DeSmog Blog ran a great story last week detailing the shady origins of a new report the Koch network is using to attack tax credits for electric vehicles.
A Koch company, Flint Hill Resources, commissioned the report from the National Economic Research Associates (NERA), and it was then promoted by other Koch-y groups and “reported” on by the Koch’s Daily Caller.
As DeSmog’s Ben Jarvey points out, this is hardly NERA’s first pro-polluter rodeo, as the organization has long been a hired gun for the industry. It was co-founded by Iwrin Setlzer from the Hudson Institute, a Koch industry and apparently Russian oligarch-funded free-market group.
As is generally the case when one has to produce reports for polluters, NERA’s work is frequently criticized in the harshest of terms. For example, a NERA report on new ozone regulations, which was commissioned by the National Association of Manufacturers, was fact-checked by a research firm which found the report “grossly overstates compliance costs, due to major flaws, math errors, and unfounded assumptions.” One of the report authors told Media Matters that NERA’s estimates of job losses from the proposed policy were “fraudulent” and calculations were done in “an insane way.”
One of NERA’s most “popular” reports was commissioned by fossil fuel-funded groups and attacked Obama’s Clean Power Plan. According to NRDC, the report “cooks the books” and “grossly overstates” the costs of the policy.
On the Paris Agreement, Trump cited a NERA claim about job losses supposedly resulting from the agreement, a finding it reached in part because it only looked at costs, not benefits. As Yale economist Kenneth Gillingham told The Verge last year, “If you assume that there are no benefits and the costs are there, then of course things look bad.” On top of that, Marc Hafstead from Resources for the Future told CNN that the report “grossly overstates” changes in industry as a result of policies aimed at meeting the Paris target.
Are you sensing a pattern yet?
Because it goes even deeper. Back in the ‘90s, before fossil fuel denial was all the rage, NERA was doing its part to protect another industry from regulations: tobacco. The industry commissioned a report from NERA on whether cigarette advertising affects smoking rates. At the time, a ban on smoking ads was being considered, so NERA whipped up a report saying that ads don’t really influence smoking anyway. Now, if that were true, why would the industry care whether or not they were allowed to advertise?
Nevertheless, the industry expected the report to be “particularly helpful” for rebutting an official New Zealand report that was being “used with and by governments to justify ad ban proposals.”
Like tobacco, the fossil fuel industry is in slow but inevitable decline. These massive industries may try to use NERA reports to prevent regulations that would further sink them, but it’s a losing battle.
On the Titanic, the ship’s band famously (supposedly) played “Nearer, my God, to thee,” as the unsinkable sank.
So not to grossly overstate things but if your industry is sinking, it might be time to start playing NERA, my God, to thee!
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