More Transparency Needed Among Environmental Groups
I’m calling the environmental movement out for supporting nothing and opposing everything.
Not too long ago, I was proud to call myself an environmentalist. Today, I’m bordering on embarrassed to admit that I support sustainability programs. The cause of my distress is what is happening under the carpet among environmental groups. On the surface, they look squeaky clean, but when you pull back the carpet you find years of dust and dirt.
The result is crippling the system so that the status quo remains unchanged.
Are they doing this unknowingly? It’s hard to imagine a community founded on integrity and steeped in the honorable tradition of academia could blatantly miss the truth on the intellectually definable myths about renewable energy.
For example, for more than 30 years, environmental organizations have attacked the oil and gas industry in the name of environmental integrity. During this same time, these same groups have aided Big Oil in its attack of the biofuels industry in the name of subsidies. The irony is that ethanol subsidies such as the ethanol tax credit (VEETC) and the ethanol tariff are subsidies that actually go to the oil industry – not the ethanol producer.
Until recently, the oil industry was not attacked for the hundreds of billions of subsidies they receive nor were they held accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions until the University of Nebraska conducted an indirect land use emissions study from petroleum transportation and protection – mainly war.
How did everyone miss this?
Environmentalists shout that we must stop using oil and gas. Their solution—that everyone seems to have missed – more oil and gas. This is supported through their claims that biofuels are bad. Hydrogen? Ha. Plug in? Patience? Natural Gas? Never. In essence, the environmental movement is preserving our dependence on dirty fossil fuels.
In the last decade, environmental organizations that have been heralded as the watchdogs of the planet are now taking money from the same industry they are purporting to be saving us from – oil. In case you didn’t notice, this is a conflict of interest. Google some of the top biofuel critic studies by academia and you will likely find a trail of gifts and grants by major oil companies. Look at the board of directors and you will find a tangled and interconnected web of renewable energy foes.
Many consumers revere and monetarily support these groups, but beware. They have won our trust. Now they are using it carte blanche to hide their true intent: halting the recovery of our economy and placing our national security at risk.
But wait. Aren’t these organizations policing environmental criminals on our behalf?
Who is policing them?
In the past two years, Congress has dragged the oil, biofuels, banking, agricultural, and auto industry to Washington, D.C. for a series of Congressional hearings to probe into their transgressions. They have even dragged in baseball players accused of abusing steroids. Yet they have never called environmental organizations to the halls of justice and asked them to defend their funding and research shenanigans.
We don’t have a decade to determine our future strategy. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not advocating that we move forward blindly – as our country appears to be doing now. That would be an injustice. What I am proposing is an across the board analysis of all the potential strategies and solutions on the table. This means we must start vocally questioning the actions of environmental organizations. They need to become more transparent.
On behalf of American consumers, I am making an official request for Congress to hold a Congressional Hearing, this year, to look into the actions, funding, research, and programs of the most influential environmental groups. It’s high time we see what’s behind the curtain so we can make more educated policy decisions.
5 Comments »
Mike Green
How do you explain that VALERO (huge ethanol producer!) said yesterday they don’t need the VEETC?!? See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt57ObCEV5s
Bob Winnson
Mike, in the case of Valero, ethanol IS their product. For the other oil companies, ethanol is in competition for selling more volume of a product they own–gasoline. The mention of the VEETC above was to make the point that it is hard to figure out WHAT THE HECK is going on with the environmental groups, who receive many millions of dollars of petroleum industry funds, who have petroleum industry insiders on their boards, and at the same time oppose VEETC. The other oil companies would just like to see corn ethanol to go away…like biodiesel is without its tax credit. The VEETC now is worth many millions to each petroleum company; HOWEVER, the elimination of biofuels would be worth many tens of BILLIONS were that to occur. Also–since the oil companies are buying up positions in 2nd generation biofuels, they will handsomely profit from those and keep tax credits in place through their friends in Congress, when those are ready to move forward.
Farmer John
Mike,
Your video doesn’t make sense. VEETC has never had anything to do with ethanol plants. It’s a “blenders credit”. What it would affect is domestic production of ethanol in America based on foreign ethanol market penetration making the United States dependent on both oil and ethanol, moving our jobs and dollars out of the country.
Ron Steenblik
Joanna,
Let’s start by taking the argument that the ethanol tax credit (VEETC) benefits the oil industry, not the ethanol producer. If that is the case (which it isn’t all the time), then how can environmental groups be faulted for opposing it?
On the other hand, your claim that the ethanol tariff confers “subsidies that actually go to the oil industry” makes no sense. A tariff on a product such as ethanol raises the domestic price of that product, benefitting domestic producers of that product, especially when combined with a government mandate forcing a minimum level of consumption of that product.
Your assertion that the environmental movement ignorred subsidies to the oil industry and did not hold it accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions would be hillarious if it were not so astounding. Clearly you have done no research on the activities of the environmental movement, or choose to be blind to its efforts. Environmental groups, including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, have been attacking oil subsidies and oil pollution (and GHG emissions) for decades.
And, by the way, most estimates I see of subsidies to U.S. oil and natural gas place the numbers in the range of at most tens of billions a year (significantly less per gallon than the VEETC), not hundreds of billions a year. Are you perhaps confusing U.S. oil subsidies with estimates of global subsidies (mainly provided by developing and emerging economies) to keep consumer prices of fossil-fuels artificially low?
“In essence, the environmental movement is preserving our dependence on dirty fossil fuels.” No it isn’t: it is fighting for the proper pricing of fossil fuels (which would encourage conservation), improved transport efficiency, and improved non-fossil-fuel transport options (including bicycle infrastructure). Many environmental groups are not opposed to truly sustainable biofuels.
That all said, I would welcome an across-the-board analysis of all the potential energy strategies and solutions on the table, and even a Congressional enquiry into the actions of environmental organizations. While we’re at it, let’s also increase the transparency on all the biofuel lobbying organizations, and their hired guns in academia and among certain consultants.
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