October 15, 2007
RALEIGH – North Carolinians should question the process that’s leading to proposals for fighting global warming in the Tar Heel state. That’s the warning from a John Locke Foundation analyst who has monitored the process.
Click here to view and here to listen to Dr. Roy Cordato discussing this press release.
“This process has been skewed from the start toward the agenda of global warming alarmists,” said Dr. Roy Cordato, JLF Vice President for Research and Resident Scholar. “Today’s planned announcement of proposals for addressing climate change is really just a ‘dog and pony show’ to provide some cover for the alarmist agenda.”
A group called the Climate Action Plan Advisory Group (CAPAG) is scheduled to unveil 56 proposals today. Those proposals are billed as ways North Carolina could address problems linked to climate change. The proposals include items that would raise taxes, restrict land use, and increase energy costs. The N.C. Division of Air Quality set up CAPAG with the help of a consultant called the Center for Climate Strategies, Cordato said.
“The problem is that the Center for Climate Strategies is no objective consulting firm,” he said. “It is an advocacy group disguised as a consultant. This group tied to the Pennsylvania Environmental Council has been bought and paid for by a battery of leftwing foundations. For several years it has been infiltrating state government all across the country.”
Problems extend beyond just the consultant’s viewpoint, Cordato said. “The 56 proposals were chosen from an original list crafted by CCS with no other options allowed to be part of the discussion process,” he said. “In addition, all these proposals were adopted with absolutely no discussion of the science of global warming. CCS and its government enablers forbade all efforts to bring up the science. CCS devised rules of discussion that stifled all scientific debate.”
The Center for Climate Strategies has employed the same strategy in other states, said Pat Michaels, former Virginia state climatologist and former president of the American Association of State Climatologists. “In state after state, CCS ‘advises’ on this process, specifically what to do in order to achieve ‘consensus,’” Michaels said. “In fact, CCS presents a series of stipulations, one of which is particularly odd: The Commission will take discussion of global warming science off the table.”
Stifling that discussion allows CCS and its state-government colleagues to avoid hard questions, Michaels said. “There isn’t any extant suite of technologies that are politically acceptable to the CCS crowd that can significantly alter the warming trajectory the planet is on,” he said. “That’s the science that CCS wants off the table.”
Any policies resulting from such a flawed process must be suspect, Cordato said. “That’s right, a panel set up to devise strategies for dealing with climate change allowed absolutely no discussion of the science,” he said. “There’s nothing like open government.”
For more information, please contact Dr. Roy Cordato at (919) 828-3876 or [email protected]. To arrange an interview, contact Mitch Kokai at (919) 306-8736 or [email protected].