The American Spectator

AmSpecBlog

You're Paying For This

By David N. Bass on 8.5.09 @ 10:40AM

It gave me warm fuzzies this morning to discover yet another use of taxpayer dollars to bankroll the left's holy war against global warming.

Not.

I recently pulled The Climate Registry's IRS Form 990. As I discussed in an AmSpec column last year, TCR is a nonprofit whose mission is to get companies, organizations, state and local governments, and other entities to report their greenhouse gas emissions. TCR has convinced 41 states, plus the District of Columbia, to sign a statement in support of the group and pay an annual fee for the 2007 and 2008 fiscal years ranging from $20,000 to $50,000, depending on the state's population.

Turns out that TCR operated last year almost entirely courtesy of these payments from taxpayers, plus a dose of support from liberal foundations. Out of $1.33 million in revenue for fiscal year 2008, $800,000 came from state governments and $359,000 from liberal foundations, such as Kendall and Merck. Its remaining budget was funded from fees paid by companies or other entities that have joined as emissions reporters.

Thus, 60 percent of its budget was courtesy of the American taxpayer. Most of the rest came from global warming alarmist groups.

Although the donations are small compared to the spending orgies going on in Congress, they illustrate state governments' misplaced priorities. Here in North Carolina, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources gave TCR $100,000 and bankrolled travel for an air quality official to attend the group's board meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Chicago. Now, the department is handing out pink slips thanks to a massive budget deficit.

Not that most politicos would connect the dots between wasteful spending in the past and current deficits. Why do that when you can just raise taxes.