The ever-vigilant Media Matters has noticed that, over the past few months, chapter and deputy directors at Americans for Prosperity (AfP) have authored at least 16 op-eds asking states to fight back against the EPA's Clean Power Plan. Each op-ed is remarkably similar, suggesting AfP is shopping around a template to different outlets, while crossing their fingers that the editors don't do a quick google search to see if the pieces are even remotely original.
This isn't exactly unexpected, but what's worth noting is that none of the papers fully disclosed AfP's bias. While one paper described AfP as a "conservative political action group," none of the papers mentioned the group is "run by the oil baron Koch brothers," as described by Media Matters.
What's more, the op-eds are (predictably) problematic. They rely on a fossil fuel industry-funded "study" that the Washington Post Fact Checker has judged as "misleading."
A network of undisclosed actors peddling mad-libs style interchangeable op-eds in order to mislead the public should be a big deal, but for the Kochs, that's just business-as-usual.
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Oil executives ambushed by climate change activists. From 7:30am, oil executives entering the convention centre to register for the conference were greeted by photos of the fire-covered seas of the Gulf of Mexico and oil-soaked wildlife following the deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, drought-stricken landscapes, and the wide-eyed face of a young Filipino girl being hoisted up from floodwaters caused by Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.
Mexico Pledges to Cut Emissions 25% in Climate-Change Milestone. Mexico has become the first developing nation to formally promise to cut its global-warming pollution, a potential milestone in efforts to reach a worldwide agreement on tackling climate change.
We donât have a Ted Cruz problem on climate change. We have a GOP problem on climate change.
Funds for safety went to utility execs' pay instead, PUC president says. Money collected from ratepayers and earmarked for pipeline safety was instead spent on executive pay raises by the state's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Co., in the months before a deadly pipeline explosion in 2010