More Climate Bill Forgery: Big Oil Lobbyists Fake Public Opposition

You can smell the desperation of the dirty energy industry from a mile away. It’s the smell of a slow death, a filthy, oozing, gangrenous smell that emits from Big Oil and Big Coal as they attempt to lie, cheat and steal their way to maintaining the status quo.

Last month, lobbyists working for a coal industry front group were caught red-handed forging anti-climate-bill letters to a member of Congress. Now, it’s been revealed that the American Energy Alliance (the unholy spawn of the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute) is faking broad public opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

From the NRDC:

According to the AEA’s round-up release:  “In Newspapers Coast-to-Coast, Energy Rationing Bill Continues to Get Exposed for What it is: A Job Killer.” And how do our oily friends reach that conclusion?  In a move that is unlikely to represent a threat to the future of scientific polling, AEA bases its claims on eight letters to the editor and one op-ed.

What do the selected editorial page items tell us?  First, AEA is apparently endorsing flat-out, wild-eyed howling-at-the-moon denial of global warming science.   Take this “op-ed” found in the Springfield (MO) News Leader:

“I told you in my column on July 10 that global warming was a hoax. Just when I thought the cap and trade lunatics could not be any more ignorant, along comes the Democrat-controlled Congress with the Waxman-Markey bill on climate change. Cap and tax or con and tax are all better names for this abhorrent bill.”

Message: AEA appears to be 100 percent comfortable in embracing this full-throated, know-nothing approach to trashing the consensus view on global warming science.

The NRDC asks, “Couldn’t we just do the same thing by collating positive letters to the editor from across the nation?” and then proceeds to quote from seven such supportive letters – which actually appear in major publications, not BFE pennysavers.

Scruples: lobbyists do not haz dem.

Link [NRDC]
Photo credit: I Can Has Cheezburger?

Sierra Club Seeks DOJ Investigation into Faked Climate Bill Letters

The Sierra Club has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate lobbying firm Bonner & Associates to see if it has faked letters to other legislators in the past after the firm was caught forging anti-climate bill letters.

Bonner & Associates sent letters purporting to be from two West Virginia minority groups to Rep. Tom Perriello in an attempt to trick him into voting against the Waxman-Markey climate bill that narrowly passed in the House last month. It didn’t work – Perriello voted for the bill anyway – but, the Sierra Club asks, how many other faked letters has this firm sent out?

From the Sierra Club’s letter to the Attorney General, via Treehugger:

Dear Attorney General Holder,

I am writing to urge you to initiate an investigation into the recent, apparently illegal activities of Bonner & Associates, a consulting firm located in Washington, D.C. In June of 2009 Bonner & Associates, on behalf of an unspecified client, sent letters via fax machine to the offices of U.S. Representative Tom Perriello. These letters purported to come from community organizations within Rep. Perriello’s Congressional district – including Creciendo Juntos and the Charlottesville, Virginia chapter of the NAACP – and utilized the letterhead of these organizations.

…The letters were sent without authorization of any representative of the community organizations. The individuals whose names and signatures appear on the letters do not exist.

…On behalf of Sierra Club, I therefore urge you to initiate an investigation into Bonner & Associates. First, the Department of Justice should ascertain whether forged letters were sent to other Representatives or Senators. Second, the Department of Justice should investigate whether other community organizations were similarly misrepresented.

That ‘unspecified client’ has turned out to be none other than the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a front group for the coal industry. ACCCE claims not to have known about the tactics, saying in a press release “we are outraged at the conduct of Bonner & Associates”.

The Sierra Club, for one, isn’t buying it. They ran a full-page advertisement today in CQ, The Hill, Politico, Roll Call, and the National Journal’s Congress Daily AM. Treehugger reports that the ad says “When Dirty-Energy Washington Lobbyists couldn’t get any real-life supporters to defeat comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation, they made them up instead.”

Read the full letter from the Sierra Club to the DOJ (PDF) as well as ACCCE’s full response to the controversy.

Link [Treehugger]
Photo credit: Flickr user david drexler

Lobbyist Group Forges Anti-Climate-Bill Letters, Then Lies About It

A couple weeks ago, The Huffington Post warned readers to be on the lookout for dirty tricks orchestrated by right-wing groups attempting to derail the climate bill. Sure enough, a Washington D.C. based lobbyist group got caught sending five forged letters purportedly from Hispanic voters and the NAACP to a congressman in the hopes that it would sway his vote.

It didn’t work. Congressman Tom Perriello of West Virginia voted in favor of the Waxman-Markey climate bill, and lobbyist group Bonner & Associates is taking the heat for its abhorrent tactics.

Congressman Ed Markey announced that he would hold an official House hearing into the forgeries, saying:

“This fraud on Congress shows that some opponents of clean energy have resorted to forgery and theft to block progress.  This is an appalling abuse, and Congressman Tom Perriello deserves great credit for seeing through it and casting a vote that will create clean energy jobs in Virginia and throughout the United States. I encourage all Members of Congress to be on the lookout for other suspicious and illegal materials. My Select Committee will immediately begin an investigation of the extent and scope of this activity.”

Not that Bonner & Associates are actually admitting any wrongdoing. The group blames a ‘temporary employee’ who supposedly sent out the letters unbeknownst to the rest of the firm.

Nice try, says The Huffington Post – Bonner has a history of tricking people into supporting their causes. HuffPo found a 2002 story by the Baltimore Sun, which called out another forgery in the group’s past:

Donna J. Stanley, director of Associated Black Charities, was ready to mobilize for political battle after she received a fax marked “urgent” this week.

The fax told her she needed to sign an attached petition “today” to prevent 600,000 of Maryland’s poor and disabled from losing access to affordable prescription drugs. The fax, sent to dozens of community leaders, had the markings of a grass-roots effort, including grammatical errors and a handwritten cover letter.

But the appeal was actually generated by a sophisticated Washington lobbying firm trying to defeat several bills before the General Assembly supported by advocates for the poor.

So, how’d they explain that one away? Jack Bonner said it was “a great exercise in the First Amendment”. Bonner & Associates had allied itself with a puppet group for the pharmaceutical industry, using the organization’s letterhead to fool legislators into thinking they were hearing legitimate concerns from voters.

Abolishing the practice of lobbying lawmakers, and imposing strict term limits on all politicians – wouldn’t that go a long way toward cleaning up our government? Lobbyists clearly have no scruples when it comes to getting favors for Big Oil, Big Pharma and other corporate entities intent on putting greed before the good of the earth and its people.

Link [The Huffington Post]

Money-Hungry Industries Fight to Expand Meaning of ‘Renewable Energy’

Motivated by dollar signs, industries are pushing to have a range of technologies categorized as renewable including nuclear power plants, the burning of garbage and even waste from coal plants. Everyone wants to get in on government incentives, which were designed to give technologies like wind and solar an economic boost.

From The New York Times:

The lure of the renewable label is understandable. Federal tax breaks for renewable energy have been reauthorized, and quotas for renewable energy production have been set in 28 states, accompanied by extensive new grants, loans and other economic advantages. And legislation is moving through both houses of Congress to establish national quotas for renewable energy sources, including the climate bill passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday.

With billions of dollars at stake, legislators have been besieged by lobbyists eager to share in the wealth.

“They’ve been queuing up outside staff offices, everyone with all their ideas as to what should be included,” said Bill Wicker, the spokesman for the Democratic majority on the Senate energy committee, which is considering a national quota.

Next thing you know, the coal industry is going to go beyond attempts to convince us that coal is clean and find a way to claim that coal is renewable. Who else is going to come out of the woodwork in an attempt to grow their bank accounts?

Lobbyists. Oy.

In The Know: Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Flickr user david drexler

Why Aren’t More Roads Made of Rubberized Asphalt Concrete?

Over 240 million tires are thrown out every year in the U.S., and where do they go? According to RideLust, fewer than 7 percent get recycled, 5 percent are exported to other countries, 11 percent are burned for fuel and the rest are either sent to landfills, stockpiled or illegally dumped.  But, there’s a very eco-friendly and easy-to-incorporate use for all of these tires: rubberized asphalt concrete, a material made from shredded rubber mixed with asphalt.  RAC roads are known for making better roads that need less maintenance, yet it’s still not being used on all of the roads in the U.S.

From RideLust:

Rubberized Asphalt Concrete (RAC) does work better.

1. Using RAC clearly reduces road noise by as much as 85%
2. Applying a two-inch layer overlay of RAC can save $50,000 per lane mile compared to using four inches of conventional asphalt in the same application
3. An overlay of RAC can prevent cracks in underlying pavements from reflecting through to the surface of the new paving
4. RAC retains its original color better than conventional asphalt and markings remain more visible
5. Using RAC saves on maintenance costs, a properly designed application can last 50% longer than use of standard asphalt
6. RAC provides better traction and can reduce traffic accidents in poor weather

So, what’s the holdup? Lobbyists, as usual. The government is in charge of building the streets, and politicians choose the companies that get the contracts. The biggest corporations can afford the best lobbyists – the ones that will do practically anything to get big projects for their bosses. As noted by RideLust, there’s no incentive to use RAC even though it’s far more eco-friendly and superior to the materials currently being used for most roads.  Of course, using tires in RAC roads isn’t a miracle answer to all the tire waste in the world, but it can help.  Too bad greedy corporations are holding up progress, as they tend to do.

Link [RideLust]

Who’s Behind the ‘Save the Plastic Bag’ Campaign?

The plastic bag industry is nervous, and they have good reason to be. More and more cities are banning plastic bags, or imposing taxes on people who want to use them. It’s all part of an effort to reduce the number of plastic bags that end up littering our streets, floating on the surface of oceans and lakes, clogging storm drains, killing birds and marine life and sitting in landfills all over the world.

Plastic bags are so ubiquitous – you get one nearly any time make a purchase, from your groceries and clothing to medicine and school supplies.  In fact, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation estimates that shoppers worldwide use 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags per year.  That’s a lot of resources – and trash.  Trash that could easily be avoided by choosing reusable bags instead, which many people are now doing.

But the plastic bag industry doesn’t think we need to cut back on plastic. It’s their livelihood, and they’ve enlisted the help of lobbyist Stephen Jones to protect their interests.  One of the ways the industry (including plastic giants Elkay Plastics Co. and Grand Packaging) is ‘fighting back’ is through their website, SavethePlasticBag.com.  Save the Plastic Bag is an attempt to debunk ‘misinformation’ about plastic bags, and Stephen Jones is head of the campaign to bring their protests to the public.

Some of the points disputed on the Save the Plastic Bag website include the idea that plastic bags are made from oil, that paper bags are better for the environment, that landfills are full of plastic bags and that plastic bags aren’t recyclable.  The site alleges that a ‘global campaign of misinformation’ is targeting their industry. You can read the site’s claims and the data they use to back them up for the details.

Believe it or not, it’s true that there’s a lot of misinformation about plastic bags out there.  For example, paper bags aren’t necessarily a better choice.  Trees are cut down to create them in many cases, and they release methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as they decompose.  It’s also true that there are recycling facilities for plastic bags, though Salon notes that plastic bags are usually downcycled into other products that can’t be recycled – plus, less than 1% of all plastic bags end up being recycled.

Do any of the campaign’s points make plastic bags good for the environment? The answer is a resounding NO.  First of all, since plastic bags don’t decompose and very few of them end up recycled, they all have to end up somewhere.  That means they either take up space in landfills (which, despite the plastic campaign’s insistence that 0.4% of the total trash in landfills is a small amount, is actually millions and millions of bags) or litter the earth.  Why should we just continue adding to trash dumps when there are alternatives out there? And, regardless of the pro-plastic campaign’s insistence that the numbers are wrong when it comes to the animals killed by plastic bags, animals are still being killed needlessly.

The simple truth is, plastic bags aren’t good for the earth.  Reusable is always better.  Taxing people who choose to use plastic bags may not be the answer, and the fight against plastic bags is only a small facet of the efforts we need to make to clean up the only planet we have to live on.  But it’s still important, and reducing the number of plastic bags we use is absolutely worth doing.

To their credit, the ‘Save the Plastic Bag’ campaign advocates reusing plastic bags as many times as possible, recycling them when you’re done and even using reusable bags.  Consumers definitely need to take responsibility for their own actions and return plastic shopping bags to the store (most stores have recycling bins out front). Plastic bags aren’t likely to completely go away any time soon, so if you’ve got to use them, use them again, and again, and again – and then recycle them.  But you should also carry reusable bags with you on every single shopping excursion, because less trash on the earth is always a good thing.

Link [Save the Plastic Bag] + [Algalita]

Photo credit: PlasticBagFree.com + GreenerImpact

McCain Campaign Advisors Paid to Stop Cape Wind Renewable Energy Project

Some people out there still seem to need evidence that McCain is just Bush 2.0, and luckily for all of us, McCain’s camp keeps on delivering. Surprise, surprise: two high placed advisors in the McCain campaign worked with lobbyists to stop the Cape Wind renewable energy project.

From The Sietch Blog:

Charlie Black, Senior Political Adviser to McCain: Senate lobbying disclosure documents reveal that lobbying firm BKSH & Associates was retained in January 2008 by the Alliance to
Protect Nantucket Sound to “Defeat the proposal for 130 wind turbines” and “promote alternative means to meet energy needs without sacrificing Nantucket Sound.” Charlie Black was the chairman of BKSH until March. [Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database]

Tom Loeffler, McCain’s Campaign Co-chairman: The Loeffler Group received $380,000 from the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound from 2003 to 2005 to lobby against Cape Wind. The Loeffler Group was founded by former Republican congressman Tom Loeffler, who remains its chairman. [Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database]…

In addition to these two jokers, McCain also recently had advisors quit after it was revealed that one was actively working for Myanmar and one had ties to the Saudi government. McCain tries to play himself as an honest guy who’s more moderate than the Bush administration and open to new ideas. Too bad “Mr. Straight Talker Reformerman” is thick with lobbyists who have anything but the best interests of the American people in mind. Taking money to help corporations, organizations and foreign governments tighten their grip on American society. What else is new?

Of course, that doesn’t mean that all of the people who plan to vote for McCain have two brain cells to rub together and are therefore able to process this information. For them, there is no hope. However, perhaps those still on the fence will take it into consideration. There has been a haze of corruption over the White House for nearly 8 years, and McCain taking office will only make it more ominous.

Link [The Sietch Blog] + [Cape Wind]
Photo source: Flickr user Hot Rod Homepage