The Money Trail Anti-warming scam at work in NY
| 09 February 2010
New York state is frittering away millions to "buy" prefab anti-global-warming advice that would just be more bad news for the local economy.
Last November, Gov. Paterson issued an executive order setting up a Climate Action Council. This panel of state bureaucrats will supposedly address ways the state can fight warming. In fact, the fix is in: The report will push strongly toward a phase-out of New York's fossil-fueled power plants and motor vehicles.
This drill has been run already in 33 states, from Alaska to Florida. Behind most of those efforts -- and now New York's -- is the Center for Climate Strategies, a Washington-based warming-alarmist group that lobbies governors to use its services.
The nonprofit usually collects about a half-million dollars each time it's hired -- some from state coffers, but more from such wealthy activist foundations as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
In state after state, CCS signs on as "technical experts" -- dispassionate "facilitators" assisting a "stakeholder process." In fact, it winds up exerting total control over the climate panel's process -- running the meetings, limiting the menu of acceptable ideas and prohibiting discussion of science.
Richard Ford, a University of Arkansas environmental-economics professor who served on his state's Governor's Commission on Global Warming, explained CCS' behavior to the Arkansas News Bureau last year. Pointing to the state law establishing the commission, he said, "It says that 'it is imperative that Arkansas study the scientific data . . . to determine whether global warming is an immediate threat to the citizens in the State of Arkansas.' We did not do that."
When the process is done, the result is always 50-some recommendations to the governor (for making executive orders) and the Legislature (to make laws) that raise energy prices and diminish consumer freedom.
Ideas that have taken hold with other states' commissions include biofuel mandates and subsidies, vehicle-idling limits, taxpayer-funded incentives to live near rail stations and pay-by-the-mile insurance premiums.
Beyond these specifics, CCS' agenda mainly seeks to replace efficient fossil-fuel energy with such inadequate, expensive "renewables" as solar or wind power -- or at least to massively penalize the use of fossil fuels and subsidize "renewables." Such policies would force New Yorkers to pay millions more for energy -- a burden that would fall hardest on the poor.
Meanwhile, the "science" behind global warming has been falling apart. We've learned that researchers at the UK's Climatic Research Unit fudged important data and withheld records from outside scientists who wanted to test their work.
And the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Global Climate Change turns out to have used biased research from such alarmist groups as the World Wildlife Fund and "consensus science" culled from such sources as student essays and an Antarctic tour operator's boot-cleaning guide. Yet the IPCC is the authority upon which CCS grounds its case for action (see nyclimatechange.us).
State-level plans engineered elsewhere by CCS have promised that its proposals to raise energy costs will somehow bring vast economic benefits ("Green jobs! Cost savings!") yet don't even specify any gains on the climate.
This exercise in futility might be great for keeping the nonprofit's staff rolling in grant money -- but it can do nothing for New York. Paterson should shut the panel down now.
