Indiana | Greenpeace Blogs

You’re probably familiar with the old “fox in the hen house” story, but what about when a hen joins the fox den?

This is the case with the recent American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in Washington, DC. Leaked documents obtained by Greenpeace reveal that ALEC’s anti-environmental jamboree was inundated with coal money and featured an Indiana regulator advising coal utilities on delaying US Environmental Protection Agency rules to control greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous air pollution.

Bottom of blog: View contents of the ACCCE USB drive from ALEC's 2012 States & Nation Policy summit.

At ALEC’s coal-sponsored meeting, where state legislators and corporate representatives meet to create template state laws ranging from attacks on clean energy to privatization of public schools, Indiana’s Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Management Tom Easterly laid out a plan to stall the US EPA global warming action in a power point clearly addressed to coal industry representatives at ALEC’s meeting.

In a USB drive branded with the logo of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a folder labeled “Easterly” contains a presentation titled “Easterly ALEC presentation 11 28 12” explaining current EPA air pollution rules and how Tom Easterly has worked to obstruct them. The power points is branded with the Indiana Department of Environmental Protection seal. In the latter presentation, Easterly ended his briefing to ALEC’s dirty energy members with suggestions for delaying EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions at coal plants. Continue reading →

In the lead up to this fall’s Democratic National Convention, polluter giant Duke Energy has offered a $10 million loan. Good thing, since Duke CEO Jim Rogers has taken the lead on the remaining fundraising for the DNC and is now being criticized for doing a shoddy job of it amid his controversial takeover as CEO following a big merger with Progress Energy.

Lost amid this dramatic transition is Duke’s ironic role in the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. ALEC is the infamous corporate bill mill that connects notably-conservative state lawmakers with lobbyists, PR agents and other representatives of companies ranging from Koch Industries to Phillip Morris to Pfizer. ALEC’s agenda spans across Big Business priorities, creating template state laws that serve to deny climate change science, privatize schools, protect killers (as with the Trayvon Martin “castle doctrine” legislation) and disenfranchise voters through Voter ID laws.

Voter ID laws that Democrats call “suppressive,” an ironic contrast to Duke’s $10 million line of credit to the DNC.

Duke Energy is heavily invested in ALEC in several ways. Duke sponsors ALEC’s meetings, dedicates its staff to help oversee ALEC’s state operations, and consistently operates in ALEC’s anti-environmental task force, a who’s-who of polluters and apologists attacking clean energy legislation that Duke purportedly supports. Here’s an overview of Duke’s notable role in ALEC: Continue reading →