Hill Heat

Speaking at a right-wing conference, Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) denounced the “radical environmentalists” and “social engineers” who oppose the “individual job creators” who run fossil-fuel companies. Promising the Keystone XL pipeline will get built, Gardner went on to describe his allegiance to the fracking “shale revolution”: “We will rise up, and we will win!”

Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), now challenging Democrat Mark Udall’s U.S. Senate seat, has run a campaign as a “likeable” moderate.

Dick and Liz Cheney were the featured stars at the Steamboat Institute Freedom Conference, which took place in Steamboat Springs, Colo., on August 23, 2013. Gardner was the first speaker at the conference.

Gardner’s remarks about the “power” of fossil-fuel executives who “realize what is at stake in this country” alludes to the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers and other campaign contributors.

Gardner is a “long-time friend” of Americans for Prosperity Colorado head Jeff Crank, and is known to have appeared at the Koch’s 2014 summit in California. AFP and the Koch super PAC Freedom Partners have spent over $3 million supporting Gardner’s candidacy, primarily by attacking Udall. Koch Industries is Gardner’s top campaign contributor this cycle. Gardner, who joined Congress in 2011, has raked in $772,000 in campaign contributions from the oil & gas industry.

TRANSCRIPT:

U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst denied coordinating with outside groups who are involved in the race, despite her participation in a secret summit organized by the Koch brothers in June. Speaking at a Des Moines, Iowa, event on October 23, Ernst claimed she doesn’t have any contact with outside groups that are running negative ads.

“I can’t control the outside groups, with the independent expenditures,” Ernst said. “You know, I don’t have contact with them.”

However, at June Koch summit in Dana Point, Calif., Ernst thanked the Koch network, which is now spending millions of dollars in attack ads and get-out-the-vote efforts on her behalf, for discovering her and powering her candidacy.

“A little-known state senator from a very rural part of Iowa, known through my National Guard service and some circles in Iowa. But the exposure to this group and to this network and the opportunity to meet so many of you, that really started my trajectory,” Ernst was recorded saying. “We are going to paint some very clear differences in this general election,” she said. “And this is the thing that we are going to take back—that it started right here with all of your folks, this wonderful network.”

As of October 27, the Koch super PAC Freedom Partners Fund has spent over $3,158,815 for Ernst, and the Koch 501c4 Americans for Prosperity has spent $250,954, according to FEC records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ernst’s remarks in Des Moines were recorded by the Young Turks Undercurrent’s Lauren Windsor, who said Ernst was caught in a “big fat Koch lie.” Windsor had earlier released the audio recording of Ernst and other GOP Senate candidates speaking at the Koch retreat.

(Windsor is not associated with The Undercurrent, a right-wing libertarian campus magazine that promotes the Koch network.)

Students across the country have launched a new effort to protest the influence of the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers on their campuses. As part of their effort to influence the American political system, Charles and David Koch have flooded hundreds of universities with contributions intended to promote their economic agenda. Although the contributions go back for decades, the spigot has been opened wide in recent years; from only seven universities recorded to have Koch contributions in 2005 to over 250 by 2012. According to UnKochMyCampus, the new grassroots effort to oppose Koch influence on higher education, 390 different colleges and universities have received Koch money.

The UnKochMyCampus effort was launched by three young activists: Kalin Jordan, a graduate of Suffolk University, where the Koch-funded Beacon Hill Institute is housed; Lindsey Berger, a Missouri State University graduate and campus organizer, and Connor Gibson, a University of Vermont graduate and Greenpeace researcher. Jordan founded the Koch Free Zone campaign at Suffolk in 2013 to end the Koch influence over the Beacon Hill Institute, one of a nationwide network of right-wing think tanks. The UnKochMyCampus site has a organizer’s guide to help students launch campaigns on their own campuses, including background research on the Koch brothers.

There are now at least four campuses that have active student efforts opposing Koch influence:

• Suffolk University in Boston, Mass.: KochFreeZone.org
• Florida State University, Tallahassee, Fla.: Progress Coalition
• University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kans.: Students for a Sustainable Future
• George Mason Unversity, Fairfax, Va.: Transparent GMU

All four universities have clear evidence of Koch influence over the educational system; George Mason houses the Mercatus Center, the Koch-powered deregulatory think tank. Florida State is the center of a scandal over a $1.5 million pledge from the Kochs that gave them control over hiring and curricula at the school. In 2001, the Kochs founded the University of Kansas Center for Applied Economics, modeled after the Mercatus Center, with a Koch lobbyist as its head.

There are also online efforts opposing Koch influence at the University of Arizona, Catholic University of America, and California State University at Northridge.

In September 2014, Gibson and Berger published an extended Greenpeace report entitled “Koch on Campus: Polluting Higher Education,” that detailed the $49.5 million known to have flown from Koch foundations to over 250 campuses, based on IRS filings.

This money is in addition to the $185 million David Koch has given directly to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and $20 million to Johns Hopkins University, primarily for cancer research. Although those seem like substantial sums, those amounts are dwarfed by the billions of dollars in cuts in public funding for cancer research that have come as a result of Koch political advocacy.

In addition to the website, UnKoch My Campus has a Twitter account.

One year ago, more than fifty Bostonians (and Elmo) presented the WGBH board with 50,000 signatures demanding the removal of David Koch as a trustee. One year later, despite an ever-louder chorus of voices demanding Koch’s removal, he remains on the board. So we’ll be returning this year, stronger than ever. We’ll rally outside the WGBH building and present the WGBH board with 400,000 signatures demanding Koch’s removal.

RSVP

3:00pm – 4:00pm ET: Listen to music, speakers, hold signs and engage in fun chants.

4:00 pm: Attend the public portion of the WGBH board meeting with Koch-Free WGBH t-shirts (will be supplied by us, if you don’t have one already).

WGBH’s offices at One Guest Street, Boston (accessible by the 86 and 64 MBTA bus lines)

According to the New York Post, the Public Broadcasting Service has suspended advertising in Harper’s Magazine after the journal published a story critical of David Koch’s relationship to public television. The billionaire carbon financier and Tea Party funder is on the board of Boston’s PBS flagship station WGBH, and until a recent New Yorker exposé served on the board of New York City’s WNET. Koch is also on the board overseeing WGBH’s science program Nova.

The Harper’s story, by journalist Eugenia Williamson, detailed the campaign by climate advocacy group Forecast the Facts to get WGBH to drop Koch (including a profile of the protest and petition delivery I led at WGBH’s board meeting last November). Williamson was critical of Koch’s potential influence over the public television station.

The Post reports:

In the past, Harper’s teamed up with PBS to sponsor a kickoff event timed to Ken Burns award-winning World War II documentary.

While there was an ad for the latest Burns saga “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” PBS has pulled ads from the November and December issues. The ads were supposed to hype the box set CD editions of the documentary.

“I have to say I am shocked,” John “Rick” MacArthur, the president and publisher of Harper’s, told Post media reporter Keith J. Kelly. “You’d think PBS would be above that kind of tit-for-tat mentality.”

“PBS has lost its moral compass,” wrote Forecast the Facts campaign manager Emily Southard in a press release. “Instead of punishing its critics, PBS should pull itself away from the influence of David Koch and others who work to misinform Americans about climate change.”

PBS earlier released a page of talking points which claimed the Harper’s piece was “filled with many basic errors,” but did not name any.

The political organizations founded and run by the Koch brothers — particularly the Cato Institute and Americans for Prosperity — are committed against public funding for the arts, including public television. Their advocacy over the past thirty years has successfully decimated federal and local support for public television. Through these organizations, Koch supports the miseducation of the public, including children, on the existential threat of climate change. Koch Industries is one of the nation’s largest and most toxic polluters, and Koch works to prevent government efforts to protect the public from that pollution.

WGBH is providing David Koch not only a tax write-off but also social legitimacy, despite his being one of their greatest enemies.

Activists with Forecast the Facts and the Better Future Project will be protesting again in Boston and delivering a 400,000-signature petition at WGBH’s upcoming board meeting on Wednesday, October 1.

Taking part in the largest climate march in history, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that Wall Street bankers will only act on climate change if people organize to make them do so. He also expressed succinctly the climate-policy challenge: “We have to stop CO2 from hurtling into the atmosphere.”

During the PeoplesClimate.tv livestream of the People’s Climate March, Hill Heat’s Brad Johnson caught up with Schumer as he chatted with billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer. The senator said that action from pension funds is needed to get Wall Street to stop financing fossil fuels, because the bankers will not lead.

“The leadership has to come from the people,” Schumer told me. “Pension funds could do a lot.”

Wall Street plays a tremendous role making New York one of the richest cities in the world. It drives the global economy, which is powered on fossil fuels. Even as Mayor DeBlasio is working to decarbonize the city’s energy supply, carbon financier David Koch is the richest man in the city. Meaningful global action on climate change, the type Schumer called for, will require Wall Street to fully divest from financing the fossil-fuel industry. Although pension-fund and other private action is helpful, what is truly needed is legislative action from Congress.

PeoplesClimate.tv is a project of Act.tv, the web video activism site.

Transcript:

“I think the First Amendment is a little more important than traffic.”

With those words, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio vigorously defended #FloodWallStreet, the Occupy-style climate civil disobedience action that took place Monday on Wall Street.

De Blasio’s remarks came in a press conference after he addressed the United Nations climate summit on Tuesday.

Asked if he thought “the protests are at all going too far,” de Blasio expressed his disagreement.

No, I can’t say they’re going too far. I think, first of all, the issue is one of tremendous urgency and whenever you have an urgent issue, people utilize civil disobedience. It’s not a new phenomenon. I thought, clearly, we had a situation where it was civil disobedience as it’s supposed to be, meaning it was peaceful, the police handled it beautifully, and those who really wanted to get arrested got arrested. That was their choice. They were given every opportunity to not get arrested, but they chose to. But I think these are the kind of issues that bring out incredibly strong passions and they should – this is about the survival of the earth.

“The right of people to make their voices heard, regardless of their views, is a fundamental American value,” de Blasio continued. “And we’ll protect that value. I think there’s going to be times, in this city – because we’re an international capital – where we’ll see protests that create inconvenience, but again, it’s part of our responsibility as the hosts of the United Nations to handle that appropriately.”

De Blasio was similarly forceful in his support for the People’s Climate March, in which he participated. “This is not the first time you’ve seen a scenario where the people are leading and the leaders have to get out of the way and follow the will of the people,” he said. “I think there’s been a bad stereotype in public debate that the policy-makers have to somehow pull the people along and the people were unwilling to make change. I actually think the people – years ago – recognized what a profound threat the earth faces and are very comfortable that we have to make change and are ready to do what it takes.”

Transcript:

A day after Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced his company had dropped the “liars” at the American Legislative Exchange Council, it appears social media juggernaut Facebook is next. The San Francisco Chronicle received an email from an unnamed representative announcing Facebook’s unhappiness with ALEC on “some key issues.”

We re-evaluate our memberships on an annual basis and are in that process now. While we have tried to work within ALEC to bring that organization closer to our view on some key issues, it seems unlikely that we will make sufficient progress so we are not likely to renew our membership in 2015.

The representative seems to have been referring a key incident at ALEC’s annual meeting in Dallas this July. Michael Terrell, Google’s senior policy counsel for energy and sustainability, made a presentation on behalf of then-members Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and eBay promoting clean energy development. The tech companies are major electricity consumers, because of their need for massive data farms, and have worked to power their installations with renewable energy. Chris Taylor, a state lawmaker attending the presentation, wrote that the lobbyists for Peabody Energy, Edison Electric, and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity in attendance were unswayed.

Google and Facebook are both participants in Greenpeace’s Cool IT effort to decarbonize the data farms. When I pressed the companies’ green energy executives at a Greenpeace event in November of last year as the manager of the #DontFundEvil campaign why they had ALEC membership, they were unable to provide an answer.

The experience of the tech giants is a replay of what happened when renewable trade associations were part of the fossil-driven lobby group in 2012. The American Wind Energy Association and Solar Energy Industries Association were outvoted in a series of decisions that led to ALEC pushing anti-renewable legislation. Chastened by the result, AWEA and SEIA left ALEC when their one-year membership came up for renewal.

It seems that none of these companies bothered to look who is on ALEC’s corporate board — lobbyists for fossil-fuel companies Koch Industries, Exxon Mobil, Peabody Energy, and Future Energy Holdings. One would think they could have Googled it.

The political arm of the Koch brothers’ petrochemical empire excoriated President Barack Obama’s address at the UN climate summit today, challenging the science of climate change and the economics of climate policy as “radical,” “ideological,” “destructive,” and “needless.” David Koch, one of the two brothers who run Koch Industries, is the richest man in New York City, with his home and offices a few blocks from the United Nations headquarters.

In an email to supporters, Tim Phillips, the president of the Koch political advocacy organization Americans for Prosperity, decried the president’s “radical international energy agenda for “what used to be called global warming, then climate change, then extreme weather, and now finally climate disruption.” (The idea that the left changes the name of global warming as a propagandistic fiction is a conservative meme.) Phillips then blamed the Republican filibuster of climate legislation on Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.):

The worst part is, President Obama knows that his energy agenda is harmful and will not help our country get back on the path to prosperity. In fact the President’s proposal is so unpopular and destructive, even Harry Reid’s Senate wouldn’t dream of passing it, which is why he has bypassed Congress and taken his short-sighted, destructive energy policies to an international body.

In an accompanying video entitled “Obama’s UN Speech Promises to Kill Jobs and Raise Energy Prices,” Phillips rejects the science of man-made climate change, and falsely claims that reductions in carbon pollution would be economically harmful and environmentally meaningless.

“If all the numbers, facts, and figures that the left claims are true, their own numbers say this will make really no difference in saving the planet. We think they’re wrong on the merits, but even if you accept their numbers, this will be nothing but a lose-lose situation for the American public.”

The email links to a letter campaign in opposition to “the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations calling for a 30 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030,” calling on U.S. Senators to “stop the EPA from forcing more burdensome regulations on our families.”

Text of supporter email:

The Climate Justice Alliance, together with our friends and allies, is hosting the People’s Climate Justice Summit, featuring the voices, strategies, and solutions of climate-affected communities around the world.

On September 23, political and corporate leaders will meet at the United Nations in New York City for Climate Summit 2014. This summit represents yet another step towards the corporate takeover of the UN climate negotiations and the privatization of land, water, and air resources under the guise of a global climate compact. The climate crisis is a symptom of a deeper problem: an economy based on extraction and exploitation of resources and people. This economy benefits a few at the expense of communities and the planet.

While heads of state meet at the UN, communities across the country are united for a just transition away from an economy based on fossil fuel extraction and other dirty industries, and towards clean community energy, zero waste, public transit, local food systems and housing for all.

Schedule:

Church Center for the United Nations, 777 1st Ave at E. 44th St

10:00 AM – 5:00 PM

PEOPLES TRIBUNAL

• Dr. Robert Bullard, Dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University
• Lisa Garcia, Friends of the Earth
• Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Sustainability
• Rex Varona, Global Coalition on Migration
• Rosa Guillen, World March of Women
• Julia Olson, Our Children’s Trust

Hear hard-hitting testimonies from affected peoples around the globe as we indict political leaders and corporate polluters for their failure to protect our health, communities and planet. We will hear from those living with the real and immediate impacts of climate change and people living on the frontlines of extractive industries that are contributing to climate change.

Opening

• Julia Beatty, Center for Social Inclusion

10:00 AM – 12:30 PM

Climate Change: Place-based Experiences, Impacts/Adaptation/Migration

• Laquan Thomas/Andres Felipe Hernandez, Ironbound Community Corporation (United States)
• Cynthia Moices, UPROSE (United States)
• Beryl Thurman, North Shore Waterfront Conservancy – Staten Island (United States)
• Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, Earth Guardians (United States)
• Mamadou Goita, Institute for Research and the Promotion of Alternatives in Development, (Mali)
• Antolin Huáscar Flores, Confederación Nacional Agraria (Peru)
• Representative, Black Urban Growers (United States)

1:00 PM – 2:30 PM

Corporate Root Causes to Climate Change

• Patricia Gualinga Montalvo, Kichwa leader, Sarayaku, Ecuadorian Amazon (Ecuador)
• Jihan Gearon, Black Mesa Water Coalition (United States)
• Kelsey Julian, Our Children’s Trust (United States)
• Katherine Eglund, NAACP Gulf Port Chapter (United States)
• Venancia Cruz Jimenez, Movimiento Indígena Santiago de Anaya (México)
• Alex Cardoso, Movement of Recyclers/Catadores – MNCR (Brazil)

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

The People Face the Tribunal- Statements and Decision by Judges

• Damaris Reyes, Good Old Lower East Side (United States)
• Miriam Miranda, Organizacion Fraternal Negra Hondurena – OFRANEH (Honduras)
• Stanley Sturgill, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (United States)
• Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Cree, Greenpeace (Canada)
• Mithika Mwende, Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, Kenya (Nigeria)

New School, Alvin Johnson / J.M. Kaplan Hall Auditorium, 66 West 12th St

9:00 AM – 11:30 AM

TOWARDS LIVING ECONOMIES 1: SYSTEMS ALTERNATIVES

Speakers:

• Casey Camp, Ponca Tribe (United States)
• Michael Leon Guerrero, Climate Justice Alliance Our Power Campaign (United States)
• Lidy Nacpil, Jubilee South Asia Pacific on Debt and Development (Philippines)
• Sandra Van Niekerk, Public Services International (South Africa)

Moderator:

Juliet Rousseau, Bizi, Alternatibas Process (France).

In the face of climate change, communities everywhere are experimenting with new and time-tested approaches to energy, waste, transit, and the provision of peoples’ needs that protect people and the planet. But to counter the systemic causes of the climate crisis and meet the scale of the problem, movement forces are also developing bold proposals for systemic alternatives. Join us for an exploration of new economic, organizing and worker-centered models that could help us all weather the storm as we build the next economy together.

12:30 PM – 2:30 PM

TOWARDS LIVING ECONOMIES 2: JUST TRANSITION STRATEGIES

Speakers:

• Al Weinrub, Local Clean Energy Alliance (United States)
• Monica Wilson, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (United States)
• Juan Camilo Osorio, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (United States),
• Beth Grimsberg (Brazil)
• Rosa Miranda, Bus Riders Union (United States)

Confronting the climate crisis effectively – and building a climate movement strong enough to do so – will require us to take on the social, economic, and political inequities that have allowed the dirty energy economy to persist. And we must address these issues with a particular lens focused on how these systems have led to communities of color and low-income communities bearing the brunt of climate impacts. While we fight against the old energy economy rooted in inequity, we must continue to build a better and stronger vision that can both can work for all of us and is led by communities most marginalized and impacted by climate change. This requires a just transition from the old to the new. A transition into a new economy rooted in the foundation of racial and social justice, invested in people and the planet, and on that is regenerative and life giving. To do so, we must begin to think intersectionally and build cross-sectoral alliances for making change.

From transit to energy, in this panel and conversation, participants will learn from people who are envisioning a just transition and building towards a more sustainable and just future.