenches doing their dirty work
of killing off Americans and what is left of the Earth’s climate.
Bill Clinton
