ExxonMobil and Sierra Club Agreed on Climate Policy—and Kept It Secret
Source: Bloomberg
A forgotten accord reached in 2009 may yet have relevance for the future of U.S. climate policy.
ExxonMobil and Sierra Club may be thought of as natural enemies, particularly when it comes to a question so tricky as how to address climate change. That's what two men named David thought, too, when they first met in 2008 to talk about a climate policy with very little support: a national tax on industrial carbon dioxide emissions. Secretly, however, they found that a common problemthe threat of unwieldy legislationcan for a time scramble the very idea of friends and enemies.
Demonizing people is not a good idea, said David Bailey, who at the time managed climate policy for ExxonMobil in Washington. I realized that people at the Sierra Club dont all have horns and a tail, andI thinklikewise.
His negotiating partner at the time, David Bookbinder, was the chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club. The two wonks, working for organizations that are typically locked in opposition, recognized a shared interest in finding an alternative direction for U.S. climate policy. It took nearly a year and more than a dozen meetings to come up with a short document that bridged a huge chasm. It turns out that America's biggest oil company and one of its most iconic environmental groups could collaborate. What they came up with has gone unacknowledged until nowand it could provide a path past an intractable impasse on climate policy.
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The documentavailable here (PDF)consists of 10 ideas that might shape a national carbon tax. A bill should set the U.S. on an emissions path that takes into account global climate-change risk and establishes an independent body to adjust the tax, when appropriate. Legislators should refund 90 percent of the tax to Americans, with the rest marked for research, technology deployment, and relief for coal communities.
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Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-22/exxonmobil-and-sierra-club-agreed-on-climate-policy-and-kept-it-secret
This reminds me of how Stanford Professor Martin Hellman described his first meeting with NSA chief Admiral Bobby Ray Inman:
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I had the privilege of experiencing this approach first hand in the 1970s. Back then, NSA was used to having absolute control over all American cryptographic research, so they were rankled when I started publishing papers that they would have classified above Top Secret. I had developed my results without access to the classified literature, so I thought I should be free to publish my work plus, there was a growing personal and commercial need for encryption that could not be met by classified algorithms. NSA saw things differently, and some elements within the Agency warned that I could be thrown in jail for publishing my work. This confrontation drew major media coverage, including coverage in Science, TIME magazine, and the New York Times.
That battle was in full swing when Inman took over as Director of NSA and, against the advice of all his advisors at the Agency, decided to pay me a visit to see if he could defuse the conflict. Ill never forget his cutting through the initial tension by telling me, Its nice to see you dont have horns, which is how the career people at NSA had been portraying me. I repaid the compliment, since their threats had produced a similar picture of NSA in my mind. Inman went on to tell me that he couldnt see the harm in talking, and talk we did. With that kind of out of the box thinking on Inmans part, what had been an adversarial relationship eventually blossomed into a friendship with enough trust and understanding that Inman is one of the charter signers of my petition asking Congress to authorize a study of the risk inherent in our current nuclear posture.
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PatrynXX
(5,668 posts)someone tried to take it over. it didn't work. maybe this was then
bananas
(27,509 posts)There have been a number of divisive issues, but there was also a hostile takeover attempt by anti-immigration groups.
Here are a couple of articles about it from the Southern Poverty Law Center, they're kind of long, from 2004 and 2010:
FORMER SIERRA CLUB DIRECTOR DISCUSSES HOSTILE TAKEOVER ATTEMPT BY ANTI-IMMIGRANT ACTIVISTS
April 20, 2004
Robbie Cox, former Sierra Club president, discusses the ongoing attempt to turn the environmental organization into an anti-immigration group.
Anti-immigration activists have pondered trying to take over the well-known environmental group, the Sierra Club, going back at least to the mid-1980s. The basic idea, suggested in a once-secret 1986 memo by anti-immigration leader John Tanton, was to seize the reins of a respected and well-financed liberal group to express immigration restriction arguments that might otherwise draw accusations of racism.
Led by a group then called Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization (it is now known only by its acronym, SUSPS), anti-immigration activists including current Club director Ben Zuckerman made their first attempt in 1998. Their proposed resolution failed in a bitterly fought 60%-40% vote of the Sierra Club's membership.
Last fall, as predicted earlier in these pages, it became clear that a second major attempt, led again by Zuckerman and his allies, had begun. SUSPS and other anti-immigration groups and individuals are now pushing to elect a board majority that agrees with them.
Since that fact became public, 13 former Sierra Club presidents have signed an open letter warning that the Club is facing the most serious threat in its 112-year history.
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Greenwash: Nativists, Environmentalism and the Hypocrisy of Hate
June 30, 2010
In this article
- Executive Summary
- The Hypocrisy of Hate: Nativists and Environmentalism
- An Early Battle: Defending the Sierra Club
- The Foundations: Funding the Greenwashers
- The Greening of Hate: An Environmentalist's Essay
- Nativists and Environmentalists: A Timeline
- Key Groups and Individuals
This report describes how right-wing nativists are targeting the mainstream environmental movement with advertisements, websites and even a newly formed "progressive" organization that purports to represent liberals who believe immigration must be radically curtailed to preserve the environment.
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bananas
(27,509 posts)Sierra Club comes out in favor of immigration reform
By Lisa Hymas on 25 Apr 2013 23 comments
It was notable when Bill McKibben of 350.org and Philip Radford of Greenpeace recently came out in support of immigration-reform legislation.
But its really notable that the Sierra Club has now joined them. Over the past decade and a half, the club has had vicious leadership battles over immigration and population. But now the board of directors, which is elected by the groups 1.4 million members, is unanimously agreed. From Politico:
The Sierra Clubs board voted Wednesday to support comprehensive immigration reform
The decision is a major shift for the group, which has a storied past over the issue.
Sierra Club leaders in the mid-2000s fought off an insurgent effort trying to have the club take an explicitly anti-immigration stance, with some members claiming it was needed to overcome the effects of more people living more consumptive American life styles. The effort fell apart after a pitched battle.
Other environmental groups have historically helped financially support immigration reform opponents like Numbers USA and Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Heres the official position adopted by the Sierra Club board:
Currently at least 11 million people live in the U.S. in the shadows of our society. Many of them work in jobs that expose them to dangerous conditions, chemicals and pesticides, and many more of them live in areas with disproportionate levels of toxic air, water, and soil pollution. To protect clean air and water and prevent the disruption of our climate, we must ensure that those who are most disenfranchised and most threatened by pollution within our borders have the voice to fight polluters and advocate for climate solutions without fear.
The Sierra Club takes a position to support an equitable path to citizenship for residents of the United States who lack official documentation. Americas undocumented population should be able to earn legalization and a timely pathway to citizenship, with all the rights to fully participate in our democracy, including influencing environmental and climate policies. The pathway to citizenship should be free of unreasonable barriers, and should facilitate keeping families together and reuniting those that are split whenever possible.
If you like (or hate!) this news, you might want to check out another recent Grist post on the issue: How immigration reform can lead us to a stronger environmental movement.
bananas
(27,509 posts)and the NSA is still freaking out about it.
Every time you make a Paypal donation to DU, or order something from Amazon or Ebay, fetch your email, do online banking, you are using algorithms and protocols derived from Hellman's work.
Inman's predecessor had been trying to harrass and intimidate Hellman into not making his work public.
mgmaggiemg
(869 posts)organization ...that has been more about keeping the unwashed masses out of their playground...not about the environment