Bernie Sanders' Broadband Plan Is Comcast's Worst Nightmare

09 December 19 Yesterday 11 Reader-Supporters Kept RSN Going Sunday we served 21,820 readers. 11 of those people said “yes I will help.” Though their numbers were small, their impact was huge. We are working as hard as we can to close the September funding gap. Who can help? Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts CA 95611

08 December 19

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

WE WON'T CUT YOU OFF, BUT WE DO NEED YOUR HELP: How many people out there have been cut off by a corporate service provider for not paying their bill? Most likely everyone, at one time or another for one reason or another. In the 18 years we have been doing this we have never cut anyone off for not paying...and we never will. We go the far harder route of earning your support through our efforts on your behalf. Our challenge is find a way to pay the organization's bills. The bills are relatively small, but we do have to pay them. If you are not an active donor please join those who are. Onward. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

---

Bernie Sanders' Broadband Plan Is Comcast's Worst Nightmare

Karl Bode, VICE
Bode writes: "Sanders promises to break up media monopolies, restore net neutrality, and embrace the countless towns and cities that are building their own broadband networks."
READ MORE


Jerry Nadler listens as constitutional scholars testify before the House judiciary committee. (photo: Reuters)

Nadler May Add Mueller Counts Against Trump
Oliver Laughland, Guardian UK
Laughland writes: "The Democratic chairman of the House judiciary committee, Jerry Nadler, has not ruled out including evidence from the Mueller report in articles of impeachment against Donald Trump that could be published as early as next week."
READ MORE


Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) takes the stage before speaking at the Climate Crisis Summit at Drake University on November 9, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa. (photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

AOC Celebrates That "Amazon Is Coming to NYC Anyway" Without Tax Incentives

Daniel Politi, Slate

Politi writes: "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is 'waiting on the haters to apologize' after Amazon said it would open up corporate offices in New York City to house more than 1,500 employees."

 The announcement from the internet giant came less than a year after it abruptly dropped plans to build a second headquarters in the city following backlash to the some $3 billion in financial incentives that the government had offered to woo the company. Ocasio-Cortez quickly celebrated the announcement in a series of tweets.

“Won’t you look at that: Amazon is coming to NYC anyway - *without* requiring the public to finance shady deals, helipad handouts for Jeff Bezos, & corporate giveaways,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Maybe the Trump admin should focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families.” She then tweeted a photo of herself sitting on a couch saying she was waiting for apologies .

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

✔@AOC

Me waiting on the haters to apologize after we were proven right on Amazon and saved the public billions https://twitter.com/jordanuhl/status/1203089153170259970 …

jordan

✔@JordanUhl

.@AOC was unfairly criticized and attacked for standing up to one of the biggest companies in the world.

That company just caved. https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/1203088492236021765 …

339K

6:25 PM - Dec 6, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

75.4K people are talking about this

The lawmaker’s tweets came shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon had signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet in New York City. Unlike earlier expansions, the company is setting up shop without any special tax incentives. Some had worried that when Amazon pulled out of setting up its second headquarters in New York it would scare away other large businesses. “Instead, Amazon’s continued expansion marks the latest sign that tech companies are scrambling for prime Manhattan real estate to attract the city’s large and well-educated talent pool,” reports the Journal.

Some though were quick to criticize Ocasio-Cortez, saying her claiming victory on the issue was a bit misleading considering that the new office space is far smaller than what the online giant had vowed to set up in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City as part of its second headquarters. The company had pledged to create 25,000 new jobs as part of that expansion.

READ MORE

From left, Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan, University of North Carolina Law School professor Michael Gerhardt and George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley appear for a hearing on the constitutional grounds for the impeachment of President Trump. (photo: Alex Brandon/AP)

Four Ways Democratic Presidential Candidates Can Use Impeachment to Their Advantage
Jennifer Rubin, The Washington Post
Rubin writes: "Whether that is true now, they are likely to get a 2020 gift never before handed to the party out of the White House: a month-long impeachment trial in which Trump's wrongdoing, recklessness and corruption are aired every day, all day, on every news channel. To quote Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), they better not screw this up."
READ MORE


Gabrielle Union. (photo: Getty Images)

The Power and Danger of Being a Difficult Woman
Rachel Sklar, Medium
Sklar writes: "In the appalling case of Gabrielle Union's removal from America's Got Talent by NBC, 'A source close to the production disputes that Union was fired,' reports Yashar Ali at Vulture, 'and specifically that she was fired for being perceived as 'difficult.'"
READ MORE


A rally near Place de la République in support of the national strike in France, one of the largest nationwide strike in years, on December 5, 2019 in Paris, France. (photo: Kiran Ridley/Getty Images)

Emmanuel Macron Wants to End France's Welfare State
Stathis Kouvelakis, Jacobin
Kouvelakis writes: "France was paralyzed by strikes on Friday, as workers from train drivers to teachers revolted against Emmanuel Macron's attack on pensions. While the liberal president fancies himself as a French 'Thatcher,' his bid to tear up France's welfare state now faces its most powerful opposition yet."
READ MORE

Air pollution. (photo: Robyn Beck/Getty Images)

Getting Rid of Pollution Improves Public Health Almost Immediately
Emily Pontecorvo, Grist
Pontecorvo writes: "After decades of steadily declining, air pollution is once again on the rise in the United States. Between 2016 and 2018, pollution of fine particulate matter - tiny particles that are emitted whenever we burn anything - rose by more than 5 percent."

That’s terrible news for Americans’ health. The researchers who identified the increase in pollution calculated that it was linked to 9,700 additional premature deaths in 2018. Worldwide, outdoor air pollution is responsible for an estimated 4.2 million deaths per year. It affects nearly every organ in the body, and can cause or contribute to stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, and chronic respiratory diseases.

The good news is that scientists have repeatedly found that improving air quality has quick and significant benefits for public health. A new analysis of the literature on pollution reduction published this week in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society shows that as soon as two weeks after a source of pollution is removed, many respiratory symptoms experienced by the surrounding community disappear and hospital visits are reduced. Within as little as two months, mortality drops as well.

The paper looks at several cases where a temporary reduction in pollution was the only change in a community that could account for major differences in health outcomes. For example, when a steel mill in the Utah Valley closed for just 13 months from 1986 to 1987, hospitalizations for pneumonia, bronchitis, and asthma went down, especially for children. School absences were reduced by 40 percent. Women who were pregnant during the year the mill was closed were less likely to have premature births than those who were pregnant before or after. And there was a 16 percent decrease in overall mortality.

When the Summer Olympics were held in Atlanta, Georgia in 1996, the city closed the downtown area to private vehicles and upped its public transportation system to run 24 hours a day, with additional bus services. The closure lasted only 17 days, but peak daily ozone concentrations went down 28 percent. Over the next month, children sought care for their asthma 42 percent less frequently, pediatric emergency room visits went down by 11 percent, and overall hospitalizations for asthma went down by 19 percent.

These numbers make a powerful case for reducing air pollution — especially because there’s next to nothing people can do personally to avoid it. That’s especially true for vulnerable populations who live near industrial zones, highways, and power plants because the real estate is affordable there, or because those big polluters set up shop in their neighborhoods because of structural racism.

There’s a range of interventions that can help, and some of them are already being implemented on a local scale, like car-free streets. San Francisco recently voted to shut down the central artery of Market Street to private cars. New York City is experimenting with doing the same to Manhattan’s 14th Street. In Oslo, Norway, the entire downtown is now basically car-free. Smoking bans, cleaner fuels for school buses, and switching out fossil-fuel burning home heating systems for electric ones have also been proven to improve health outcomes.

The federal government could help by enforcing the Clean Air Act stringently (instead of, you know, rolling parts of it back). The researchers who identified the recent reversal in air pollution found that the Environmental Protection Agency’s actions against polluters have been falling since 2009. They also attribute the increase in pollution to the rise of natural gas and an increase in driving. So developing a national climate policy to use more renewable energy and electrify buildings and cars won’t just slow global warming, it will literally save lives — and fast.

READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN

Update My Monthly Donation

This & that.....

League of Conservation Voters

 

Former Senator Jim Jeffords passed away earlier today. He was a true environmental champion who helped make the Clean Air Act of 1990 a reality. We remember him today for his legacy of environmental protection. Read LCV's statement here: http://bit.ly/1w1TpYn
 

 

US Uncut

Let's not forget who the real looters are.



 

Who supports a dirty environment and global warming?

It's difficult to understand why anyone would support continuing to accelerate Global Warming with its catastrophic consequences.

Can it really be all about GREED? Do they think they're magically immune?

Top Story More Federal User Fees Could Be Part of a Mini Budget Deal Observers have low expectations of the special House-Senate committee set up to craft recommendations for a long-term fiscal deal to replace the next nine years of so-called "sequestration" (automatic and indiscriminate budget cuts). Those recommendations are due by Dec. 13. The committee met for the first time last week, with Republicans publicly opposed to tax reforms that could generate more revenue and Democrats rejecting a spending cuts-only approach. But some think a smaller deal could happen to replace a year or more of sequestration, involving more "federal user fees" as a modest way to generate more funding. News & Analysis Citizen Health & Safety Congress Continues Efforts to Thwart Climate Change Emissions Limits On Sept. 20, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a new proposal to limit carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from new coal-fired power plants. The Center for Effective Government applauded the steady progress on the rule but warned of likely challenges from climate-change deniers, regulatory opponents, and their allies in Congress. Over the past month, these challenges have appeared in the form of draft legislation and appropriations riders that seek to repeal or severely limit EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from fossil-fueled power plants under the Clean Air Act. Open, Accountable Government E-Gov Spotlight: EPA's Enforcement Database Gets Updated On Oct. 23, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a beta 2.0 version of its enforcement and compliance web-based tool. The new version should make it easier for the public to find information on which facilities near their communities violate air, water, and pollution standards. The agency has requested user feedback as it continues to update and fine-tune the site, so we encourage readers to visit the website and provide comments on your experience to the agency.

Donate to the Center for Effective Government Today! Make a contribution to support our work to build an open, accountable government that advances the priorities defined by an informed citizenry! If you're a federal employee, please support the Center for Effective Government by donating through the Combined Federal Campaign. The current CFC cycle ends on Dec. 15, so please give today! Find us listed under CFC #10201. From The Fine Print Agency Extends Comment Period on Long-Overdue Worker Safety Rule The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has extended the public comment period for a proposed rule to lower worker exposure to deadly crystalline silica. Find more posts on our blog, The Fine Print.

---

DONATE

Bill Moyers

What do Big Coal and Wall Street have in common? Both industries are spending big bucks on lobbyists and legal fees to weaken yet-to-be-written regulations from the EPA and Dodd Frank.

 

 

 

Big Coal Takes on Obama’s New Pollution Limits

September 4, 2013

by John Light

 

Sunflower Electric Cooperative's coal-fired power plant churns out electricity in Holcomb, Kan. Existing power plants like this one, as well as those constructed in the future, will face tougher environmental regulations. Dirty energy lobbyists are displeased. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, file)

 

In June, President Obama announced his Climate Change Action Plan, which calls for cutting total U.S. carbon pollution by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. A key part of that effort is placing limits on the amount of CO2 emitted by power plants, and the EPA plans to do it by enforcing regulations under section 111d of the Clean Air Act. The little-known section of the 1970 law allows the EPA to develop and apply regulations to specific types of polluters — e.g., sulfuric acid manufacturers, landfills and, now, power plants.
The EPA explains:

For newly built power plants, the plan calls for EPA to issue a new proposal by September, 20, 2013, and to issue a final rule in a timely fashion after considering all public comments, as appropriate. For existing plants, the plan calls for EPA to issue proposed carbon pollution standards, regulations, or guidelines, as appropriate, for modified and existing power plants by no later than June 1, 2014 and issue final standards, regulations, or guidelines, as appropriate, by no later than June 1, 2015.

Approximately 40 percent of America’s carbon footprint comes from power plants (transportation is the other big one), and there are many viable alternatives to the dirty fuels many plants burn. That’s why environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council argue that targeting power plants makes sense: Power plants don’t have to get 37 percent of their energy from coal, and an additional 30 percent from (somewhat cleaner, but justifiably controversial) natural gas. Far more than the current 12 percent could come from renewable sources.

Contributors to America's carbon footprint (Graphic: EPA)

Before any new law or policy can go into effect, there is an extensive rulemaking process. With a situation as complex — and contentious — as regulating already-existing power plants, that process can take years to complete.

This week, the EPA will engage policymakers and community leaders in that process with a “webinar” video explaining the Clean Air Act’s section 111d and how the agency plans to use it.

Of course, the industry that stands to lose the most — the industry responsible for extracting and burning America’s most widely used dirty fuel, coal — isn’t taking this lying down. The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) reports that the new regulations could “halt construction of future coal plants” and mean potential closure for many of the more than 500 coal plans operating today. They outlined three ways in which the industry will likely push back.

• Industry is sure to flex its muscles in the regulatory process, inundating the EPA with comments, analyses, legal opinions and technical documents, and picking apart its draft plans.
• Plan critics will engage lobbyists to influence the rules’ language, enlisting support from other federal agencies, and offering alternatives to the White House.
• And, the coal industry is sure to oppose strict rules in a scorched-earth strategy infused with aid from allies in Congress.

This sort of multipronged approach by industry to weaken yet-to-be-written regulation is a time-honored tradition in Washington. A recent corporate interest group success story can be seen with the painfully slow implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the law written to reign in the risky banking behaviors that led to the 2007-2008 financial crisis and caused our ongoing international economic woes today.
Three years after the president signed Dodd-Frank into law, regulators are besieged by comments on the rulemaking process from Wall Street, and politicians have been inundated with lobbying money from the same. Some in Congress challenged parts of the law, or even sought to repeal it entirely. Of the 398 deadlines set for regulators to write the rules for implementing the law, 280 — or about 70 percent — have come and gone, and 61.4 percent of them were missed. The Volcker Rule, one of the law’s most powerful elements, was supposed to go into effect over a year ago but has yet to be implemented. The Government Accountability Office said in January that one of the major challenges slowing regulators was “extensive industry involvement through comment letters and litigation resulting from rulemakings.”
The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics, writes:

By most accounts, the banks’ besiege-the-regulators strategy has yielded rich rewards in sapping, slowing, and stymieing regulations intended to prevent another massive financial crisis. The emerging consensus is that Dodd-Frank implementation is limping, while the big banks are poised to return to being the most profitable industry in the U.S.

Dodd-Frank, in its final form, will be a lot more comfortable for Wall Street than the lawmakers who wrote the law would have hoped. The coal industry hopes to achieve the same thing with the EPA’s regulation of power plant emissions.

But they may not succeed. In a recent story for The National Journal, Coral Davenport writes that the coal lobby feels existentially threatened — more so, at least, than our country’s banking elite.

Coal is under siege from forces beyond its control. Its dominant place in the American economy is slipping—and so, for the first time in a century, is its ability to get what it wants from Washington. There are two big reasons for this. The first is economic: Over the past two years, as a glut of cheap natural gas has flooded the U.S. energy market, coal has been pushed out. The second is more existential: The world is waking up to the fact that pollution from coal-burning plants is the chief cause of global warming. Although some coal companies still deny that, governments around the world don’t—and they are pushing policies to end coal’s use. In the U.S., President Obama is deploying the full force of his executive authority to crack down on climate change. Coal is now reckoning with its role in global warming, whether it likes it or not.

But stricter regulations on burning coal in America wouldn’t necessarily be a nail in the coal industry’s coffin. As domestic natural gas production has increased, coal has successfully found overseas markets for their American product. United States coal exports hit a record 126 million short tons last year.

Related Features

• The Last Decade Was One of Climate Extremes
• Marty Kaplan on Why the Media Ignores Climate Change
• The Naïveté We Need: Notes on a Climate Action
• Climate Change Deniers at War with Military Over Green Energy
• Lobbying Moves into the Shadows
• Tracking Political Contributions from Oil and Coal

Struggling to Breathe

In May 2013, doctors, nurses, clergy, labor advocates and community activists traveled from every state to Washington, D.C. to meet with their elected officials and tell their stories of why clean air is important.

Phillip Bautista, a registered nurse from California, works in one of the nation's most polluted cities. Everyday, he sees patients struggling to breathe due to bad air quality. Phillip was one of the Ambassadors, and this is his story.

Code Orange Alert Day for Southeastern counties

It's time to end Dirty Coal!
[Remember that a 'Waste-to-Energy Incinerator is planned in Taunton that will contribute to unsafe air quality.]

Please add your name to improve Air Quality!

Did you hear today's news? The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) declared an ozone Code Orange Alert Day for Southeastern counties Barnstable, Dukes, Nantucket, Bristol and Plymouth.¹

That means that air pollution has exceeded safe levels for sensitive groups² -- our air is unsafe to breathe. Burning coal for energy generates emissions of toxic gases and particles with devastating consequences for public health. Now it's finally catching up with us. The good news is we have an opportunity to clean up our air in Massachusetts.

Will you send a message to Governor Patrick telling him you want clean air and a coal free Massachusetts?

Governor Patrick needs to hear from hundreds of people across Southeastern Massachusetts. He needs to know that we're serious about cleaning up coal pollution. There are three coal plants in Massachusetts that contribute to unhealthy air (Salem Harbor Station, Mount Tom in Holyoke and Brayton Point in Somerset).

Air pollution from coal emissions is especially harmful to Massachusetts children -- can you imagine having to pack their school bags with a mask alongside their lunch and homework? We can and must do better.

Send your message now. Tell Governor Patrick that unsafe air is unacceptable, and we need swift action to clean up our air from harmful coal pollution!

Sincerely,

Drew Grande
Beyond Coal Campaign
Sierra Club

P.S. After you take action, forward this message or spread the word on Facebook or Twitter by clicking our handy share buttons below:

1.) Weatherunderground.com Air Quality Alert 5.30.2013
2.) Air Quality Index (AQI) - A Guide to Air Quality and Your Health, 2012

Tell Gov. Patrick to Clean Up Our Air!

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection declared today an "Orange Alert" Air Quality Day for Southeastern Mass. That means that air pollution has exceeded safe levels for children, older adults and anyone with respiratory diseases, like asthma and COPD, to breathe.

Burning coal for energy generates emissions of toxic gasses and particles that create soot, smog, acid rain, and global warming pollution, with devastating consequences for public health. But we can do something about it!

Send a message to Governor Patrick telling him to clean up our air and keep us safe from coal pollution!

Personalize the message text on the LINK with your own words, if you wish.

Complete the form [on LINK] with your information.

Click the Send Message button to send your message to Governor Patrick

https://secure.sierraclub.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=11219&autologin=true&s_src=213ECOAE22

The ALEC Hen in the Fox Den

The Union of Concerned Scientists offered the information below that highlights the organized efforts of Dirty Energy Polluters to thwart efforts to protect our environment and address Global Warming.

It's a good guess you won't see this on MSM.

You probably know how dangerous burning coal can be for our planet and our health—it leads to acid rain, lung disease, mercury poisoning, and cancer-causing smog. But coal companies want to hide the facts and keep polluting.

That's why they recently sponsored a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) where Indiana's top environmental regulator ran a workshop on how to obstruct clean air regulations.¹ ALEC is also going after state renewable energy standards across the country.

UCS members are fighting to get the truth in front of the public and into policy makers' hands. We've identified more than 350 specific coal generators that are ripe for retirement because they are economically uncompetitive with other energy sources, and are releasing harmful levels of pollution—mercury, soot, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide—into our air and water.²

UCS members are building a movement. They know there are no quick fixes to climate change, clean energy, and a healthier food system; they're in this for the long haul. Just look at the decade-long campaign you powered to protect federal whistleblowers who expose censorship or misuse of government science—it was a long road, but we won.

Our campaign to shut down the country's dirtiest coal generators is winning, too. When Georgia Power announced the retirement of 15 of its power plants, every single coal generator had been identified in our report.³ While there are hundreds left to go around the country, we know we're taking the right approach.

Because we prize our independence and objectivity, nearly all of our funding comes from individuals like you and philanthropic foundations, which makes every single UCS member especially critical to our success. And our ranks are growing every year, with more and more people who believe that facts matter and must be defended. That's why I hope you will become a 2013 member today.

1. http://www.alternet.org/environment/climate-denying-indiana-regulator-helps-alec-coal-companies-delay-epa-climate-rules
2. http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/smart-energy-solutions/decrease-coal/ripe-for-retirement-closing-americas-costliest-coal-plants.html
3. http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ga-power-closures-0356.html

Climate-denying Indiana Regulator Helps ALEC Coal Companies Delay EPA Climate Rules

Leaked documents reveal that ALEC's anti-environmental jamboree was inundated with coal money and featured an Indiana regulator advising coal utilities on delaying EPA rules.

You're probably familiar with the old "fox in the hen house" story, but what about when a hen joins the fox den?

This is the case with the recent American Legislative Exchange Council ( ALEC) meeting in Washington, DC. Leaked documents obtained by Greenpeace reveal that ALEC's anti-environmental jamboree was inundated with coal money and featured an Indiana regulator advising coal utilities on delaying US Environmental Protection Agency rules to control greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous air pollution.
At ALEC's coal-sponsored meeting, where state legislators and corporate representatives meet to create template state laws ranging from attacks on clean energy to privatization of public schools, Indiana's Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Management Tom Easterly laid out a plan to stall the US EPA global warming action in a power point clearly addressed to coal industry representatives at ALEC's meeting.

In a USB drive branded with the logo of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a folder labeled "Easterly" contains a presentation titled " Easterly ALEC presentation 11 28 12" explaining current EPA air pollution rules and how Tom Easterly has worked to obstruct them. The power points is branded with the Indiana Department of Environmental Protection seal. In the latter presentation, Easterly ended his briefing to ALEC's dirty energy members with suggestions for delaying EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions at coal plants.

Easterly's presentation, which is posted on his Indiana Dept. of Environmental Mgmt commissioner webpage, even offered a template state resolution that would burden EPA with conducting a number of unnecessary cost benefit analyses (which the federal government has done through the Social Cost of Carbon analysis) in the process of controlling GHG emissions.

The template resolution Easterly presented to ALEC was created by the Environmental Council of States (ECOS), a group of state regulators that create template state resolutions similar to ALEC, often with overlapping agendas that benefit coal companies. ECOS has some questionable template state resolutions for an "Environmental" organization, including a resolution urging EPA not to classify coal ash as "hazardous." Although its less regulated than household trash, coal ash contains neurotoxins, carcinogens and radioactive elements and is stored in dangerous slurry "ponds" that can leak these dangerous toxins into our waterways.

Almost too predictably, ECOS' work is sponsored by the coal fronts like ACCCE and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), both sponsors of the ALEC meeting where Easterly presented the ECOS model resolution. See clean air watchdog Frank O'Donnell's blog on ECOS for more.

Easterly's work, including his presentation to ALEC, is also promoted by the Midwest Ozone Group, a group whose membersinclude ACCCE, American Electric Power and Duke Energy.

Commissioner Tom Easterly's suggestion of burdening EPA with tasks beyond its responsibility is concerning, as is his ongoing campaign to discredit the science of global warming--something he doesn't have the scientific qualifications to do. To this end, the Indiana regulator fits nicely into the coal industry's long history of denying problems they don't want to be held accountable for and delaying solutions to those problems. The same processes applied to acid rain, a problem the coal industry also denied for years--check out Greenpeace's collection of Coal Ads: Decades of Deception.

Climate Science Denial at Indiana's Department of Environmental Management
Even before Indiana's top enforcer of federal and state environmental regulations was advising coal companies on how to continuing polluting our air and water, it appears that denial of basic climate science is the state's official position on global warming--Indiana's 2011 " State of the Environment" report rehashes tired climate denier arguments such as global temperature records having "no appreciable change since about 1998." (see why this is a lie) and referencing the "medieval warm period" as false proof that current temperature anomalies are normal (they aren't, see Skeptical Science for a proper debunking). Similar arguments have apparently been presented by the Indiana government to ALEC since 2008--the ACCCE USB drive contains another Indiana power point created in 2008 full of junk climate "science." This level of scientific illiteracy is concerning, especially for the regulatory body responsible for overseeing pollution controls for the coal industry.

Remember, this isn't the Heartland Institute. It's the State of Indiana....working with the Heartland Institute, a member of ALEC's anti-environmental task force that has been central in coordinating campaigns to deny global warming. See Commissioner Easterly's full presentation to ALEC on climate "science."

ALEC States & Nation Policy Summit 2012: brought to you by King Coal
ALEC's brochure for last week's meeting shows a disproportionately large presence of coal sponsors. The brochure lists 14 sponsors, five of which are coal interests:

• American Electric Power (AEP): the second largest coal utility in the U.S. now that Duke Energy and Progress Energy have merged.
  • Political spending since 2007: AEP has spent over $46.2 million on federal lobbying and $3.9 million on federal politicians and political committees.

• Peabody Energy: the world's largest private-sector coal mining company, known for its legacy of pollution and aggressive finance of climate change denial.
  • Political spending since 2007: Peabody has spent over $37.9 millionon federal lobbying and $690,769 on federal politicians and political committees.

• American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE): a coal public relations front whose members include AEP, Peabody and other ALEC-member coal interests. ACCCE's new president is Mike Duncan, former Republican National Committee chairman and founding chairman of Karl Rove's American Crossroads. ACCCE spent over $12 million on advertising during the 2012 election to promote the fantasy of "clean coal." ACCCE reportedly spent $40 million on TV and radio ads during the 2008 election and over $16 million around the 2010 election. ACCCE was caught up in a scandal when a subcontractor forged letters on behalf of senior and civil rights groups urging members of Congress to oppose national climate legislation. For more, see ACCCE on PolluterWatch.
  • Political spending since 2007: ACCCE spent over $22.3 million on federal lobbying, $10 million of which was spent in 2008 alone.

• Edison Electric Institute (EEI): the primary trade association for electric utility companies, whose members include AEP, Duke Energy and numerous other members of ALEC's energy/environment task force.
  • Political spending since 2007: EEI has spent over $63.7 million on federal lobbying and over $2.1 million on federal politicians and political committees.

• National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA): NRECA is the top dirty energy money contributor to federal politicians, above heavyweights like Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. Composed of over 900 rural coal interests, NRECA is known for its staunch opposition to climate change policy.
  • Political spending since 2007: NRECA has spent over $23.9 million on federal lobbying and over $8.6 million on federal politicians and political committees.

$15.3 million: total federal politicians and committees spending from these groups since 2007

$194 million: total federal lobbying expenditures from these groups since 2007

The collective millions spent on federal lobbying and politicians went a long way for these five coal interest groups. Their lobbying goals included weakening 2009 climate legislation and working to interfere with US EPA rules to reduce coal pollution or greenhouse gases.

All five of these groups have recently lobbied to prevent US EPA from controlling greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. These five interests only represent a slice of the coal interests spending money in politics, and just a few players among many in the coal, oil, gas and chemical industries that dump millions of dollars into public relations campaigns telling us that climate change is not a problem.