Imagine that a commission was formed by NC state government to look
at regulatory or tax reform and the state hired a consulting firm to do
the economic analysis of different proposals. Now imagine that it was
discovered that more than two thirds of the payment that this
consulting firm was to receive would be coming from well-known
conservative foundations–foundations like the Pope Foundation or the
Koch Foundation. What would the reaction be in the media and among the
usual left wing blogs and think tanks? There would be outrage and this
outrage would be justified. People would argue that there is no way,
given that two thirds of their compensation is coming from conservative
foundations, that their analysis is likely to be objective.
This is the situation that Paul Chesser has uncovered
with the consulting firm hired to provide analysis for DENR’s Climate
Action Policy Assessment Group (CAPAG), who in turn is using that
analysis to make recommendations to the Legislative Commission on
Climate Change. More than two thirds of the pay for their analysis is
coming from left wing foundations. Not surprisingly the analysis
that they are pursuing has taken the most extreme alarmist explanations
for global warming as a given and has ignored all evidence, most of
which is uncontested, that there is nothing North Carolina can do, even in
conjunction with the entire world, that can have any impact on the
climate. It is also not surprising that the proposals that they are
presenting to the CAPAG include a 50 cent per gallon increase in the
gasoline tax, higher taxes on electricity, increased spending on light
rail, major restrictions on property rights through smart growth land
use policies, and a host of other proposals that have been being pushed
by left wing environmental groups for decades.
The Center for Climate Strategies, which is a front for an advocacy
group known as the Pennsylvania Environment Council, has used left wing foundation money to buy its way
into controlling North Carolina’s policies toward global warming, and
unfortunately the officials at NC DENR have been willing to be bought.
The citizens of North Carolina should be outraged.
