Coal Industry Shills Oppose (Desperately) the Move to Renewables

One recent day the two “guest columnists” in our local newspaper both savaged the renewable energy movement. 

 

Local citizens with strong feelings on these issues? Nope.

One Op-Ed was attributed to Larry Behrens, with no further information. The second writer, inadvertently unnamed, was State Senator Rod Montoya (Rep. – Farmington). Both have worked desperately to undermine New Mexico's new energy law. 

 

Montoya's guest column complains that Resources Secretary Sarah Cottrell Propst consulted with Interwest Energy Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of wind, solar, and storage companies, and conservation organizations seeking to expand deployment of a reliable, cost-effective and diverse renewable energy portfolio. Sounds good. Montoya's beef is that IEA was her previous employer. However, IEA is not a company, she consulted many entities, and Montoya doesn't identify anything secretive or improper – let alone allege that she profited financially. 

 

Behrens is Western States Director for Power the Future, a self-described “energy advocacy organization” founded by Daniel Turner as “pushback” against “radical environmental groups that come into small towns in America and close coal mines.” He says those groups “take away all your rights” and harm rural communities. 

 

Turner's previous gigs include Director of Strategic Communications at the Charles Koch Institute and VP of Communications in another Koch-related nonprofit. Turner declined to answer questions about whether or not the Koch Brothers were among the energy-industry-loving rich folks who bankrolled PTF. The Charles Koch Institute is not noted for its concern about pollution or climate-change – or its fair coverage of energy issues. On climate-change, Turner says, “if you don't like energy, don't use it.” 

 

Behrens, a former Susanna Martinez staffer, should fit right in at PTF. His Op-Ed warns against “special interest groups” – by which he means public-interest organizations concerned about climate-change. He represents the special interests, such as coal.

Behrens's drivel attacks the Under 2 Coalition mostly for being a coalition of entities from outside New Mexico, and he'd rather hear ideas from Farmington. To make sure readers get the point, he prominently mentions “California Governor Jerry Brown” and “Manhattan,” as if Brown were Vladimir Putin and Manhattan Gomorrah. Cheap Rhetoric 101. 

 

I looked up Under 2. It sounds great. California and a major German state started it in 2014 to ramp up the fight against climate change. It aims to limit global warming to below 2°C and to limit the annual carbon footprint to under 2 tons per capita by 2050. Others soon joined, including British Columbia and Ontario, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, and Baja and Jalisco. Its rapid growth helped persuade national governments to adopt the goals of the Paris Agreement. The Under 2 Coalition now includes more than 220 members, representing more than 1.3 billion people and about 43% of the global economy.

What's not to like? Well, Behrens's paymasters make their money from non-renewable energy.

Montoya represents San Juan County, and, despite the massive methane hot spot at Four Corners, he keeps trying to keep the coal plants alive, no matter how they harm our planet.

Both these men essentially get paid by the energy industry. Slowing progress toward renewable energy is part of their job descriptions. 

 

Behrens says joining the Coalition would be “declaring independence from economic reality.” But glaciers and polar-ice are melting, seas are rising, and coal is outmoded and uneconomical. Maybe corporations trying to revive the coal industry and fight renewable energy are living in a zip code far from economic reality. 

                                          -30- 

[The column above appeared this morniing, Sunday, 16 June 2019, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website the newspaper's website and KRWG's website.  A spoken version will air on KRWG Radio Wednesday and Saturday and on KTAL-LP Community Radio, 101.5 FM, on Thursday.  The spoken version is also available at the KRWG website.]

[It particular annoys me when large and polluting industries call do-gooder entities such as environmental organizations, human rights organizations, or Common Cause "special interest groups."   They are not.  They do not represent special interests.  They represent the general public (or earth's) interest.  One need not agree with them; but neither in intent nor in effect are they "special-interest groups" in the sense that an industry alliance promoting the interests of its profit-making creators is a special-interest group.  Even a labor union could qualify as a "special-interest group"  But Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, the ACLU, or Common Cause hardly seem to merit that label.]

[Meanwhile, the same week the news included: a CNN report that GREENLAND LOST TWO BILLION TONS OF ICE just his week! and Permafrost hs begun thawing in the Canadian Arctic more than 70 years early because of climate change, according to new research.   The latter cited a study by a publication called Geophysical Research Letters, a peer-reviewed publication, but unfortunately when I tried to click on the link in the article about it, I learned it would cost $42 to get the actual study.] 

[Meanwhile, just this morning Forbes -- no radical rag -- published an interesting article on the IMF's finding that U.S. SUBSIDIES TO FOSSIL FUELS NOT ONLY EXCEED SUBSIDIES TO RENEWABLES, BUT EXCEED OUR DEFENSE BUDGET!! :
 
Despite nations worldwide committing to a reduction in carbon emissions and implementing renewable energy through the Paris Agreement, the IMF’s findings expose how fossil fuels continue to receive huge amounts of taxpayer funding. The report explains that fossil fuels account for 85% of all global subsidies and that they remain largely attached to domestic policy. Had nations reduced subsidies in a way to create efficient fossil fuel pricing in 2015, the International Monetary Fund believes that it “would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28 percent and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46 percent, and increased government revenue by 3.8 percent of GDP.”
[I write a weekly column.  My views are my own, and not always agreeable to even friends and people who generally agree with me on issues.  I'm not a paid advocate for any cause or foundation or industry.  I may be an idiot, but my idiocy is self-generated.]

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