Carbon Lobby Launches "CO2 is Green" Campaign
Ads Backed by Fossil-Fuel Interests Argue 'CO2 Is Green'
Greenwire, July 14, 2010
A group with ties
to the fossil fuel industry launched a new ad campaign today pushing
the idea that carbon dioxide isn't an environmental pollutant.
The organization "C02 is Green" funded a half-page advertisement in The Washington Post
urging people to call their senators and seek a vote against "the
president's cap-and-trade bill that will increase your cost of living
and not change the climate.
"The bill is
based on the false premise that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate
change," the ad says. "Real, empirical evidence indicates it is not."
The ad makes a
number of other charges, including that the bill from Sens. John Kerry
(D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will drive up prices for
electricity, transportation fuel and food, that the country relies on
fossil fuels and that the backers of the bill are "buying support from
industries on Wall Street with various corporate giveaways."
CO2 is Green
spokesman H. Leighton Steward sits on the board of directors of EOG
Resources Inc., an oil and natural gas development company. He also is
an honorary director at the industry trade group American Petroleum
Institute, according to a biography on EOG's website.
The intent of the
ad is more political than scientific, said Ken Green, resident scholar
at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.
"The purpose of
their ad is obviously to try to show the Democrats there's a large body
of people who do not want climate controls and will punish them in the
midterm elections," Green said.
But David Di
Martino, spokesman for Clean Energy Works, a coalition of about 60
groups that want climate legislation, maintains the ads cannot be taken
seriously.
"The ad reads
like the 'climate deniers' manifesto,'" Di Martino said. "This Big Oil
front group wants people to think Congress is going to raise taxes, kill
jobs, spill more oil, take our children and charge us for the
pleasure."
The ad, Di
Martino said, is "funded by the world's largest polluters and those who
stand to profit from our continued dependence on fossil fuels for our
energy." In addition to Steward, he said, CO2 is Green is bankrolled by
Corbin J. Robinson, chief executive of and leading shareholder in
Natural Resource Partners, a Houston-based owner of coal resources.
"Considering the
source, the message of the ad, and the intent to keep America addicted
to oil, this cynical front group should change its name to 'Greed is
Good,'" Di Martino said. He added that the bill from Kerry and Lieberman
"is projected by independent studies to create new American jobs and it
will reduce our deficit by $20 billion," according to figures from CBO.
Statements made in the ad about climate change are "patently false," Di Martino said.
The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2007 report declared
evidence of global warming to be "unequivocal" and pinned much of the
blame on human activities.
The Climate
Interactive Scoreboard earlier this month calculated that despite recent
pledges by 60 countries to reduce carbon emissions, in 2100 the world
will end up with temperature increases of 4 degrees Celsius.
Claims made in
the new ad need to be parsed, Green said. All temperature increase
estimates, he said, "are based on assumptions about how sensitive the
climate is to added greenhouse gases." The IPCC, and much of the climate
"establishment" uses high estimates of sensitivity, which leads to
predictions of severe temperature increase. Others disagree with the
IPCC's sensitivity estimate."
Some scientists
argue, Green said, that a temperature increase of 1 degree is more
likely and that given that, "greenhouse gases are not that potent. That
doesn't mean it's green. Those are two different things. Yes, it's true
increased CO2 means increased plant growth," Green said, but there are
unknown environmental damages and questions about ocean acidification.
"People who make
claims like [CO2 being green] are being just as irrational as people
saying it's going to destroy the Earth," he added. "No one has enough
info to actually say that."
The ad also
charges that "Even if CO2 was a major factor," using the IPCC's own
formula and numbers, "the bill would only reduce Earth's temperature by
one tenth of one degree within the next 90 years."
The claim that
policies proposed in current legislation won't have much effect on
climate have some validity, Green said. Environmental groups, he said,
argue that those changes would be a start toward addressing carbon
emissions and climate change.
CO2 is Green could not be immediately reached for comment.
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