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Frances Beinecke’s Blog

ALEC and Big Polluters Try to Attack Limits on ClimateChange Pollution One State at a Time

Posted March 28, 2014Tags: ALEC, carbonstandards, coalindustry, exxonmobil, kansas,kentucky, koch, oilindustry, powerplants, virginia, westvirginia

Last week the Kentucky legislature passed a bill to undermine national standards toreduce climate change pollution. The bill would prop up the profits of Kentucky’s biggestpolluters while saddling ordinary Kentuckians with higher electricity bills.

A coal-friendly bill may not be surprising in Kentucky, but this effort didn’t originate in theBluegrass State. The bill’s language mirrors legislation being pushed in statehousesacross the country by the American Legislative Exchange Council—a cabal of corporategiants and Tea Party supporters including the Koch brothers, Peabody Coal, ExxonMobil,and other fossil fuel companies.

ALEC is known for creating “model bills” designed to shrink public safeguards andprotections. Often the bills are drafted by the very industry that would benefit from themthe most. Now ALEC is trying to use state legislatures to block our country’s mostsignificant effort to clean up the air and stabilize the climate.

Power plants belch out 40 percent of all carbon pollution in the United States. Thatpollution drives climate change and threatens our health with asthma attacks and otherrespiratory problems. And yet there are no national limits on how much carbon theseplants can dump into our atmosphere.

The Environmental Protection Agency is about to change that. In June it will proposecarbon pollution limits for power plants. Strong limits could yield up to $60 billion inavoided climate change and medical costs in 2020, according to NRDC analysis. Theywould also create a net increase of 210,000 jobs in 2020 and reduce household electricbills. This is a win-win for our economy and our families.

Yet coal companies and other polluters are fighting carbon limits at every turn, and somehave turned to ALEC’s “model bill” factory to thwart them at the state level. ALEC’ssample language has already spawned more than a dozen resolutions in statelegislatures, all of them attacking the EPA’s efforts to reduce carbon pollution and protect

Switchboard is the staff blog of theNatural Resources Defense Council, thenation’s most effective environmentalgroup. For more about our work,including in-depth policy documents,action alerts and ways you cancontribute, visit NRDC.org.

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public health.

Legislation based on ALEC language has been introduced in seven states. These billswould be more legally binding than resolutions, and they would hamstring states’ ability tomeet their carbon reduction targets. The Kentucky bill, for instance, would favor dirtycoal-fired plants by preventing the state from using the least expensive methods toreduce carbon pollution.

That bill sailed through the Kentucky legislature—even though Governor Beshear hasalready started a responsible effort to meet national clean air standards and protectKentucky energy consumers—but ALEC isn’t always so successful. Lawmakers inVirginia and Florida blocked the polluters’ bills. Cooler heads prevailed in Kansas andeven in coal-dominated West Virginia where legislatures stepped back from the brink andpassed bills that allow state officials to write a carbon reduction plans that could meet thenation’s clean air laws.

ALEC prefers to operate in the shadows, relying on backroom deals and private donorlists, but when their actions come to light, people mobilize. Last year, ALEC’s attempts torepeal state clean energy standards failed in every state because residents value cleanenergy resources that make their air safer to breathe and creates jobs. Kansas andNorth Carolina, for instance, beat back ALEC-funded attacks, in part because wind farmshave created more than 12,300 jobs in Kansas, and the clean energy economy hasgenerated more than 11,500 jobs for North Carolina in the past two years alone.

People also see the value of holding polluters accountable for dangerous carbonemissions. More than two-thirds of voters in battleground states say the EPA should limitcarbon pollution from power plants, according to a recent poll conducted for the NRDCAction Fund.

This groundswell of support is the most effective weapon against ALEC’s stealth agenda.Ask your local representatives if there is an ALEC “model bill” in your state and call onthem to put public health, clean energy, and a stable climate above the interests of a fewpolluting industries.

Photo credit: Tim Hoeflich

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Michael Berndtson — Mar 28 2014 04:30 PMI'm guessing the oil and gas wouldn't be helping out coal (via ALEC), if renewables weren't doingas well as they are. For awhile I thought O&G was throwing coal under a bus - acting allconcerned about the environment and stuff - to move into the electricity generation market. Atthis point in time, it appears that renewables are nipping at the heels of gas and coal on pricealone. Nevermind environmental issues.You'd think O&G would embrace other energy sources. Then again, O&G doesn't do researchand development, much. They hardly even do petroleum and chemical engineering anymore.Even its core technical is increasingly contracted out. What's left is commodity trading andpolitician arm twisting. That's also where the money's at.

anonymous — Mar 28 2014 09:45 PMYou keep referring to ALEC's actions as "their". That bestows corporate personhood. Until Texasexecutes a convicted corporation, I cannot accept that a corporation is a person.So please, when referring to ALEC or any other corporation, use the correct pronoun--it.

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