
By Connor Gibson
Leaked American Legislative Exchange Council documents published by The Guardian recently offered a glimpse into ALEC’s financial troubles, spurred by its role in peddling corporate laws through statehouses around the country. ALEC’s controversial work has caused its member companies to abandon it, such as pushing the National Rifle Association’s Stand Your Ground laws, efforts to undermine clean energy incentives and delay climate change regulations, and breaking workers unions.
The ALEC documents revealed its “Prodical Son” project [sic], a list of 41 corporate members the legislator-lobbyist matchmaker would like to entice back into its roster. ALEC has lost about 60 corporate members since 2011, the year ALEC Exposed was launched by the Center for Media and Democracy.
But there are some private sector members that ALEC doesn’t want back. Sixty companies left ALEC and it’s asking 41 to rejoin…so who is missing from the Prodigal Son list?
Conspicuously, both the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) and Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) are not on ALEC’s secret Prodigal Son list. Not surprising, since an ALEC staffer accused residential solar rooftop owners of being “freeriders,” despite how they feed extra electricity back into the grid and spare utilities the capital costs of installing those solar panels themselves.
The solar trade group SEIA left ALEC in the fall of 2012. Shortly before that, ALEC’s Energy, Environment & Agriculture task force considered, but didn’t ever approve, the Solar Streamline Permitting Act (see p. 18). It’s pretty much what it sounds like–making it faster and easier for state governments to approve solar projects, a concept that you might assume ALEC’s conservative member legislators would embrace.
But ALEC didn’t pass the solar permitting model bill. At the same time, ALEC was incubating its assault on state clean energy incentives through The Heartland Institute’s proposed Electricity Freedom Act, the repeal of state renewable portfolio standards, later introduced in some form in 15 states, according to ALEC.
ALEC’s documents list SEIA among “Lapsed” members, with a note explaining “left because their bill did not pass the task force.” SEIA was ALEC’s only interest dedicated entirely to solar energy at the time, and with both SEIA and AWEA absent from ALEC’s ranks, ALEC has no members predominantly focused on clean energy development.
Check out Rachel Maddow’s recent interview with Guardian reporter Ed Pilkington for more on ALEC’s work against clean energy and other revelations from ALEC’s leaked documents:
ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force: Hostile Territory for Clean Energy
Members of ALEC’s EEA task force include Koch Industries, the engine of climate denial finance, not to mention many groups its billionaire owners fund and even helped create, like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute and The Heartland Institute.
There’s ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, the architects of the leaked 1998 master plan to publicly attack climate science and scientists, which included ALEC itself and other ALEC members like DCI Group.
There’s Peabody Energy, which commands its PR spokespeople to deny global warming. There’s Duke Energy and Arizona Public Service, two major utilities fighting to make residential rooftop solar energy more expensive for residents and small businesses owners in their respective regions. ALEC’s utilities are joined by their top trade association, Edison Electric Institute.
And don’t forget the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the heavily advertised “coalition that hates each other.” ACCCE was caught subcontracting groups that forged letters to Congress against 2009′s failed national climate policy.
Mining, petrochemical, utility, & agribusiness interests supporting ALEC:
Many dirty energy interests have recently sponsored ALEC’s conferences, pay to participate in ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force meetings, or both. ALEC’s Energy, Environment and Agriculture task force is currently co-chaired by American Electric Power’s Paul Loeffelman and Wyoming state Representative Thomas Lockhart.
*Companies with membership on ALEC’s national corporate board are indicated with asterisks.*
Koch:
*Koch Industries*—with business in oil and gas exploration, pipelines, refining and trading, coal and other carbon product logistics, timber and consumer paper products, commodities trading and investing, chemicals, fertilizer, ethanol, cattle and game ranching, glass, fiber optics, electronics and plenty of awkward public relations.
The Charles Koch Foundation and Koch-controlled Claude R. Lambe Foundation both fund ALEC outside of Koch Industries’ membership dues, together giving ALEC hundreds of thousands of dollars. ALEC has long depended on the Koch brothers.
Oil & Gas:
- Atmos Energy
- BP
- Cheniere Energy
- Chesapeake Energy
- Chevron
- Continental Resources
- Devon Energy
- EnCana Corporation
- Energy Transfer
- *ExxonMobil*
- Marathon Oil
- McMoRan Exploration Company
- OXY USA (Occidental Petroleum)
- QEP Resources
- Shell
- Spectra Energy
- TransCanada Pipelines
- Williams Companies
Oil & Gas Lobby:
- American Petroleum Institute (API)
- American Gas Association (AGA)
- America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA)
- Center for Liquified Natural Gas
Coal Mining:
- *Peabody Energy*
- Cloud Peak Energy
Utilities (primarily Coal, Gas and Nuclear generation):
- American Electric Power (AEP)
- Ameren
- Arizona Public Service (APS)
- Dominion Resources
- Duke Energy
- *Energy Future Holdings*
- MDU Resources
- MidAmerican Energy, PacifiCorp, NV Energy (all owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway)
- NiSource
- PG&E Corporation
- Salt River Project (SRP)
Coal, Chemical & Fossil Fuel Product Shipping Railroad Co’s:
- Burlington Northern Santa Fe (owned by Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway)
- CN
- CSX Corporation
- Genessee & Wyoming Inc.
- Norfolk Southern
- Union Pacific
Coal & Utility Lobby:
- American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE)
- Edison Electric Institute (EEI)
- Indiana Energy Association
- National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA)
- Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives (NRECA member)
- Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI)
Chemical, Agribusiness and Paper Industry Interests:
- Dow
- LyondellBasell Industries
- American Chemistry Council
- American Plastics Council
- Bayer
- J.R. Simplot Company
- CropLife America (lobbying group for Monsanto & other agribusiness corporations)
- International Paper
Uranium Mining & Nuclear Technology:
- Virginia Uranium
- EnergySolutions
State Policy Network, SPN members & SPN associate members:
- State Policy Network (umbrella for 64 state-based orgs and over 250 formally-affiliated allies—see full SPN member list)
- Americans for Prosperity
- Atlas Foundation
- Competitive Enterprise Institute (co-authors ALEC reports against U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pollution rules)
- The Heartland Institute (IL)
- Goldwater Institute (AZ)
ALEC notes show that SPN members the Commonwealth Foundation (PA) and John Locke Foundation (NC) have recently lapsed but would like to rejoin ALEC’s ranks. Each of these SPN groups are part of the the Koch-funded climate denial machine.
Public Relations firms with known Fossil Fuel Clients:
- Dezenhall Resources (consulted for ExxonMobil)
- DCI Group (climate denial PR for Exxon, API; represents coal companies pushing for exports in the Pacific Northwest)
- Harris Deville & Associates (PR work for Koch Pipelines, American Petroleum Institute, Dow, and others)
Visit EcoWatch’s RENEWABLES page for more related news on this topic.
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Trending
By Eric Tate and Christopher Emrich
Disasters stemming from hazards like floods, wildfires, and disease often garner attention because of their extreme conditions and heavy societal impacts. Although the nature of the damage may vary, major disasters are alike in that socially vulnerable populations often experience the worst repercussions. For example, we saw this following Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey, each of which generated widespread physical damage and outsized impacts to low-income and minority survivors.
Mapping Social Vulnerability
<p>Figure 1a is a typical map of social vulnerability across the United States at the census tract level based on the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI) algorithm of <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1540-6237.8402002" target="_blank"><em>Cutter et al.</em></a> [2003]. Spatial representation of the index depicts high social vulnerability regionally in the Southwest, upper Great Plains, eastern Oklahoma, southern Texas, and southern Appalachia, among other places. With such a map, users can focus attention on select places and identify population characteristics associated with elevated vulnerabilities.</p>Fig. 1. (a) Social vulnerability across the United States at the census tract scale is mapped here following the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI). Red and pink hues indicate high social vulnerability. (b) This bivariate map depicts social vulnerability (blue hues) and annualized per capita hazard losses (pink hues) for U.S. counties from 2010 to 2019.
<p>Many current indexes in the United States and abroad are direct or conceptual offshoots of SoVI, which has been widely replicated [e.g., <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13753-016-0090-9" target="_blank"><em>de Loyola Hummell et al.</em></a>, 2016]. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/placeandhealth/svi/index.html" target="_blank">has also developed</a> a commonly used social vulnerability index intended to help local officials identify communities that may need support before, during, and after disasters.</p><p>The first modeling and mapping efforts, starting around the mid-2000s, largely focused on describing spatial distributions of social vulnerability at varying geographic scales. Over time, research in this area came to emphasize spatial comparisons between social vulnerability and physical hazards [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-009-9376-1" target="_blank"><em>Wood et al.</em></a>, 2010], modeling population dynamics following disasters [<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11111-008-0072-y" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Myers et al.</em></a>, 2008], and quantifying the robustness of social vulnerability measures [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0152-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Tate</em></a>, 2012].</p><p>More recent work is beginning to dissolve barriers between social vulnerability and environmental justice scholarship [<a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304846" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Chakraborty et al.</em></a>, 2019], which has traditionally focused on root causes of exposure to pollution hazards. Another prominent new research direction involves deeper interrogation of social vulnerability drivers in specific hazard contexts and disaster phases (e.g., before, during, after). Such work has revealed that interactions among drivers are important, but existing case studies are ill suited to guiding development of new indicators [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2015.09.013" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Rufat et al.</em></a>, 2015].</p><p>Advances in geostatistical analyses have enabled researchers to characterize interactions more accurately among social vulnerability and hazard outcomes. Figure 1b depicts social vulnerability and annualized per capita hazard losses for U.S. counties from 2010 to 2019, facilitating visualization of the spatial coincidence of pre‑event susceptibilities and hazard impacts. Places ranked high in both dimensions may be priority locations for management interventions. Further, such analysis provides invaluable comparisons between places as well as information summarizing state and regional conditions.</p><p>In Figure 2, we take the analysis of interactions a step further, dividing counties into two categories: those experiencing annual per capita losses above or below the national average from 2010 to 2019. The differences among individual race, ethnicity, and poverty variables between the two county groups are small. But expressing race together with poverty (poverty attenuated by race) produces quite different results: Counties with high hazard losses have higher percentages of both impoverished Black populations and impoverished white populations than counties with low hazard losses. These county differences are most pronounced for impoverished Black populations.</p>Fig. 2. Differences in population percentages between counties experiencing annual per capita losses above or below the national average from 2010 to 2019 for individual and compound social vulnerability indicators (race and poverty).
<p>Our current work focuses on social vulnerability to floods using geostatistical modeling and mapping. The research directions are twofold. The first is to develop hazard-specific indicators of social vulnerability to aid in mitigation planning [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-04470-2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Tate et al.</em></a>, 2021]. Because natural hazards differ in their innate characteristics (e.g., rate of onset, spatial extent), causal processes (e.g., urbanization, meteorology), and programmatic responses by government, manifestations of social vulnerability vary across hazards.</p><p>The second is to assess the degree to which socially vulnerable populations benefit from the leading disaster recovery programs [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17477891.2019.1675578" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Emrich et al.</em></a>, 2020], such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) <a href="https://www.fema.gov/individual-disaster-assistance" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Individual Assistance</a> program and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) <a href="https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/cdbg-dr/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Disaster Recovery</a> program. Both research directions posit social vulnerability indicators as potential measures of social equity.</p>Social Vulnerability as a Measure of Equity
<p>Given their focus on social marginalization and economic barriers, social vulnerability indicators are attracting growing scientific interest as measures of inequity resulting from disasters. Indeed, social vulnerability and inequity are related concepts. Social vulnerability research explores the differential susceptibilities and capacities of disaster-affected populations, whereas social equity analyses tend to focus on population disparities in the allocation of resources for hazard mitigation and disaster recovery. Interventions with an equity focus emphasize full and equal resource access for all people with unmet disaster needs.</p><p>Yet newer studies of inequity in disaster programs have documented troubling disparities in income, race, and home ownership among those who <a href="https://eos.org/articles/equity-concerns-raised-in-federal-flood-property-buyouts" target="_blank">participate in flood buyout programs</a>, are <a href="https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063477407" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">eligible for postdisaster loans</a>, receive short-term recovery assistance [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.102010" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Drakes et al.</em></a>, 2021], and have <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/08/25/texas-natural-disasters--mental-health/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">access to mental health services</a>. For example, a recent analysis of federal flood buyouts found racial privilege to be infused at multiple program stages and geographic scales, resulting in resources that disproportionately benefit whiter and more urban counties and neighborhoods [<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023120905439" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Elliott et al.</em></a>, 2020].</p><p>Investments in disaster risk reduction are largely prioritized on the basis of hazard modeling, historical impacts, and economic risk. Social equity, meanwhile, has been far less integrated into the considerations of public agencies for hazard and disaster management. But this situation may be beginning to shift. Following the adage of "what gets measured gets managed," social equity metrics are increasingly being inserted into disaster management.</p><p>At the national level, FEMA has <a href="https://www.fema.gov/news-release/20200220/fema-releases-affordability-framework-national-flood-insurance-program" target="_blank">developed options</a> to increase the affordability of flood insurance [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2018]. At the subnational scale, Puerto Rico has integrated social vulnerability into its CDBG Mitigation Action Plan, expanding its considerations of risk beyond only economic factors. At the local level, Harris County, Texas, has begun using social vulnerability indicators alongside traditional measures of flood risk to introduce equity into the prioritization of flood mitigation projects [<a href="https://www.hcfcd.org/Portals/62/Resilience/Bond-Program/Prioritization-Framework/final_prioritization-framework-report_20190827.pdf?ver=2019-09-19-092535-743" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Harris County Flood Control District</em></a>, 2019].</p><p>Unfortunately, many existing measures of disaster equity fall short. They may be unidimensional, using single indicators such as income in places where underlying vulnerability processes suggest that a multidimensional measure like racialized poverty (Figure 2) would be more valid. And criteria presumed to be objective and neutral for determining resource allocation, such as economic loss and cost-benefit ratios, prioritize asset value over social equity. For example, following the <a href="http://www.cedar-rapids.org/discover_cedar_rapids/flood_of_2008/2008_flood_facts.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2008 flooding</a> in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, cost-benefit criteria supported new flood protections for the city's central business district on the east side of the Cedar River but not for vulnerable populations and workforce housing on the west side.</p><p>Furthermore, many equity measures are aspatial or ahistorical, even though the roots of marginalization may lie in systemic and spatially explicit processes that originated long ago like redlining and urban renewal. More research is thus needed to understand which measures are most suitable for which social equity analyses.</p>Challenges for Disaster Equity Analysis
<p>Across studies that quantify, map, and analyze social vulnerability to natural hazards, modelers have faced recurrent measurement challenges, many of which also apply in measuring disaster equity (Table 1). The first is clearly establishing the purpose of an equity analysis by defining characteristics such as the end user and intended use, the type of hazard, and the disaster stage (i.e., mitigation, response, or recovery). Analyses using generalized indicators like the CDC Social Vulnerability Index may be appropriate for identifying broad areas of concern, whereas more detailed analyses are ideal for high-stakes decisions about budget allocations and project prioritization.</p>Wisconsin will end its controversial wolf hunt early after hunters and trappers killed almost 70 percent of the state's quota in the hunt's first 48 hours.
By Jessica Corbett
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday was the lone progressive to vote against Tom Vilsack reprising his role as secretary of agriculture, citing concerns that progressive advocacy groups have been raising since even before President Joe Biden officially nominated the former Obama administration appointee.