A pair of John Locke Foundation experts helped North Carolina’s Americans for Prosperity chapter Thursday as it presented a Raleigh webcast of the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Cancun, Mexico. Roy Cordato, Vice President for Research and Resident Scholar, and Daren Bakst, Director of Legal and Regulatory Studies, offered their expertise to the AFP audience assembled at the JLF Raleigh office. Katy’s Conservative Corner blog describes the event here. Cordato also discussed the climate summit this week with Chad Adams on WLTT Radio’s morning program. Bakst appeared on WPTF Radio to discuss the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to take up an Arizona case involving taxpayer-financed election campaigns. American Thinker published Bakst’s column on that issue. Though unnamed, Cordato and Bakst are the primary JLF researchers discussed in a recent Charlotte Business Journal article about the future of environmental legislation in the North Carolina General Assembly. ([Democratic Sen. Ellie Kinnaird] fears what she calls the more libertarian wing of the GOP. She cites a call by the John Locke Foundation for repeal of North Carolina’s landmark energy legislation in 2007, which requires utilities to sell a percentage of their power from renewable sources.) The Durham Herald-Sun also cited the John Locke Foundation in a recent editorial about potential budget cuts for the University of North Carolina system. ([T]he budget process this year may be done with axes and butcher’s knives rather than scalpels — and the warning signals suggest that the UNC System is at the front of the line to the chopping block. Those signals generally come from the state’s most prominent conservative policy group, the John Locke Foundation, rather than from legislators. But JLF is influential and, more to the point, has been in Raleigh for 20 years, which is 20 years longer than many of the new legislators. JLF is quick, and correct, to remind people that the state is a silent partner in writing tuition checks.)