The Public Policy
Commandeered by Climate Alarmists
Did a few Western governors and their staffs pull a fast one on other members of the Western Governors Association in the name of accelerated cap and trade?
Did the chief executives of a few Western states hijack the staff and resources of their regional coalition, against the will of most of their fellow governors, all to promote their vision for a regional cap-and-trade agreement?
It sure looks that way. Based upon documents I obtained from Patrick Cummins, program director for climate change and air quality at the Western Governors Association, it appears that a few governors and WGA staff violated rules (which require unanimous consent by its member governors) in devoting resources and staff time to the Western Climate Initiative. WCI seeks to create a regional agreement among its member states to cap greenhouse gas emissions, in order to avert what they believe to be a pending global warming catastrophe.
I shared the documents I obtained with the National Taxpayers Union, which sent a letter of concern to (now outgoing) WGA chairman Jon Huntsman Jr. , governor of Utah:
No doubt you agree that, as an organization that receives tax dollars from both state and federal sources, WGA has a responsibility to operate with full transparency and public disclosure in terms of its fiscal activities, where it receives its funding and how and where it spends those funds. We also know that WGA functions on the basis of consensus among its member states, so that moneys provided to WGA by one or several states do not subsidize operations or programs that their governors oppose.
Seven states agreed to work as WGA partners, leaving the majority of WGA states not formally supporting the involvement of WGA in the WCI process. According to information we have received, no resolution was adopted by WGA endorsing WCI or authorizing WGA to provide any support to the WCI process. Given the opposition by many Governors to having any of their taxpayer-backed contributions to be used to subsidize the operations of the WCI, this is understandable.</em>
That is why we were surprised to review documents recently released by WGA that indicate deep and wide-ranging involvement by WGA staff in the WCI.
Those documents are posted at Climate Strategies Watch, and upon review you realize that WGA has total management control of WCI. As NTU stated in its letter, “It is difficult to see how tax dollars from non-WCI states did not subsidize this process.”
In a conversation I had with Cummins, he explained that some funds came from private resources for WCI. But that doesn’t explain whether or not they fully covered WCI, nor does it account for how much of his (and other WGA staff) time was diverted to WCI efforts. It also doesn’t explain why WGA secretly undertook the project — even signing contracts with consultants for the WCI project — without obtaining approval from its member governors.
Several documents posted at the WGA and WCI websites show that five governors — Democrat Janet Napolitano in Arizona (now Homeland Security Secretary); Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in California; Democrat Bill Richardson in New Mexico; Democrat Ted Kulongoski in Oregon; and Democrat Chris Gregoire in Washington — formed WCI (.pdf) (Montana and Utah joined later) in February 2007 with no mention of WGA involvement or approval. The five signed an agreement committing their states to the WCI effort, but they make no more than a passing reference to how WGA resolved that “action is needed” on climate change.
Further evidence that everything was not on the up-and-up: WGA’s annual reports in 2007 and 2008 (both.pdfs) do not mention its extensive involvement with WCI, save a very passive reference in 2008. The same reports identify Cummins, who manages WCI (and was my contact for the records I requested), as project manager of its Western Regional Air Partnership project and its air quality initiative.
What were they trying to hide?
While the five global warming alarmist governors hijacked WGA for their own agenda, at least 10 other member governors were kept in the dark. As NTU wrote:
These facts raise serious questions about the use of taxpayer funds in this effort from states that did not agree to partner in the WCI project – including Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Idaho, Nevada and Alaska. In fact, it is difficult to see how this was not the case, given the extent to which WGA time, staff and resources were spent to support the WCI.
At least one unidentified WGA governor, interviewed by the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund before this week’s annual meeting, expressed dismay :
One governor I spoke with points out that the WGA is supposed to operate on a consensus basis. He says the WGA’s involvement in planning climate change proposals is serious overreach. “The dues states give WGA come from tax money and I was surprised to learn just how much the WGA seems to be getting ahead of many of the states on carbon regulation,” he told me.
The secrecy with which the five WCI governors and the WGA officials like Cummins operated highlights how they have defied the will of the majority of the member governors, and likely improperly used the taxpayer funds of the states they represent. Let’s hope NTU gets a full accounting, and that governors regain control of an organization that appears to have been overtaken by environmental activists and a few WGA members who have done their dirty work.
About the Author
Paul Chesser is executive director for the American Tradition Institute and a senior fellow for the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives. The views he expresses do not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.
Melvin | 6.19.09 @ 7:09AM
Being from Oregon it isn't surprising. I have watched Ted Kulongowski go from a political neophyte to a downright lowdown sneaky weasel who will stop at nothing and do anything to advance the global warming fraud.
stmichrick| 6.19.09 @ 8:20AM
You could see, towards the end of W's term in office, how he began to accept climate hysteria as a political reality, if not a scientific one. At what point will the electorate realize how these expenditures, on top of all the entitlement programs, threaten to cause the Final Financial Crash.
Big time environmentalists are best described in Michael Crichton's State of Fear.
Russell| 6.19.09 @ 11:14AM
Excellent work. This probably explains why I never received answers from Governor Napolitano about what justified her actions to bring Arizona into the WCI - I compiled those questions into a story that appeared in the "American Thinker" in November 2008: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/11/post_135.html
The enormous irony is that now in Napolitano's absence, the Arizona legislature GOP majority and our new GOP Governor Brewer (the former Sec of State, we have no Lt. Governor) will be able to block our Department of Environmental Quality from having to operate under WCI guidelines.
Ray| 6.19.09 @ 12:07PM
"WCI seeks to create a regional agreement among its member states to cap greenhouse gas emissions, in order to avert what they believe to be a pending global warming catastrophe."
Isn't this type of "regional agreement" unconstitutional? Article 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution states that "No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation;" This "regional agreement" sure sounds like an alliance to me.
Jeff| 6.19.09 @ 3:47PM
This magazine is going to look incredibly stupid if it continues to ignores the overwhelming evidence that global warming is indeed real and may cause devastating damage to our environment. If someone could give me a reasonable explanation as to why the right is so dead set against the issue I would be fascinated. Really, why are you so dogmatically opposed to accepting climate change despite the scientific consensus on the issue? Im curious
2Gunz, AZ| 6.19.09 @ 3:56PM
JEFF,
You are the one who is going to look stupid, when in ten years time, the consensus is that a new ice age is upon us do to reduced radiation of the sun.
I vividly remember in high school ( late sixties) being told how the great ice sheets werre coming, and as in the past, they were going to just scrape all the cities along the great lakes into big piles of rubble and we were ALL GONNA' DIE!!!! Amazing how times change.
Mazzuchelli| 6.19.09 @ 4:30PM
I suggest a couple of theology and philosophy classes to improve critical thinking, Jeff. You're at the receiving end of a preposterous yet fashionable hoax that will end up costing you and your friends much more than I over the long haul. Wake up.
Russell| 6.19.09 @ 4:55PM
In response to Jeff's comment about "why the right is so dead set against the issue", the greater question is "why is the left so 'for' the issue, when they haven't proved it to be true under the standard methods of science inquiry?". Ask these five one-word questions about Al Gore's and the IPCC's claims of the global warming debate being settled - "when, where, who, how, why": If the global warming debate is truly over, WHEN exactly did the debate occur, WHERE was it, WHO attended, HOW were expert scientists offering conclusions contradictory to IPCC reports addressed and disproved beyond a shadow of a doubt, and is there any reason WHY “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the NONgovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC http://www.nipccreport.org/ )”, a collection of peer-reviewed published scientific papers, should not be considered as a second opinion to the IPCC reports?
ben| 6.19.09 @ 6:19PM
JEFF
Climate change is real. Our climate has been in constant flux since the beginning of time. However, anthropogeneic or man made climate change is completely untrue. You kind of explained this in your post when you asked "... despite the scientific consensus on the issue?"
Since when has consensus substituted fact and observation. Also, where is the consensus when more climatologists and physicists oppose the IPCCs findings than agree with it.
This whole idea of ACC is based on the false notion that CO2 drives climate - it never has. A cursory review of the IPCCs own charts comparing CO2 and Global temps over the last 600,000 years proves that CO2 does NOT drive temps. Look at when the Earth's temps start rising as compared with CO2 levels. You'll see that CO2 begins to rise long after the Earth's temps start rising. If A comes before B, how can B be the cause of A?
Also, if you wanted to stop CO2 being released into the atmosphere the place to start would be the oceans as they are the top emitters of CO2. 2nd look at Volcanos and Naturally caused fires. 3rd look at decomposition of leaves and dead animal corpses. 4th stop every oxygen breathing creature on the planet from exhaling and then 5th we can look at our factories and autos.
So instead of asking why we won't believe in climate change ask yourself if there is even 1 claim by any environmentalist over the last 40 years concerning climate change that has come true. Then when you can't find 1, because there isn't 1, you should ask yourself why you ever believed them in the first place?
Nick| 6.19.09 @ 7:11PM
Jeff,
I too am curious.
Why do you blindly accept the word of people you have never met? Scientists are just men, are they incapable of lying? Don't you need proof?
I'm no scientist, but I understand scientific principles. And I've seen no evidence in the research I've done. Please do your own research, don't swallow the "concensus" view.
Read the speeches of the late author of "Jurassic Park", Micheal Crichton. He had a science background (M.D.) and he saw no evidence of climate change.
Ask yourself these questions:
-If scientists can't predict the weather in two weeks, how can they possibly predict it 20, 50, 100 years from now?
-Is there an IDEAL global temperature? If there is, what is it?
-Why do all the computer models fail to predict global temperatures only a few years out?
-Think of all the "scientific" studies that the MSM has reported on in the past 30 years. How many have proven false or been reversed? Think Alar scare, breast implants, coffee is bad/good for you.
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Marc Jeric| 6.20.09 @ 5:12PM
Excellent article showing standard commie practices. However:
1) There was first in the 1970's the globaloney cooling scam (see e.g. Newsweek April 28 1975 on the internet); the government-paid scientists (90% of them are rejects of private enterprise) recommended to fight the new ice age by sending our war planes to cover the polar ice with soot in order to increase solar heat and prevent crushing of New York skyscrapers by the new glaciers;
2) When that did not work we had the globaloney warming hoax in the 1990's, proclaimed by mainly the same government-paid scientists (Dr. Hansen of the NOAA, for example); to prevent the massive heating, fires, flooding of coastal cities, disappearance of Florida, California, and Caribbean islands, massive hurrucanes, global famine, and other catastrophic events we should nationalize oil and gas and coal and electricity companies;
3) after 11 years of considerable cooling we are now faced with the climate change flimflam where whatever happens with our climate we should nationalize oil and gas and coal and electricity companies; and why not our banks, car companies while we are at it. To prevent this catastrophe the best vehicle presumably is international agreements enforced by the United Nations world government.
As for the influence of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas: on a normal day the atmoshere contains 10,000 ppm (parts per million) of water vapor and about 300 ppm of carbon dioxide. The government-paid scientists say that an increase of 100 ppm of CO2 over the next 50 years will result in a catastrophic warming. The thermal absorptivity of water vapor is 4 times larger than that of carbon dioxide; it follows that the CO2 increase will increase the overall thermal absorptivity of the mixture by about 1/4 of one percent. The production of methane from livestock and the swamps (or as the enviro-nazis call those "wetlands") vastly surpasses the influence of CO2.
There is the Global Warming Petition Project (see Internet) where 31,478 US independent scientists declared that there is no anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming; of these 9,029 are scientists with PhD degrees. Our enviro-nazis tried to sabotage this effort by submitting phony names with phony degrees - and then claimed the whole effort by the Petition scientists was a fraud. It took us 3 years and a lot of private money to verify the credentials of all the signatories and clean up the Petition of those saboteurs. See also Manhattan Declaration with more such signatories, plus a large number of scientific groups from other countries who state the same.
I am one of these signatories, MS and PhD degrees from UCLA, with majors in thermodynamics and heat & mass transfer.
I think to fight this communist attempt to secure a world government should not be fought on the narrow grounds of more taxes - that is the losing proposition; where about 50% of the population is on some kind of welfare we will always be outvoted. The battle should be fought and won on the firm scientific basis.
SCAM - HOAX - FLIMFLAM!!!
Jim O'Brien| 6.20.09 @ 5:42PM
The depth of ignorance about this is astonishing. Ask almost anyone if he thinks "greenhouse gases" are bad, and you will hear a knee-jerk "Yes". But in fact, greenhouse gases are essential to maintain earth at its current temperature, warm enough for life as we know it. Most people don't even realize that a major greenhouse gas is Water Vapor, and most don't realize that CO2 is only present in the atmosphere in trace amounts - currently about 380 parts per million. CO2 is not pollution, it is essential for plants and humans. The earth has gone through periods of warming and cooling for millions of years, before homo sapiens arrived, and long before cars and factories. Changes in cycles of the sun and the earth's orbit are the keys.
Yet the Socialist Obama and the Socialist Congress are willing to further wreck the economy based on pseudo-science. If Obama's Cap & Trade scheme is enacted, the cost of electricity will skyrocket. More businesses will shut down or leave and take hundreds of thousands of jobs with them. Cap & Trade will be economic suicide. The unemployment rate is already more than 10% in Michigan, California and Florida. Do I hear 20%?
Roy| 6.20.09 @ 6:53PM
2Gunz:
I'm a bit younger and was in elementary school and middle school in the 80's, when the mantra was that we were in an "energy crisis". Simple logic stated that we were going to run out of oil, after all it was finite and if you keep on using up a finite resource you were bound to use it up..right? So we better with all deliberate speed spend massive government money and use massive government force to get recalcitrant ignoramuses to use solar power.
Now, the story is a bit different. Apparently, we're never going to run out of oil. It's just going to go on and on and get cheaper and cheaper. Same with coal. And you evil hicks will burn more and more of it for your gas guzzling SUVs. And this will cause global warming and melt the polar ice caps, which will kill the polar bears, so the solution is to spend massive government money and use massive government force to get recalcitrant ignoramuses to use solar power.
It's funny how no matter the question the Left comes up with the same answer.
Michigander| 6.23.09 @ 6:12PM
A few questions: Without global warming wouldn't Michigan (and most of the northern states) still be covered by glaciers? I mean they keep telling me the reason a Michigander can't go more then 50 miles in any direction without hitting a body of water is because it was once covered by glaciers (way before modern man's polution) and global warming caused the glaciers to receed. But now it's a bad thing? and I caused it? Who caused it when the glaciers receeded? and wasn't that a good thing? or is the half the world supposed to be covered in ice? I admit I'm confused.
Had Enough| 6.28.09 @ 12:53PM
My state will experience about 30-35 degrees of global warming just today. Run these SOB's out of office.Get out and let them know they are finished. Waxman will be a double for Chucky Cheese I don't know what the rest of these leaches will do when they can't live off our taxes?
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