Make Polluters Pay Press Conference
We invite you to attend a press conference on Wednesday, September 22 at 1pm ET at the U.S. House Triangle (House side of the Capitol’s East Front) to highlight the importance of holding major fossil fuel companies accountable for their massive past global pollution through the Polluters Pay Climate Fund.
Speakers include:- Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)
- Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)
- Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)
- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
Climate Action Now Rally
Join Congressional leaders for a bicameral rally calling for major climate investments in the Build Back Better Act!
Leaders in Congress know that now more than ever we need to cut emissions, lower costs for families, create millions of family sustaining jobs, and turbocharge our economy. That is why they are calling for the Build Back Better Act—a bold investment plan to tackle climate change, create jobs, and transform our economy.
The rally will be moderated by Tiernan Sittenfeld and feature Members including: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Tim Kaine, Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, Sen. Tina Smith, Sen. Martin Heinrich, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. Peter DeFazio (OR-04), Rep. Sean Casten (IL-06).
Congress knows it’s time to go big, be bold, and put people to work.
at the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Washington, DC 20016
White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council Virtual Public Meeting
The WHEJAC’s first meeting will be held on March 30, 2021.
Register for the March 30, 2021 Public Meeting
If you would like to submit your public comment in writing please complete the public comment form and email any additional materials to [email protected] with the subject line “WHEJAC March 2021 Meeting Public Comments.”
White House Names Environmental Justice Advisory Council Members, First Meeting Tomorrow
Today, the White House announced the members of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC). The advisory council will provide advice and recommendations to the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (soon to be Brenda Mallory) and the White House Environmental Justice Interagency Council on how to address current and historic environmental injustices.
The first meeting of the WHEJAC will be held virtually tomorrow, March 30, and will be open to the public.
The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) was established by President Biden’s executive order, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. Biden’s order also established the White House EJ Interagency Council as the successor to the Environmental Justice Interagency Working Group, which was established in 1994 by Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations.
- LaTricea Adams, founder, Black Millennials For Flint, Michigan
- Susana Almanza, founder, People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources, Texas
- Jade Begay, climate justice campaign director, NDN Collective, South Dakota
- Maria Belen-Power, associate executive director, GreenRoots, Massachusetts
- Dr. Robert Bullard, Texas
- Tom Cormons, executive director, Appalachian Voices, Virginia
- Andrea Delgado, goverment affairs director, United Farm Workers Foundation, founding board member, Green Latinos, Washington, D.C.
- Catherine Flowers, founder, Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, Alabama
- Jerome Foster II, founder, OneMillionOfUs, New York
- Kim Havey, director of sustainability, City of Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Angelo Logan, campaign director, Moving Forward Network, California
- Maria Lopez-Nunez, director of environmental justice and community development, Ironbound Community Corporation, New Jersey
- Harold Mitchell, founder, Regenesis, South Carolina
- Richard Moore, co-coordinator, Environmental Justice Health Alliance, New Mexico
- Dr. Rachel Morello-Frosch, environmental health scientist, Berkeley Public Health, California
- Juan Parras, founder, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, Texas
- Michele Roberts, co-coordinator, Environmental Justice Health Alliance, Washington, D.C.
- Ruth Santiago, environmental justice lawyer, trustee, EarthJustice, Puerto Rico
- Dr. Nicky Sheats, director, New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, New Jersey
- Peggy Shepard, co-founder, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, New York
- Carletta Tilousi, Havasupai Tribal Council, Arizona
- Vi Waghiyi, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, Alaska
- Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte, environmental justice scholar, University of Michigan, Michigan
- Dr. Beverly Wright, executive director, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, Louisiana
- Hli Xyooj, Director of Program Strategies, Hmong American Partnership, Minnesota
- Miya Yoshitani, executive director, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, California
The Environmental Protection Agency will fund and provide administrative support for the WHEJAC.
The council will advise on how to increase the government’s efforts to address current and historic environmental injustice through strengthening environmental justice monitoring and enforcement. The duties of the WHEJAC are to provide advice and recommendations on issues including, but not limited, to environmental justice in the following areas:- Climate change mitigation, resilience, and disaster management
- Toxics, pesticides, and pollution reduction in overburdened communities
- Equitable conservation and public lands use
- Tribal and Indigenous issues
- Clean energy transition
- Sustainable infrastructure, including clean water, transportation, and the built environment
- NEPA, enforcement and civil rights
- Increasing the federal government’s efforts to address current and historic environmental injustice
The WHEJAC will complement the ongoing work of the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, a federal advisory committee established in 1993 to provide advice and recommendations on EJ issues to the Administrator of the EPA.
For updates, subscribe to the EPA-EJ listserv.
Senate Democrats Release Agenda For "Net-Zero Emissions" Clean Economy By 2050
The Senate Democrats’ Select Committee on the Climate Crisis has released a 263-page report detailing a “clean economy” agenda with “bold climate solutions.” Entitled “The Case for Climate Action: Building a Clean Economy for the American People,” the report, which repeatedly emphasizes economic growth and job creation, was developed by the ten-member committee chaired by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
Legislation must now be developed to meet the overarching goals of the committee:
- Reduce U.S. emissions rapidly to help achieve 100 percent global net-zero emissions no later than 2050.
- Stimulate economic growth by increasing federal spending on climate action to at least 2 percent of GDP annually—and ensure that at least 40 percent of the benefits from these investments help communities of color and low-income, deindustrialized, and disadvantaged communities.
- Create at least 10 million new jobs.
The report, while largely in the spirit of the Green New Deal platform – in particular in the listing of recommendations from environmental justice leaders – avoids any mention of that phrase. Several of the photographs in the report are of rallies and marches of Green New Deal advocates.
Unlike most Green New Deal advocates, the report makes space for “safer nuclear power” and “fossil generation paired with carbon capture and storage.” “Carbon capture and removal technologies are an essential supplement to decarbonization,” the report argues in an extended section.
An entire chapter of the report is dedicated to “Dark Money” – specifically, the “undue influence from the leaders of giant fossil fuel corporations” who “used weak American laws and regulations governing election spending, lobbying, and giving to advocacy groups to mount a massive covert operation” to “spread disinformation about climate change and obstruct climate action.”In order to advance bold climate legislation, we must expose the covert influence of wealthy fossil fuel executives, trade associations, and front groups that have done everything possible to obstruct climate action.
The report credits the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision with allowing “fossil fuel political power to effectively capture Republican elected officials nationwide.”
In addition to ten hearings, the committee held twelve in-depth hearings with advocates, four of which were exclusively with corporate executives (utilities, health care, insurance, and banks). Two meetings were held with international representatives (a United Nations representative and European central bankers). Two meetings were with union officials (one included environmentalists); two were with environmental justice activists and mainstream environmentalists; one was with youth climate activists. The last meeting was with surfers and surfing industry representatives.
Notably, the committee did not meet with any climate scientists in academia.
In addition to Schatz, the other members of the committee are U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), and Tina Smith (D-Minn.).
Hearings:
A Blueprint for Success: U.S. Climate Action at the Local Level (July 2019)
- Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Atlanta, GA
- Mayor Kirk Caldwell, Honolulu, HI
- Mayor Melvin Carter, Saint Paul, MN
- Mayor William Peduto, Pittsburgh, PA
- Mayor Ted Wheeler, Portland, OR
- Dr. Frank Luntz, founder and CEO, FIL, Inc.
- Kiera O’Brien, vice president of Students for Carbon Dividends
- Nick Huey, founder of the Climate Campaign
- Mike Richter, president of Brightcore Energy; Hall of Fame goaltender for the New York Rangers
- Jeremy Jones, founder of Protect Our Winters; professional snowboarder
- Caroline Gleich, professional ski mountaineer and adventurer
- Tommy Caldwell, professional climber
- Dr. Justin Farrell, professor, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
- Dr. Naomi Oreskes, professor, Harvard University
- Morton Rosenberg, congressional scholar, Project on Government Oversight
- Dylan Tanner, executive director & co-founder, InfluenceMap
- Dr. Cecilia Martinez, co-founder and executive director, Center for Earth, Energy, and Democracy
- Michele Roberts, national co-coordinator, Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform
- Celeste Flores, outreach director, Faith in Place
- Alice Hill, senior fellow for climate change policy, Council on Foreign Relations
- Laura Lightbody, project director, Pew Charitable Trusts Flood-Prepared Communities
- Mayor Tim Kabat, La Crosse, WI
- Rear Admiral Ann C. Phillips, United States Navy (retired)
- The Hon. John Conger, director, Center for Climate and Security
- Andrew Holland, chief operating officer, American Security Project
- The Hon. Sarah Bloom Raskin, former member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and Deputy Treasury Secretary
- Dr. Bob Litterman, founding partner and Risk Committee chairman, Kepos Capital; chair of the Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee, Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- Dave Burt, CEO and founder, DeltaTerra Capital
- Frédéric Samama, head of responsible investment, Amundi; co-author of “The green swan: Central banking and financial stability in the age of climate change”
- The Hon. Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Secretary of Energy; founder and CEO, Energy Futures Initiative
- Tom Conway, international president, United Steelworkers (USW)
- Vivian Satterfield, director of strategic partnerships, Verde
- Jeff Allen, executive director, Forth
- Brad Schallert, director of carbon market governance and aviation, World Wildlife Fund
- Rachel Muncrief, deputy director, International Council on Clean Transportation
Meetings:
Utility executives (June 2019)
- Alan Oshima, president and CEO, Hawaiian Electric
- Bill Johnson, president and CEO, PG&E
- Maria Pope, president and CEO, Portland General Electric
- Terry Sobolewski, president, National Grid Rhode Island
- Eric Olsen, vice president and general counsel, Great River Energy
- Richard Trumka, president, AFL-CIO
- Liz Shuler, secretary-treasurer, AFL-CIO
- Sean McGarvey, president, North America’s Building Trades Unions (NABTU)
- Cecil Roberts, president, United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)
- Terry O’Sullivan, general president, Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA)
- Paul Shearon, international president, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE)
- Warren Fairley, international vice president for Southeast, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers
- Austin Keyser, director of political and legislative affairs, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)
- Eddie Bautista, executive director, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance
- Elizabeth Yeampierre, executive director, UPROSE
- Stephan Edel, director, New York Working Families
- Maritza Silva-Farrell, executive director, ALIGN
- Lisa Tyson, executive director, Long Island Progressive Coalition
- Marc Weiss, former board member, Sierra Club
- Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for the 2019 Climate Action Summit
- Alexandria Villaseñor, co-founder, U.S. Youth Climate Strike; founder, Earth Uprising
- Jonah Gottlieb, founding youth member, National Children’s Campaign
- Levi Draheim, Juliana v. United States plaintiff
- Kevin Patel, co-deputy partnerships director, Zero Hour
- Lana Weidgenant, co-deputy partnerships director, Zero Hour
- Rachel Lee, head coordinator, Zero Hour NYC
- Daphne Frias, global outreach team, Zero Hour
Financial industry executives (September 2019)
- Roger Ferguson, president and CEO, TIAA
- Douglas Peterson, president and CEO, S&P Global
- Raymond McDaniel, Jr., president and CEO, Moody’s
- Edward Skyler, executive vice president for global public affairs, Citi
Signatories to the Equitable and Just National Climate
Platform (October 2019)
- Dr. Cecilia Martinez, co-founder and executive director, Center for Earth, Energy, and Democracy
- Michele Roberts, national co-coordinator, Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform
- Dr. Mildred McClain, executive director, The Harambee House
- The Hon. Harold Mitchell, Jr., executive director, ReGenesis Project; former state representative, South Carolina House of Representatives
- Richard Moore, co-coordinator, Los Jardines Institute
- Dr. Nicky Sheats, Esq., chairperson, New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance; director, Center for the Urban Environment of the John S. Watson Institute for Public Policy at Thomas Edison State University
- Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director, WE ACT for Environmental Justice
- Jumana Vasi, senior advisor, Midwest Environmental Justice Network
- Dr. Beverly Wright, executive director, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice
- Sara Chieffo, vice president of government affairs, League of Conservation Voters
- Jessica Ennis, legislative director for climate and energy, Earthjustice
- Lindsay Harper, representative, U.S. Climate Action Network
- Cathleen Kelly, senior fellow for energy and environment, Center for American Progress
- Lissa Lynch, staff attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council
- Liz Perera, climate policy director, Sierra Club
- Frank Elderson, executive director of supervision, De Nederlandsche Bank; chairman, Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS)
- Nathalie Aufauvre, director general of financial stability and operations, Banque de France
- Dr. Sabine Mauderer, member of the Executive Board, Deutsche Bundesbank
- Dr. Egil Matsen, deputy governor, Norges Bank
- Katie Wickman, sustainability manager, Advocate Aurora Health
- Brett Green, manager for remote operations, Ascension Medxcel
- Bob Biggio, senior vice president of facilities and support services, Boston Medical Center
- Jon Utech, senior director, Office for a Healthy Environment, Cleveland Clinic
- Rachelle Reyes Wenger, system vice president of public policy & advocacy engagement, Dignity Health
- Elizabeth Rogers, policy analyst, Gundersen Health System
- Charles Goyette, director of sustainability, Inova Health System
- Jean Garris Hand, senior utility & sustainability consultant, Providence St. Joseph Health
- Michael Waller, director of sustainability, Rochester Regional Health
- Jeanine Knapp, sustainability leader, ThedaCare
- John Leigh, director of sustainability, Virginia Mason Health System
- James Slevin, national president, Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA)
- Anna Fendley, director of regulatory and state policy, United Steelworkers (USW)
- Collin O’Mara, president and CEO, National Wildlife Federation
- Kathleen Rest, executive director, Union of Concerned Scientists
- Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs, League of Conservation Voters
- Jason Walsh, executive director, BlueGreen Alliance
- Evan Greenberg, chairman and CEO, Chubb
- Mike Mahaffey, chief strategy and corporate development officer, Nationwide
- Melissa Salton, chief risk officer, Munich Re
- Ian Branagan, group chief risk officer, RenaissanceRe
- Greg Long, pro surfer
- Leah Dawson, pro surfer
- Dr. Cliff Kapono, pro surfer, journalist, and chemist
- Pete Stauffer, environmental director, Surfrider Foundation
- Katie Day, staff scientist, Surfrider Foundation
- Stefanie Sekich-Quinn, coastal preservation manager, Surfrider Foundation
- Vipe Desai, co-founder, Business Alliance for Protecting the Pacific Coast (BAPPC)
- Chris Evans, Surf Industry Manufacturers Association (SIMA)
- Shea Perkins, senior manager for culture & impact marketing, Reef
- Madeline Wade, vice president, Signal Group (on behalf of REI)
Fossil-Fuel Industry Apologist Michael Levi Becomes Top White House Energy Advisor
Michael Levi, a prominent apologist for the Keystone XL pipeline, natural-gas exports, and other fossil-fuel industry priorities, has joined the White House, Hill Heat has learned. Yesterday, Levi began work as a Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Economic Policy on the National Economic Council staff.
For ten years, Levi was Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow for energy and climate policy. Previously, Levi was a nuclear non-proliferation expert at the Brookings Institution, while pursuing his doctorate at the University of London.
Possessed of undeniable brilliance, Levi has no formal training in climate science, economics, or energy policy; his undergraduate and master’s degrees are in physics, and his doctorate is in War Studies. In 2008 he began publishing on climate policy, overseeing a major CFR Task Force report on U.S. climate policy chaired by Tom Vilsack and George Pataki. He quickly established himself as a prominent (and convenient) climate centrist-cum-contrarian—embracing the urgency of climate action, while criticizing other proponents of strong climate policy and providing convoluted arguments for the continued expansion of fossil-fuel and nuclear projects. (Levi calls his approach a most-of the above policy.) Over the years, his pursuits included taking a skeptical view of green jobs, promoting tar sands exploitation, and defending natural gas as a bridge fuel.
Levi’s position as CFR’s energy and climate expert was endowed by David Rubenstein, the founder of the Carlyle Group, a major investor in the oil and gas industry.
Levi is part of a generation of industry-friendly climate experts whose influence is on the rise with the ascension of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, whose numbers also include Heather Zichal (BA, Rutgers), the Rhodium Group’s Trevor Houser (BA, City College of New York) and Columbia University’s Jason Bordoff (Harvard Law). These people are pundits whose careers as climate experts have been sponsored by fossil-fuel industry investors despite a lack of training in climate science. They are now in position to shape United States climate policy if Clinton succeeds President Obama in November.
On Senate Floor, Sen. Whitehouse Calls for RICO Investigation of 'Climate Denial Machine'
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, called for a civil RICO investigation of ExxonMobil and the “climate denial machine” on the floor of the U.S. Senate Tuesday afternoon. Whitehouse, who speaks on climate change every week that the Senate is in session, had raised the possibility of such an investigation in a speech in May that compared the fossil-fuel industry’s campaign of deception to that of the tobacco industry.
With new investigations by InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times about ExxonMobil’s history of knowing climate deception, and rising calls from the public led by Climate Hawks Vote for civil or criminal action by the Department of Justice, Whitehouse again took the floor.
Whitehouse took on his critics, mocking the “histrionics on the far right” and describing the Wall Street Journal editorial page as the”Troll-in-Chief for the fossil-fuel industry.”
The senator concluded with a call for a civil RICO investigation of the “climate denial scheme,” from the fossil-fuel giants like ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers to the organizations they back, like the Wall Street Journal and the Manhattan Institute.
This was Senator Whitehouse 115th “Time to Wake Up” climate speech.
Whatever the motivation of the Wall Street Journal and other right-wing climate denial outfits, it is clearly long past time for the climate denial scheme to come in from the talk shows and the blogosphere, and have to face the kind of truth-testing audience that a civil RICO investigation could provide. It’s time to let the facts take their place, and let climate denial face that “greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.”
With his speech, Whitehouse joined the growing ranks calling for a DOJ investigation of the fossil-fuel industry, which now include Merchants of Doubt author Naomi Oreskes, Representatives Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier of California, and Democratic presidential candidates Martin O’Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
The Climate Hawks Vote petition, which unlike Sen. Whitehouse’s call includes language open to criminal investigation of ExxonMobil’s activities, can be found here.
Transcript:
Mr. President, last week, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Robert M. White passed away at the age of 92. Dr. White served this nation under five presidents and pioneered the peaceful use of satellites to understand our weather and climate. “We do have environmental problems and they’re serious ones, the preservation of species among them,” he said, “but the climate is the environmental problem that’s so pervasive in its effects on the society. . . . The climate is really the only environmental characteristic that can utterly change our society and our civilization.”That was in 1977. That same year, James F. Black, a top scientific researcher at the Exxon Corporation gave that company’s executives a similar warning: “[T]here is general scientific agreement,” he told Exxon’s Management Committee, “that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.” According to emerging reports, Exxon executives kept that warning a closely guarded company secret for years.
I rise today for the 115th time to urge that we wake up to the threat of climate change. I rise in the midst of a decades-long, purposeful corporate campaign of misinformation, which has held this Congress and this nation back from taking meaningful action to prevent that utter change. Scrutiny of the corporate campaign of misinformation intensifies, and scrutiny of the fossil fuel polluters behind it intensifies, and the regular cast of right-wing, climate-denier attack dogs have got their hackles up.
On May 6, I gave a speech here on the Floor. The speech compared the misinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry about the dangers of carbon pollution to the tobacco industry’s misinformation campaign about the dangers of its product.
The relevance of that comparison is that the United States Department of Justice, under the civil provisions of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute—RICO for short, brought an action against the tobacco industry. The United States alleged that the tobacco industry’s misinformation campaign was fraudulent. And the United States won, in a lengthy and thorough decision by United States District Judge Gladys Kessler.
Go ahead and read them. DOJ’s complaint and Judge Kessler’s decision can be found at the websites of the Justice Department and the Public Health Law Center, respectively, and are linked on my website, whitehouse.senate.gov/climatechange. I will warn you: the judge’s decision is a long one—but it makes good reading.
The comparison is strong. There are whole sections of the Department of Justice civil RICO complaint, and whole sections of Judge Kessler’s decision, where you can remove the word “tobacco” and put in the word “carbon,” and remove the word “health” and put in the word “climate,” and the parallel with the fossil fuel industry climate denial campaign is virtually perfect.
This is not an idea I just cooked up. Look at the academic work of Professor Robert Brulle of Drexel University and Professor Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University. Look at the investigative work of Naomi Oreskes’s book Merchants of Doubt, David Michaels’s book Doubt is Their Product, and Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner’s book Deceit and Denial, describing the industry-backed machinery of deception.
Look at the journalistic work of Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song, David Hasemyer, and John Cushman Jr. in the recent reporting of InsideClimate News about what ExxonMobil knew about climate change versus the falsehoods it chose to tell the public. Look at a separate probe by journalists Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch, and Susanne Rust in the Los Angeles Times.
From their work, we now know that Exxon, for instance, knew about the effect of its carbon pollution as far back as the late 1970s, but ultimately chose to fund a massive misinformation campaign rather than tell the truth. “No corporation,” said professor and climate change activist Bill McKibben, “has ever done anything this big and this bad.”
Here’s how Judge Kessler depicts the culpable conduct of the tobacco industry: “Defendants have intentionally maintained and coordinated their fraudulent position on addiction and nicotine as an important part of their overall efforts to influence public opinion and persuade people that smoking is not dangerous.”
Compare that to the findings of Dr. Brulle, whose research shines light on the dark money campaigns that support climate denial. The climate denial operation, to quote Dr. Brulle, is “a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public’s understanding of climate.”
The parallels between what the tobacco industry did and what the fossil fuel industry is doing now are so striking, I suggested in my speech of May 6, that it was worth a look: that civil discovery could reveal whether the fossil fuel industry’s activities cross the same line into racketeering. I said that again in an op-ed piece I wrote in the Washington Post on May 29 regarding the civil RICO action against tobacco.
Oh, my, what caterwauling has ensued from the fossil fuel industry trolls! Here’s a quick highlight reel of the tempest of right-wing invective.
One climate denier, Christopher Monckton, declared, “Senator Whitehouse is a fascist goon.” Another denier compared me to Torquemada, the infamous torturer of the Inquisition. And the official Exxon responder got so excited about this suggestion he used a word I am not even allowed to say on the Senate Floor! He forgot Rule One in crisis management: don’t lose your cool.
The right-wing website Breitbart.com responded by calling me “the preposterous Democrat senator for Rhode Island,” and saying the notion that there is an industry-funded effort to mislead the American people about the harm caused by carbon pollution is “a joke,” a conspiracy theory on par with Area 51 or the faking of the moon landing. Tell that to tobacco.
Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, said global warming concerns, “are based on computer models, not by actual evidence, not by actual evidence of what we’ve seen so far.”
The polluter-funded George Marshall Institute, a long-time climate denial outfit, wrote that this was an attack on constitutional rights; a presumptuous argument on their part given that there’s no constitutional right to commit fraud.
Similarly, Calvin Beisner, founder of a phony-baloney industry front called the Cornwall Alliance, said the same: the mere suggestion represents a “direct attack on the rights to freedom of speech and the press guaranteed by the First Amendment” and is “horrifically bad for science.” Coming from a science denial outfit, that concern for science is rich. And again, fraud is not protected by the First Amendment.
In the National Review, I was accused of wanting to launch “organized crime investigations . . . against people and institutions that disagree with [me] about global warming,” in order to “lock people up as Mafiosi.”
“Crime”? “Lock people up”? Let’s remember, Mr./Madam President, that we are talking about civil RICO, not criminal. No one went to jail in the tobacco case. Investigating the organized climate denial scheme under civil RICO is not about putting people in jail. Query why the National Review would mislead people about such an obvious fact.
All a civil RICO case does is get people to have to actually tell the truth, under oath, in front of an actual impartial judge or jury, and under cross-examination—which the Supreme Court has described as “the greatest legal invention ever invented for the discovery of truth.” No more spin and deception.
But that’s exactly the audience polluters and their allies can’t bear, so the flacks set off criminal smokescreens and launch “fascist goon” and “Torquemada” hysterics. A few weeks ago, 20 scientists agreed with me, and wrote a letter to Attorney General Lynch supporting the idea of using civil RICO.
That was too much for the Troll-in-Chief for the fossil fuel industry: the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has long been an industry science-denial mouthpiece. They use the same playbook every time: one, deny the science; two, question the motives of reformers; and three, exaggerate the costs of reforms.
When scientists warned that chlorofluorocarbons could break down the atmosphere’s ozone layer, the Wall Street Journal ran editorials—for decades—devaluing the science, attacking scientists and reformers, and exaggerating the costs associated with regulating CFCs. When acid rain was falling in the Northeast, the Wall Street Journal editorial page questioned the science, claimed the sulfur dioxide cleanup effort was driven by politics, and said fixing it carried a huge price tag. Ultimately, the Journal’s editorial page, after years of this, had to recant and admit that the cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide “saves about $700 million annually compared with the cost of traditional regulation and has been reducing emissions by four million tons annually.”
Now, on climate change, the Journal is back to the same pattern: deny the science, question the motives of climate scientists, exaggerate the costs of tackling carbon pollution. For decades, the Journal has persistently published editorials against taking action to prevent manmade climate change.
On this the editorial page said, by talking about civil RICO I’m trying to “forcibly silence” the denial apparatus. “Forcibly silence”? First of all, against the billions of the Koch Brothers and ExxonMobil, fat chance that I have much force to use. And “silence”? I don’t want them silent; I want them testifying, in a forum where they have to tell the truth. Is the Journal really saying that in a forum where deniers have to tell the truth their only response would have to be silence? Making them tell the truth forcibly silences them? Because the only thing civil RICO silences is fraud.
By the way, the Journal editorial never mentions that the government won the civil RICO case against tobacco on very similar facts. That would detract from the fable.
Who does the Journal cast as the victim in their fable? None other than Willie Soon, who they said I singled out for—here’s what they said—having “published politically inconvenient research on changes in solar radiation.” Actually, what’s inconvenient for Dr. Soon is that the New York Times reported that he gets more than half of his funding from big fossil fuel interests like ExxonMobil and the Charles G. Koch Foundation, to the tune of $1.2 million, and didn’t disclose it. Dr. Soon’s research contracts even gave his industry backers a chance “for comment and input” before he published, and he referred to the papers he produced as “deliverables.” In case you don’t know it, that’s not how real science works. Of course, none of this sordid financial conflict is even mentioned by the Wall Street Journal editorial page. They’d rather pretend Dr. Soon is being singled out for “politically inconvenient” views. Please.
It gets better. In the editorial, the role of neutral expert commenting on this goes to Georgia Tech’s Judith Curry. She offers the opinion that my “demand . . . for legal persecution . . . represents a new low in the politicization of science.” This is a particularly rich and conflict- riddled opinion, as Ms. Curry is herself a repeat anti-climate witness performing regularly in committees for Republicans here in Congress. Again, no mention of this interest of Ms. Curry’s by the Wall Street Journal editorial.
The fossil fuel industry’s climate-denial machine rivals or exceeds that of the tobacco industry in size, scope, and complexity. Its purpose is to cast doubt about the reality of climate change in order to forestall a move toward cleaner fuels and allow the Kochs and Exxons of the world to continue making money at everybody else’s expense. And the Wall Street Journal editorial page plays its part in the machine.
Even though it’s only the editorial page, and not the Journal’s well-regarded newsroom, facts and logic are supposed to matter. Ignoring the successful tobacco litigation; omitting the salient fact of Dr. Soon being paid by the industry involved in his research; and bringing in a climate denier as their neutral voice without disclosing that conflict—I’d like to see them get this editorial by the editorial standards of their own newsroom.
So why all the histrionics on the far right, Mr./Madam President? Why the deliberate subterfuge between civil and criminal RICO? Why the name-calling? Have we perhaps touched a little nerve? Have we maybe hit a bit too close to home? Are the cracks in the dark castle of denial as it crumbles maybe beginning to rattle the occupants?
Whatever the motivation of the Wall Street Journal and other right-wing climate denial outfits, it is clearly long past time for the climate denial scheme to come in from the talk shows and the blogosphere, and have to face the kind of truth-testing audience that a civil RICO investigation could provide. It’s time to let the facts take their place, and let climate denial face that “greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.”
I yield the floor.
Capitol Hill Climate Action Rally
Senators Barbara Boxer and Sheldon Whitehouse — co-chairs of the Climate Action Task Force — will kick off the Capitol Hill Climate Action Rally to wake up Congress to climate change. At the rally, they will literally sound the alarm on climate change, by setting alarms on phones, tablets, or hand-held devices to ring at 5 p.m. EST.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Gears Up Climate-Focused OCEANS PAC
Oceans PAC, the climate-focused political action committee Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) launched last year, is gearing up for the 2014 midterms. Whitehouse is the most aggressive U.S. Senator on climate policy: he has been giving weekly “Time To Wake Up” speeches on climate change since the landfall of Superstorm Sandy, is one of the founders of the Senate Climate Action Task Force and led the #Up4Climate talkathon last week.
The PAC supports “candidates who support oceans and environmental issues”, Whitehouse explains:Welcome to the OCEANS PAC website. I created the OCEANS PAC because candidates who support oceans and environmental issues need our support. Indeed, the other side is funded by big polluters who don’t hesitate to put millions of dollars behind their lies. As I’ve said many times – I’m tired of bringing a knife to a gun fight. The OCEANS PAC is one way we can fight back.And fight we must, because climate change is not a problem that will go away. Climate change is not a problem that can wait. But climate change is a problem that can be solved. We can and we must leave a healthy environment, which includes healthy oceans, to our children and grandchildren. The public is ready for action; unfortunately, the missing piece is Congress. Congress is sleepwalking through history. It is time for Congress to hear the alarms, roll up our sleeves, and do what needs to be done. It is time to wake up. But for Congress to wake up, it needs more members who will support ocean and environmental issues – OCEANS PAC will support those candidates.
This is certainly not something I can do alone. There are high stakes involved and I need your help. I hope you will accompany me on this new journey, and that I can count on your enthusiastic support as we go forward.
The PAC’s supported candidates include the four members of the Rhode Island congressional delegation; Correy Westbrook, candidate for Florida’s 8th Congressional District against incumbent Bill Posey; Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Carl Levin; and incumbent senators Chris Coons (Del.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Al Franken (Minn.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), and Tom Udall (N.M.).
Landrieu and Pryor are notable for their opposition to climate legislation. In 2011, Landrieu and Pryor voted for the Jim Inhofe Energy Tax Prevention Act, which would have prohibited the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas to address climate change. At the time, Landrieu and Pryor were supported by the Koch Industries PAC. Now, Koch’s political wing is running a “barrage” of ads against the senators.
Whitehouse: Senate Inaction Influenced by Carbon Polluter Lobbyists
From the Wonk Room.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), in a Senate hearing on the EPA budget Tuesday morning, decried the extraordinary amount of spending by corporate global warming polluters to lobby Congress. Reading from a report on new lobbying disclosures, Whitehouse noted that carbon polluters such as electric utilities and oil and gas companies have spent nearly $80 million on lobbying just in the first quarter of 2009. Whitehouse concludes:
So if we wonder why the Senate is the last place in America that still doesn’t get it – that climate change is a real problem for people and that carbon pollution is something that people should pay for when they emit it, big utilities, big industry – gee, connect the dots.
Watch it:
They’d like to just dump it and have it be somebody else’s problem. There’s absolutely nothing new about that. Polluters don’t want to pay. What’s new is our understanding of what the costs are of carbon pollution. Economic costs, environmental costs, wildlife and habitat costs, and as we’ve recently learned, very significant national security costs.
The E&E News story Whitehouse entered in the Congressional Record explains how carbon-industry lobbyists are vastly outspending environmental groups and clean energy companies:
Thus far in 2009, all environmental groups combined have spent a grand total of $4.7 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The Nature Conservancy, which has spent $850,000 thus far, tops the list.The various renewable energy companies have spent a grand total of $7.5 million, with the biggest spender there being the American Wind Energy Association which has spent just over $1.2 million.
By comparison, Exxon Mobil Corp. alone has spent more than $9.3 million in the first few months of 2009. The company’s lobbying totals exceed any other single corporation or organization except the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has spent a total of $15.5 million.
The chamber, which has been by far the single biggest lobbying force in Washington over the last decade, has likewise been active in the energy debate this year, though it is unclear from the disclosure records what amount
- if any -the organization has spent on lobbying of lawmakers. Its totals are not included in the calculations for any energy-specific industries.Other heavyweights in the energy sector include: Chevron Corp. at $6.8 million, ConocoPhillips at $6 million, BP at $3.6 million and Marathon Oil at $3.4 million. All four are among the 20 biggest lobbying spenders in any sector in the first few months of 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
As for electric utilities, the biggest single lobbying spender is Southern Co. at $3.7 million, followed by the Edison Electric Institute at $2.6 million, American Electric Power Co. Inc. at $1.7 million and Exelon Corp. at $1.54 million.
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