A Koch-backed bill to protect donors from IRS disclosure has just passed the House Ways and Means committee. This will make it harder for the government to prevent nonprofits from acting as lobbying arms for industry. But even without it, figuring out who is behind attacks on clean energy is already difficult, with shell groups and shady funding streams making it impossible to track down their true source.
Take, for example, the freshly launched corenews.org, a fake news page for a new campaign dedicated to attacking Tom Steyer and Bill McKibben (among others). The site discloses that it’s “a product of America Rising Advanced Research,” which sounds fine at face value. But some quick digging uncovers that this “news” site is run by a Republican opposition research group whose attacks are so deceitful even Fox News has called them out.
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Funding secrecy is understandable for oppressed minorities who are up against powerful forces. It is why the 1958 ruling in NAACP v Alabama was well warranted in finding that groups don’t have to turn over membership or donor info. But now, this secrecy gives the fossil fuel industry a way to circumvent lobbying disclosures that could hurt its public image. For example, if the fossil fuel industry wanted to spend millions opposing policies (those that regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant), which 75 percent of voters approved of but would hurt the industry’s bottom line. They might “donate” that money to other groups to lobby unofficially on their behalf. Because the beneficiary is a nonprofit, they don’t have to disclose the donation as lobbying.
Sometimes, though, it’s not so hard to tell who’s behind the coordinated, state-by-state legislative assault on clean energy. Such is the case with the American Energy Alliance, which has been taking credit for efforts across multiple states to pass legislation that prevents the state from spending any money on compliance plans for the Clean Power Plan, which is temporarily on hold. They’ve gotten restrictions passed in Virginia, Colorado and Wyoming, and bills are pending in Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire and Kansas.
This particular fossil fuel-funded group is an offshoot of the Charles G. Koch co-registered Institute for Energy Research and has been working with the industry-funded State Policy Network to prevent state budgets from acknowledging the reality that at some point they’re probably going to have to comply with the Clean Power Plan. Wyoming Dept. of Environmental Quality Director Todd Parfitt recently said that, “It would be a mistake to bury our heads in the sand” and waste the additional planning time the temporary Supreme Court stay has given the states.
But of course, when it comes to the fossil-fuel industry's stance climate change and clean energy, heads in the sand is the modus operandi.
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