Environmental Justice and the Law | ALEC’s neoliberal wrecking ball

Moderator’s Note: Over the past few years we have
monitored the activities of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC),
an infamous elite- and corporate donor-driven organization that has played a
major role framing and shaping the extreme right-wing agenda in state
legislatures controlled by Republicans. ALEC
– which is funded by the likes of Koch Industries, BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon
Mobil, and many other energy, oil, and natural gas industry corporations – is
well known for designing laws against voting, women’s reproductive health,
immigrant, and marriage equality rights. Indeed, ALEC is hardnosed in opposing
any policies that benefit low-income or working-class communities and lobbying
for laws designed to protect capitalist profits and political power.

With all the damage done to human and civil rights by
ALEC in the state legislative chambers, what they are doing to dismantle and
weaken environmental protections is also a grave and immediate threat to
democracy and sane ecological values.

I am posting a report prepared by the Center for
Media and Democracy’s PR Watch and first published on their website on December 3,
2013.
 One highlight of the Dirty Hands report includes an inventory
of at least 77 ALEC-drafted bills introduced in state legislatures across the
country that are designed to advance the agenda of these energy sector
corporations. Many of these bills are related to the expansion of the fracking
industry and others are efforts to thwart citizens from blocking the Keystone
XL pipeline and similar large energy boondoggles.

One
alarming trend involves the increasing number of regulations that would
restrict the First Amendment rights of environmental activists. The double
standard of ALEC-designed statutes is as blatant as can be: If you are a
capitalist then you get zero regulation because ALEC is supposedly for
“smaller” government. However, if you are an environmentalist then you get
multiple regulations with “big” government intruding on your freedom of speech
and assembly. ALEC is also busy crafting legislation to roll back the slow but
steady progress made investing in renewable energy sources. The energy
corporations want oil and gas and they want all public resources invested only
in oil and gas and perhaps nuclear.

You can
contact Center for Media and Democracy using their online contact form or via mail to 520
University Avenue, Suite 260, Madison, Wisconsin 53703. You can also reach us
by phone at 608-260-9713. This report was first posted at this link: Center for Media and Democracy.

ALEC, Fueled by Fossil Fuel

Industry, Pursues Retrograde Energy Agenda

DIRTY
HANDS: 77 ALEC BILLS IN 2013 ADVANCE A BIG OIL, BIG AG AGENDA

Center for Media and Democracy |
Madison, WI | December 3, 2013

At
least 77 bills to oppose renewable energy standards, support fracking and the
controversial Keystone XL pipeline, and otherwise undermine environmental laws
were introduced in 34 states in 2013, according to a new analysis from the
Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECexposed.org. In addition, nine states
have been inspired by ALEC’s “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” to crack
down on videographers documenting abuses on factory farms.

For
decades, ALEC has been a favored conduit for some of the world’s largest
polluters, like Koch Industries, BP, Shell, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil, and for
decades has promoted less environmental regulation and more drilling and
fracking.

ALEC
bills in recent years have pulled states out of regional climate initiatives,
opposed carbon dioxide emission standards, created hurdles for state agencies
attempting to regulate pollution, and tried to stop the federal Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The
legislation introduced in 2013 carries on this legacy. ALEC bills favor the
fossil fuel barons and promote a retrograde energy agenda that pollutes our air
and water and is slowly cooking the planet to what may soon be devastating
temperatures.

“Disregarding
science at every turn, ALEC is willing to simply serve as a front for the
fossil fuel industry,” says Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org. “Given the
stakes – the earth’s climate – that’s shabby and sad.”

ALEC
Tours the Tar Sands

In
October of 2012, ALEC organized an “Oil Sands Academy” where nine ALEC member
politicians were given an all-expenses-paid trip to Calgary and flown on a tour
of the Alberta tar sands while accompanied by oil industry lobbyists. The trip
was sponsored by pipeline operator TransCanada and the oil-industry funded
American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and email records obtained by
CMD show that after the trip, ALEC urged legislators to send “thank you” notes
to corporate lobbyists for their generosity.

At
least ten states in 2013 have introduced variations on the ALEC “Resolution in
Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline,” calling on the president and Congress to
approve the controversial project. Environmentalists oppose the pipeline
because extracting oil from Canadian tar sands would unlock huge amounts of
carbon, increasing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate
change. Despite being promoted as a “job creator,” the pipeline would only
create between 50 and 100 permanent positions in an economy of over 150 million
working people.

In
Nebraska, CMD filed an ethics complaint against state
senator Jim Smith, the ALEC State Chair for Nebraska, who never revealed to his
constituents that he had gone on the “Oil Sands Academy,” and failed to
disclose over a thousand dollars of travel expenses paid for by the Government
of Alberta, Canada. Sen. Smith has been exceptionally vocal when it comes to
his support for the Keystone XL pipeline. For example, he sponsored a 2012
Nebraska law that would -- if it survives a continuing legal challenge --
bypass the U.S. State Department and allow TransCanada to start building the
Nebraska part of the pipeline right away, regardless of any future decision by
the federal government.

ALEC
Partners with Heartland Institute for Rollback of Renewables

Even
more extraordinary is ALEC’s push this year to repeal Renewable Portfolio
Standards (RPS), which require that utility companies provide a certain amount
of their total energy from renewable sources like wind.

“ALEC’s
long time role in denying the science and policy solutions to climate change is
shifting into an evolving roadblock on state and federal clean energy
incentives, a necessary part of global warming mitigation,” says Connor Gibson,
a Research Associate at Greenpeace.

In
Germany, where the nation has set a goal of getting 35% of its energy from
renewables by 2020, public commitment to clean energy technologies is
transforming markets, driving innovation and generating huge numbers of jobs.
Even in the U.S., where there has been less public investment, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics says 3.1 million clean energy jobs have been
created in recent years



.

Perhaps
because of RPS’ job-creating qualities, ALEC’s bill to repeal renewable
standards, the “Electricity Freedom Act,” was too much even for the most
conservative legislatures. It failed to pass in every state where it was
introduced, even in North Carolina where it had the backing of Grover Norquist and
whose Republican-dominated legislature has been rolling multiple ALEC bills into law in 2013.

It
may be little surprise that ALEC’s attack on renewables was spearheaded by one
of its looniest members: the bill was brought to ALEC in May 2012 by the
Illinois-based Heartland Institute, a group best known for billboards comparing people who believe
in climate change to mass murderers like the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.

ALEC
is usually very secretive about its model legislation and its efforts in the
states, but ALEC did not disguise the fact that it had made the Electricity
Freedom Act a priority for the 2013 session. ALEC’s Energy, Environment and
Agriculture Task Force Director Todd Wynn published blog posts on the topic and was quoted in the press discussing how
ALEC was working with Heartland to promote the repeal bills.

In
many of the states that have proposed versions of the Electricity Freedom Act,
the right-wing infrastructure has sprung into action, almost according to a
script. The Beacon Hill Institute publishes a study (using discredited analysis) claiming that a
state’s renewable standards lead to higher energy costs, as it did in states
like Maine and Ohio and Wisconsin and Arizona. The David Koch-founded and-led
Americans for Prosperity organizes an event to “educate” its members about how
renewables are “punishing” consumers, as they did in Nebraska, and perhaps invite a guest from
the Heartland Institute to make similar claims, as they did in Kansas.

ALEC,
the Heartland Institute, and the Beacon Hill Institute all have received money
from foundations associated with Charles and David Koch,
and each are also part of the State Policy Network, an umbrella group of
right-wing organizations that claim adherence to the free market. SPN has received at least $10 million in the past
five years from the mysterious Donors Trust, which funnels money from the Kochs
and other conservative funders. SPN was also a “Chairman” level sponsor of ALEC’s
2011 Annual Conference and ALEC is an Associate Member of SPN.

But
even though the ALEC/Heartland anti-renewable energy fight found little success
in 2013, the group is not giving up.

New
Avenue Sought to Rollback Renewables

“I
expect that North Carolina and Kansas will probably pick up this issue again in
2014 and lead the charge across the country once again,” Wynn said.

ALEC
now appears to be modifying its strategy to find a more palatable way to attack
renewable standards.

At
its August 2013 meeting, ALEC will consider a watered-down version of the
Electricity Freedom Act with a bill called the “Market Power Renewables Act.”
That legislation would phase-out a state’s Renewable Portfolio Standards and
instead create a renewable “market” where consumers can choose to pay for
renewable energy, and allow utilities to purchase energy credits from outside
the state. This thwarts the purpose of RPS policies, which help create the
baseline demand for renewables that will spur the clean energy investment
necessary to continue developing the technology and infrastructure that will
drive costs down.

Credit: Occupy

But,
it would satisfy ALEC’s goal of preserving reliance on dirty energy from fossil
fuels.

ALEC
Bills Undermine Environmental Regulations, First Amendment

ALEC
energy, environment, and agriculture bills moving in the first six months of
2013 include:

• The “Electricity Freedom Act,” introduced in six
  states, repealing (or in some states weakening) Renewable Portfolio
  Standards. The standards have been a key component driving renewable
  energy growth -- which threatens the profits of ALEC’s polluter members.


• Variations on the “Resolution in Support of the
  Keystone XL Pipeline” (introduced in ten states) calling on the
  federal government to approve the controversial project to transport tar
  sands oil from Alberta, Canada across the United States. It is no
  coincidence that pipeline operator TransCanada is an ALEC member and
  funder.


• The misleadingly-named “Disclosure of Hydraulic
  Fracturing Fluid Composition Act” (introduced in five states) which
  would actually make it harder to find out what chemicals are being pumped
  underground through the fracking process. The bill, which was brought to
  ALEC by Exxon Mobil, carves out a giant loophole for “trade secrets” --
  potentially concealing the information the public might want to know.


• The “Environmental Literacy Improvement Act”
  (introduced in five states), seeks to sow doubt in the minds of young
  people about man’s role in the warming planet by requiring that educators “teach
  the controversy” when it comes to topics like climate change, where the
  science is beyond dispute.


• The “Environmental Services Public-Private
  Partnership Act” (introduced in two states) would give for-profit
  companies control of vital public health services like treating wastewater
  and drinking water -- the last place where you want a company to cut
  corners to increase profits.


• The “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act”
  (variations of which were introduced in nine states) have come to be known
  as “Ag-Gag” bills, as they criminalize investigations into abuses on
  factory farms and deem videographers “terrorists.”


• The “Disposal and Taxation of Public Lands Act”
  (considered in seven states) was modeled after a
  Utah law from 2012 and is an updated version of the ALEC “Sagebrush
  Rebellion Act,” where Western states assert control over federal lands
  that are being protected as wilderness preserves, in many cases to allow
  for resource extraction.

ALEC
Corporations Reap the Rewards

The
corporations bankrolling ALEC and benefitting from bills advanced by the
Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force include:

• Keystone XL Pipeline Operator TransCanada, a
  member of the ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force and
  which sponsored ALEC’s Spring Task Force Summit at the “Vice Chairman”
  level. It was one of the sponsors of the ALEC “Oil Sands Academy” where
  nine ALEC member legislators were given an all-expenses-paid trip to
  Calgary and flown around the Alberta tarsands while accompanied by oil
  industry lobbyists.


• Shell Oil, one of the largest fossil
  fuel conglomerates in the world, operates a tarsands extraction facility
  and sponsored lunch at the ALEC “Oil Sands Academy.” Shell has long been
  an ALEC member and funder, for example sponsoring ALEC’s 2011 Annual
  Meeting at the “Chairman” level (which in the past has cost $50,000) and
  hosting plenary sessions. Shell is also a member of the ALEC Civil Justice
  Task Force, presumably to advance legislation that would protect it from
  liability in case of oil spills or other disasters.


• British Petroleum (BP), the
  United Kingdom’s largest corporation and the company responsible for the
  2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, has long supported
  ALEC, including sponsoring ALEC’s 2011 meeting in New Orleans -- not far
  from the site of BP’s oil spill -- at the “Presidential” level (which in
  the past has cost $100,000).


• Peabody Energy is the largest producer of
  coal in the U.S. and boasts that it generates 10% of the country’s energy,
  and also has a lobbyist representative on the ALEC corporate board; it was
  the 2011 winner of ALEC’s “Private Sector Member of the Year” award and
  has sponsored ALEC meetings and events. In 2007, it spun-off coal mines it
  owned in West Virginia and Kentucky into an independent company, which
  then filed for bankruptcy and sought to be released from its pension and
  retirement operations.


• Duke Energy is one of the largest electric
  utility companies in the United States, and has publicly expressed concern
  about global warming and support for clean energy, but its continued
  support for ALEC undermines those rhetorical positions. A coalition of
  environmental groups have been urging Duke to drop ALEC
  for the past year, so far to no avail.


• Koch Industries, the privately-held
  multinational corporation owned by billionaire financiers David and
  Charles Koch, is involved in an array of industries including petroleum
  refining, fuel pipelines, coal supply and trading, oil and gas
  exploration, chemicals and polymers, fertilizer production, and commodity
  speculation. Koch Industries has long funded ALEC, sponsored its meetings,
  and had a lobbyist representative on the ALEC Private Enterprise Board.
  Charitable foundations associated with David and Charles have also been
  ALEC funders, with the Charles G. Koch Foundation giving ALEC a
  half-million-dollar loan in 1996.

Average
Americans Pay the Price

The
ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Task Force has not only promoted
anti-environmental bills, but also legislation to help industrial farms escape
public accountability -- which would prevent a 21st Century Upton Sinclair from
going undercover and creating a documentary work like The Jungle, which
led to a new wave of food safety regulations in the early 1900s.

ALEC’s
“Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” was the ideological ancestor for “ag-gag”
laws, introduced in nine states in 2013 to quash the First Amendment rights of
reporters, investigators and videographers by making it harder for them to
document issues with food safety and animal cruelty. The bills take many forms,
but generally make it a crime to shoot video of a farm or slaughterhouse, or to
apply for employment at these facilities under “false pretenses.”

Modern-day
Upton Sinclairs have been using similar techniques as The Jungle’s
author to document food safety issues -- Sinclair got a job at a Chicago slaughterhouse
under false pretenses so he could write his book -- but are using 21st Century
tools.

In
2007, for example, an undercover video investigation by the Humane Society
showed sick “downer” cows -- which are banned from human consumption because
they were implicated in the spread of mad cow disease -- being pushed towards
slaughter with forklifts and cattle prods, leading to the largest meat recall in
U.S. history.

The
ALEC-influenced “ag-gag” bills seek to criminalize this type of investigation.

In
March of this year, ALEC spokesman Bill Meierling defended the laws, telling the Associated Press, “at the end
of the day it’s about personal property rights or the individual right to
privacy.”

Utah
passed an ag-gag law in 2012, which led to
charges against a young woman named Amy
Meyer, who did nothing else besides film the outside of a slaughterhouse from
public land. Meyer regularly passed the slaughterhouse on her way to volunteer
at an animal sanctuary, and began filming when she witnessed what appeared to
be animal cruelty with possible public health repercussions: a sick (but still
living) cow being carried away from the building on a tractor. The
slaughterhouse owner asserted that she had trespassed, despite there being no
damage to the barbed wire fence surrounding his property.

“This
was the first time anyone has been charged under the ag-gag law,” Meyer told
CMD. “But as long as these ag-gag laws are around, this won’t be the last
prosecution, unfortunately.”

Less
than 24 hours after journalist Will Potter publicized her story, but months
after she was first charged, the prosecution dropped its case against Meyer.

“The
only purpose [of ag-gag laws] is to punish investigators who expose animal
cruelty and journalists who report on the ag industry,” she said. “These laws
are intended to keep consumers in dark and shield factory farms from scrutiny.”

As
written, the ALEC model bill could also criminalize environmental civil
disobedience, such as when activists “obstruct” the business operations of a
logging or mining facility through tree-sits or road blockades. A bill
reflecting these provisions was introduced in Oregon this year to
outlaw most civil disobedience against logging operations.

Polluters
Stand With ALEC

Over
the past year-and-a-half, at least 49 global corporations have dropped
their ALEC membership – including companies like Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, and Amazon
– but oil and energy companies have stood by ALEC.

“Despite
its terrible reputation, ALEC is still valued by polluting companies like
ExxonMobil, Duke Energy and Koch Industries, which finance and help craft ALEC’s
state policies to smother competition from clean energy industries and offer
handouts to fossil fuel companies at every turn,” says Greenpeace’s Gibson.

“ALEC’s
guise of ‘free market environmentalism’ is just a code word for its real
mission in our states’ legislatures: to allow dirty energy companies to pollute
as much as they want, to attack incentives for clean energy competitors and to
secure government handouts to oil, gas and coal interests,” Gibson says. “That’s
not a free market.”

View the full list of 2013 bills from the ALEC Energy, Environment, and
Agriculture Task Force bills here.

ALEC Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Bills 2013
State	ALEC Bill	State Bill
AL	Energy Efficiency and Savings Act	HB 191
AZ	Environmental Literacy Improvement Act	SB 1213
AZ	Regulatory Costs Fairness Act	HB 2319
AR	The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act	SB 13, SB 14
AR	Property Investment Protection Act	SB 367
CO	Environmental Literacy Improvement Act	HB 13-1089
CO	Disposal and Taxation of Public Lands Act	SB 13-142
FL	The Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act	H 745, SB 1776
ID	Disposal and Taxation of Public Lands Act	HCR 21
ID	Resolution Demanding that Congress Convey Title of Federal Public Lands to the States	HCR 22
IL	Resolution Urging the President and Congress to Act Expeditiously in Procuring a Site or Sites for the Storage of High-Level Radioactive Waste	SR 142
IL	State Implementation Plan Requirements for Ozone and Particulate Matter Attainment	SB 1704
IL	The Common Sense Scientific and Technical Evidence Act	HB 2221
IL	The Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act	HB 2615
IN	Agriculture Bio-Security Act	HB 1562
IN	The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act	SB 373, SB 391
IN	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	SCR 38, SR 41
IN	Right to Farm Act	SB 571
KS	Electricity Freedom Act	HB 2241
KS	Environmental Literacy Improvement Act	HB 2306
KS	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	HCR 5014
KY	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	SCR 273, HR 122
KY	Environmental Literacy Improvement Act	HB 269
LA	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	SCR 115, SCR 125
MD	Environmental Services Public-Private Partnership Act	HB 560, SB 538
MI	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	SCR 6
MI	The Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act	HB 4061
MN	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	SF 479, HF 987
MN	Electricity Freedom Act	HF 306
MS	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	SC 543, SR 3
MO	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	HCR 19
MO	Energy Efficiency and Savings Act	SB 26
MT	Disposal and Taxation of Public Lands Act	SJR 15
NC	Electricity Freedom Act	HB 298
NC	The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act	SB 648
NE	The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act	LB 204
NJ	Environmental Services Public-Private Partnership Act	A 4082
NM	The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act	SB 552
NM	Disposal and Taxation of Public Lands Act	HB 292
NM	The Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act	HB 136
NV	Disposal and Taxation of Public Lands Act	AB 227
NY	Energy Efficiency and Savings Act	A 52, S 3854, A 758, S 2635
NY	Regulatory Costs Fairness Act	A 3216
OH	Electricity Freedom Act	SB 34
OH	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	HCR 9, SCR 7
OK	Environmental Literacy Improvement Act	HB 1674
OR	Climate Accountability Act	HB 2806
PA	The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act	HB 683
SC	Disposal and Taxation of Public Lands Act	HR 3552
SD	Resolution in Support of the Keystone XL Pipeline	HCR 1006
TN	The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act	SB 1248, HB 1191
TX	Energy Efficiency and Savings Act	HB 2746
TX	Electricity Freedom Act	HB 2026
TX	Performance Based Permitting Act	HB 2949
TX	Protecting Property Rights to Facilitate Species Conservation	SB 468, HB 3509
VT	The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act	S 162
WV	Verifiable Science Act	HB 3129
WV	Electricity Freedom Act	HB 2609
WY	The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act	HB 126
WY	Resolution Supporting the Private Ownership of Property	HJ 3
WY	The Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act	SF 157