[✔️] June 14, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
Richard at CredoandScreed.com
Tue Jun 14 09:42:05 EDT 2022
/*June 14, 2022*/
/[ Big changes to the land ] /
*Record flooding and mudslides force closure of Yellowstone national park*
The entire park, spanning parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, will
remain closed to visitors as officials assess damage to roads and bridges.
Record flooding and rockslides following a burst of heavy rains prompted
the rare closure on Monday of all five entrances to Yellowstone national
park at the start of the summer tourist season, the park superintendent
said...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/13/yellowstone-national-park-closure-flooding-mudslides
- -
/[AP video is dramatic -- clear skies ]/
*House falls into river near Yellowstone Nat'l Park*
Jun 13, 2022 Video from a southern Montana community near Yellowstone
National Park shows a house fall into the raging Yellowstone River on
Monday. Heavy rain and melting snow have caused flooding, damage and
triggered evacuations in and around the park. (June 14)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrtV0asee2I
/[ Clips from a NYTimes opinion ]/
*What a Dying Lake Says About the Future*
PAUL KRUGMAN -- June 13, 2022
A few days ago The Times published a report on the drying up of the
Great Salt Lake, a story I’m ashamed to admit had flown under my
personal radar. We’re not talking about a hypothetical event in the
distant future: The lake has already lost two-thirds of its surface
area, and ecological disasters — salinity rising to the point where
wildlife dies off, occasional poisonous dust storms sweeping through a
metropolitan area of 2.5 million people — seem imminent...
- -
In any case, what’s happening to the Great Salt Lake is pretty bad. But
what I found really scary about the report is what the lack of an
effective response to the lake’s crisis says about our ability to
respond to the larger, indeed existential threat of climate change.
If you aren’t terrified by the threat posed by rising levels of
greenhouse gases, you aren’t paying attention — which, sadly, many
people aren’t. And those who are or should be aware of that threat but
stand in the way of action for the sake of short-term profits or
political expediency are, in a real sense, betraying humanity...
- -
So this should be easy: A threatened region should be accepting modest
sacrifices, some barely more than inconveniences, to avert a disaster
just around the corner. But it doesn’t seem to be happening.
And if we can’t save the Great Salt Lake, what chance do we have of
saving the planet?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/13/opinion/great-salt-lake.html
/[ So can a government agency evaporate like water? ]/
*How SCOTUS’ upcoming climate ruling could defang Washington*
A legal fight over the EPA’s power to restrict greenhouse gases offers
conservative justices an opportunity to tie the executive branch's hands
on a host of issues — from Covid to net neutrality.
By ALEX GUILLÉN and SARAH OWERMOHLE
06/12/2022
The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling this month hobbling the
Biden administration’s efforts to rein in greenhouse gases — but its
impact could weaken Washington’s power to oversee wide swaths of
American life well beyond climate change.
The upcoming decision on the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate
oversight offers the conservative justices an opportunity to undermine
federal regulations on a host of issues, from drug pricing and financial
regulations to net neutrality. Critics of the EPA have clamored for the
high court to do just that, by declaring it unlawful for federal
agencies to make “major” decisions without clear authorization from
Congress.
The Supreme Court and several Republican-appointed judges have invoked
the same principle repeatedly during the past year to strike down a
series of Biden administration responses to the coronavirus pandemic.
Liberal legal scholars worry that the EPA case could yield an aggressive
version of that thinking — unraveling much of the regulatory state as it
has existed since the New Deal.
That has implications for other major rules that President Joe Biden’s
agencies are writing or defending in court, including wetlands
protections, limits on car and truck pollution, insurance coverage for
birth control under Obamacare, and even the Trump administration’s
attempts to lower drug prices.
“A narrow reading of what the federal agencies can do is going to
literally handcuff the federal government from taking action to protect
Americans’ health safety and the environment,” said Lawrence Gostin, a
public health law professor at Georgetown University.
*Climate change and ‘major questions’*
The immediate stakes in the EPA case are big enough on their own: Two
coal companies and a phalanx of Republican-led states want the court to
limit the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases from power
plants, a major driver of global warming that threatens to worsen
flooding, droughts, disease and other calamities in the coming decades.
The case’s origins are messy and complicated, involving a sweeping
Obama-era power plant climate rule and the Trump administration’s
efforts to replace it with a much narrower regulation. The original rule
had sought to push the electric power industry away from fossil fuels
and toward greener sources such as wind and solar, wielding the EPA’s
powers under a seldom-used section of the 1970 Clean Air Act. Under
Biden, the EPA has embarked on writing its own version of the rule.
“A narrow reading of what the federal agencies can do is going to
literally handcuff the federal government from taking action to protect
Americans’ health safety and the environment.”
Legal experts on both sides of the issue widely expect the court to side
with conservatives by saying the Obama-era EPA had gone too far. But the
big mystery is whether the court’s majority is prepared to go big — and
open the door to a judicial crackdown on the executive branch.
The crux of the debate concerns something called the “major questions”
doctrine — the idea, debated by judges over the past two decades, that
executive branch actions with “vast economic or political significance”
should face an extra-high hurdle to winning the courts’ approval. In
those cases, the agencies would need explicit authority from Congress
for the actions they’re taking.
Some conservative justices have embraced an even more aggressive
doctrine, known as “nondelegation,” that would prohibit Congress from
handing off big decisions to agencies at all. That could throw a huge
legal cloud over landmark laws enacted in past decades, including the
Clean Air Act.
It’s unclear whether the court is prepared to go quite that far in the
EPA case — it could simply knock down the agency’s climate authority on
narrower grounds, deferring the larger regulatory fight until later.
But some groups siding with the red states want the justices to use this
case to stake a clear boundary for both regulators and Congress.
“Congress did not — and, under our Constitution, cannot — grant
unelected administrative officials at EPA legislative power to
creatively reimagine energy policy for the entire country,” the
anti-regulation Americans for Prosperity Foundation wrote in a legal
brief filed in the EPA case.
The courts have never precisely defined where the line between
legislative and executive power lies. But they have repeatedly cited the
“major questions” principle to knock down executive branch actions that
they think went too far.
In one early high-profile case, the Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the
Food and Drug Administration lacked the authority to regulate most
tobacco products. (Congress overrode that ruling in 2009 by passing a
law giving FDA clear authority over tobacco, but such bipartisan
agreement is unlikely in the current political climate.)
The issue also arose in the court’s 2015 ruling that upheld Obamacare’s
exchange markets — although the Obama administration won that case.
Biden’s Covid actions — and beyond?
Judges’ use of the major questions doctrine has surged during the past
year, especially as the Biden administration leaned on long-established
laws to respond to threats like Covid-19.
In August, the Supreme Court sided with real estate agents who
challenged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s
pandemic-inspired moratorium on evictions, reasoning that Congress had
not given the public health agency regulatory power over housing policy.
In January, the court blocked the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration from requiring Covid vaccination or testing for workers
at companies with 100 or more employers, a mandate that would have
covered about 84 million people. That decision didn’t explicitly cite
the major questions doctrine, although Justice Neil Gorsuch did in a
concurrence joined by Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
A federal judge in Florida last year cited the major questions doctrine
in striking down the CDC’s Covid-related restrictions on Florida
cruises, which he called a “breathtaking” expansion of authority. More
recently, a judge’s ruling in April cited the doctrine to strike down a
federal travel mask mandate. The Biden administration is appealing that
ruling.
On the other hand, a federal judge in December said the doctrine was
“inapplicable” in a challenge to a Covid vaccine mandate for the
military, in part because service members already must get a litany of
other vaccines.
Opponents of federal regulations have raised the major questions
doctrine to attack other rules, including an EPA air pollution rule that
oil and biofuels groups call an attempt to promote electric cars. The
Securities and Exchange Commission is also expected to face legal
challenges to its recent proposal to require companies to disclose their
climate-related risks to investors — a mandate that critics say the SEC
doesn’t have congressional authority to impose.
Agencies need flexibility to react to new threats, Georgetown’s Gostin
argued. That’s why many laws contain open-ended provisions that give
agencies some level of authority to act when Congress hasn’t
specifically required it.
“When Congress gave powers to the Food and Drug Administration, or to
EPA, or the CDC, it did so many, many decades ago — and it couldn’t
possibly foresee all of the hazards that the American public would
face,” he said.
Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown University law professor and Obama-era
EPA official, noted that the major questions doctrine is becoming more
popular among judges at a time when Congress is in full gridlock. That
means it would be difficult if not impossible to pass new laws to
address emerging threats.
“They’re introducing these new principles at precisely the moment when
they’re the most damaging, which is when we are relying on long-existing
statutes to do a lot of the work of addressing our problems,”
Heinzerling said.
Katy O’Donnell and John Hendel contributed to this report.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/12/how-scotus-upcoming-climate-ruling-could-defang-washington-00038595
/
/
/[ See a Chart showing trust has been consistently falling ]/
JUNE 6, 2022
*Public Trust in Government: 1958-2022*
Public trust in government remains low, as it has for much of the 21st
century. Only two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in
Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the
time” (19%). Trust in the government has declined somewhat since last
year, when 24% said they could trust the government at least most of the
time.
Public trust in government near historic lows
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust-in-government-1958-2022/
/[ one more from Reuters ...]/
*Report casts doubt on net-zero emissions pledges by big global companies*
By Gloria Dickie and Simon Jessop - - June 12, 2022
- -
Governments will need to impose legal standards and regulations to
ensure net-zero progress, said co-author John Lang of the ECIU. At the
moment, companies are confused about what's needed from them. "They
don’t know what information has to be disclosed," he said.
At its climate summit in Glasgow last year, the United Nations
established an expert group to produce net-zero standards for the
private sector and analyse commitments. The European Union is also in
the midst of drafting net-zero reporting standards, to be adopted in
November. The current draft text bars companies from counting carbon
offsets toward net-zero. read more
"We have to have mandatory, top-down regulations to guide them," Lang
said. However, he doubted the issue could be resolved before the next
U.N. climate summit, "COP27," in Sharm al-Sheikh, Egypt, this November.
It “probably can't be fixed before COP28" in 2023, he said.
https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/report-casts-doubt-net-zero-emissions-pledges-by-big-global-companies-2022-06-12/
//
/
/
/[ Expecting that a good computer will save us all ]/
9 June 2022
*Aligning artificial intelligence with climate change mitigation*
Lynn H. Kaack, Priya L. Donti, Emma Strubell, George Kamiya, Felix
Creutzig & David Rolnick
Nature Climate Change
*Abstract*
There is great interest in how the growth of artificial intelligence
and machine learning may affect global GHG emissions. However, such
emissions impacts remain uncertain, owing in part to the diverse
mechanisms through which they occur, posing difficulties for
measurement and forecasting. Here we introduce a systematic
framework for describing the effects of machine learning (ML) on GHG
emissions, encompassing three categories: computing-related impacts,
immediate impacts of applying ML and system-level impacts. Using
this framework, we identify priorities for impact assessment and
scenario analysis, and suggest policy levers for better
understanding and shaping the effects of ML on climate change
mitigation.
See Here https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01377-7/figures/1
We distinguish between three categories (A, B and C) with different
kinds of potential emissions impacts, estimation uncertainties, and
associated decarbonization levers. Green lines denote effects
relating to reductions in GHG emissions, magenta lines relate to
increases in emissions, and grey lines symbolize uncertain and/or
negligible effects. We provide specifics of Category A of this
framework in Fig. 2 and Category B in Fig. 3. Icons adapted with
permission from the IEA.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01377-7
/[ keep a look-out ]/
*America is staring down a summer of disasters*
Andrew Freedman - - June 8, 2022
The U.S. is in store for another summer of extreme heat, hurricanes,
droughts and wildfires — threats that are all escalating because of
climate change.
*The big picture: *Parts of the Arctic are already burning. So are parts
of New Mexico. After two years of especially devastating summer
disasters, experts say the potential for catastrophe is only growing.
Summer used to be synonymous with freedom and fun. Now, the Union of
Concerned Scientists, an environmental research and advocacy
organization, refers to it as "the danger season."
*How it works*: The warmer season comes with inherent natural
variability. When that piles on top of larger trends related to climate
change, extreme weather events can vault from "rare and uncomfortable"
to "unprecedented and deadly."
*Threat level: *To experts, it's clear that the ingredients are there
for another destructive summer.
Already this year, New Mexico has had its largest wildfire in the
state's history — and it's still burning. And the fire season has not
yet fully kicked off in northern California, the Pacific Northwest,
northern Rockies or parts of the drought-afflicted Great Plains.
The long-term megadrought in the Southwest, due largely to human-caused
climate change, only exacerbates the fire risk. Drier conditions
contribute to hotter air temperatures, further drying out soils and
vegetation to make the landscape more fire-prone.
A searing heat wave is beginning to grip the Southwest this week,
including Texas, threatening to stress the power grid. And the National
Weather Service's seasonal temperature outlook anticipates above-average
temperatures this summer for nearly the entire continental U.S.
Outside the U.S., the outlook can be even worse.
Heat came early this year in India and Pakistan. Temperatures soared
above 120°F, setting new records as early as March. Researchers
determined that climate change made the extreme heat up to 30 times more
likely to occur.
In the Arctic this week, wildfires are already burning in northern
Siberia and Alaska. The Siberian fire season may be more severe than
usual due to the diversion of military resources away from firefighting
and to the war in Ukraine instead.
Scientists are watching Arctic tundra fires and blazes in the boreal
forest especially closely, given the vast stores of carbon and other
greenhouse gases stored in the frozen soils.
"All of the environmental, oceanic, and atmospheric conditions are
loudly pointing to elevated risk for the rest of the year," said Steve
Bowen, head of catastrophe insight for Aon.
But he cautions that warning signs on paper do not always translate into
"worst-case event occurrences." He emphasized the need for preparedness.
What they're saying: Climate scientists are preparing for things to get
worse — not just in their work, but also personally.
Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, said he has stocked up on HEPA air filters in case wildfires
cause the air quality to deteriorate where he lives.
"Like many Californians, I am bracing for yet another fiery summer given
the severe drought currently across the western U.S.," he told Axios. He
is ready to relocate if air quality gets extremely hazardous. "Hopefully
we will be spared, but it is prudent to be prepared."
"What concerns me, of course, is that many people cannot afford these
expensive filters nor get out of harm’s way," he said.
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/08/summer-weather-climate-change-heat-fires-hurricanes
/[ everyone, do everything, all at once ]/
*Latino activism leads in grassroot efforts on climate change*
By ANITA SNOW - - June 12, 2022
- -
After experiencing global warming’s firsthand effects, U.S. Latinos are
leading the way in activism around climate change, often drawing on
traditions from their ancestral homelands...
- -
Recent research shows most Latinos in the U.S. consider climate change
an important concern.
A Pew Research Center study released last fall showed about seven in 10
Latinos say climate change affects their communities at least some,
while only 54% of non-Latinos said it affects their neighborhoods. The
self-administered web survey of 13,749 respondents had a margin of error
of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points...
- -
A study by researchers from the University of California, Davis and the
American University of Beirut concluded last year that poor and Latino
neighborhoods in 20 metro regions around the Southwest endure
temperatures several degrees higher on the hottest days, creating
greater risks for heat-related illness.
Phoenix, the hottest big city in the U.S., in recent years has seen some
of its hottest summers, with a heat wave a year ago pushing temperatures
up to 118 degrees (48 Celsius).
The city earlier this year worked with the conservation nonprofit
American Forests to create the first of 100 “cool corridors” by planting
shade trees for pedestrians and cyclists alongside a south Phoenix park
named for the late Latino activist Cesar Chavez...
- -
Climate policy scholar Michael Méndez, author of the book “_Climate
Change from the Streets_,“ said grassroots organizing is equally important.
Méndez grew up the son of Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles County’s
Fernando Valley, where he saw Latino neighbors fight against air
pollution and dumping of toxic waste.
“It’s not an abstract idea for us,” said Méndez, who teaches at the
University of California, Irvine. “For Latinos, climate change is about
how to protect our families, our children.”
https://apnews.com/article/climate-science-government-and-politics-trees-arizona-7a1b7860fc185edb2f97079c63cb8b98
/[ Time to calculate again ] /
*Antarctica And Greenland's Ice Sheet Melting On Track With "Worst-Case
Scenario" Forecasts*
TOM HALE -- Jun 9, 2022
Bad news, everyone. The melting of ice sheets in Greenland and
Antarctica is on track to meet the United Nation's "worst-case scenario"
forecasts, threatening millions of people worldwide with severe flooding
each year.
In the damning study published in the journal Nature Climate Change,
researchers from the University of Leeds in the UK and the Danish
Meteorological Institute found that melting from Antarctica has pushed
global sea levels up by 7.2 millimeters since the ice sheets were first
monitored by satellite in the 1990s, while Greenland has contributed
another 10.6 millimeters. On top of these glacial giants, there are also
many smaller glaciers around the world that are also melting and
fuelling sea level rise. ..
Altogether, the world's oceans are now rising by 4 millimeters each year
as a result of thawing ice sheets. If melting continues to increase at
this rate, the ice sheets could raise sea levels by a further 17
centimeters by the end of the century, exposing a further 16 million
people to annual coastal flooding and destruction.
This, say the researchers, is almost exactly the "worst-case scenario"
put forward in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC).
"If ice sheet losses continue to track our worst-case climate warming
scenarios we should expect an additional 17 centimeters of sea-level
rise from the ice sheets alone. That's enough to double the frequency of
storm-surge flooding in many of the world's largest coastal cities,” Dr
Anna Hogg, study co-author and climate researcher in the School of Earth
and Environment at Leeds, said in a statement.
There are a number of reasons why the projections appear to have
underestimated sea level rise, according to the researchers. For one,
the existing models do not take into account clouds and cloud-formation,
which help to modulate surface melting. Equally, many ignore short-term
weather events, which are also likely to change in the face of further
longer-term climate change.
This has some big implications for the way the world plans to tackle
climate change and the effects it will take have on our planet. The IPCC
is an attempt to provide the world with scientific information about the
risks of human-induced climate change and the way it will affect both
the natural world and the human world. If we’re are already inline with
its worst-case scenarios of sea-level rise, this means our guidebook to
avoid a full-blown climate crisis might need revising.
"Although we anticipated the ice sheets would lose increasing amounts of
ice in response to the warming of the oceans and atmosphere, the rate at
which they are melting has accelerated faster than we could have
imagined," explained Dr Tom Slater, lead author of the study and climate
researcher at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the
University of Leeds.
"The melting is overtaking the climate models we use to guide us, and we
are in danger of being unprepared for the risks posed by sea level rise."
https://www.iflscience.com/antarctica-and-greenlands-ice-sheet-melting-on-track-with-worstcase-scenario-forecasts-57197
/[ so long, thanks for all the fish ] /
*Major New Zealand salmon producer shuts farms as warming waters cause
mass die-offs*
Up to 42% of company’s fish have died in warm water areas this year,
with CEO warning climate change is ‘faster than people think’
- -
“We thought that climate change is a really slow effect, detected over
decades – and possibly we’ve got, two decades before we’re even
impacted. Well, within one decade we were impacted.”...
- -
According to RNZ [Radio New Zealand], trucks taking dead fish out of the
area had dumped 1,269 tonnes of dead fish and waste in Blenheim’s
landfill over the summer – 632 tonnes in February alone, seven times
last year and up from the 194 tonnes dumped in February 2020...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/26/major-new-zealand-salmon-producer-shuts-farms-as-warming-waters-cause-mass-die-offs
/[ podcast interview with John Doerr presented in the NYTimes ] /
*Can We Tech Our Way Out of Climate Change?*
The billionaire venture capitalist John Doerr offers his views on what
Silicon Valley's elite can -- and can't -- do about our global crisis.
Produced by ‘Sway’
What if Silicon Valley’s next big frontier were not web3 but climate
change? That’s the bet the venture capitalist John Doerr is making:
Doerr, the billionaire author of “Speed and Scale: An Action Plan for
Solving Our Climate Crisis Now,” recently donated $1.1 billion to
Stanford University to fund a new school focused on climate and
sustainability, describing climate science as “the new computer
science.” But with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s
latest assessment noting that the dangers of climate change are building
rapidly, piles of cash and a burst of brain power may prove too little,
too late.
In this conversation, Kara Swisher asks Doerr whether Silicon Valley can
save the planet and what President Biden and all of Washington must do
to honor the country’s goal to halve emissions by 2030. She presses him
on whether lobbying for a carbon tax, mobilizing voters or even louder
naming and shaming of fossil fuel companies may be a better use of
Doerr’s dollars. And they discuss Elon Musk’s contribution to a
sustainable future — with Doerr noting why he (wrongly) overlooked Tesla
in its early days — and whether Apple’s potential moves in the EV market
would sit well with the company’s founder, Steve Jobs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/13/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-john-doerr.html
/[The news archive - looking back at influence peddling ]/
/*June 14,1993*/
The New York Times reports on the fossil-fuel industry's successful war
against the BTU tax.
*Tax's Demise Illustrates First Rule Of Lobbying: Work, Work, Work*
By Michael Wines
June 14, 1993
Jim Mc Avoy remembers well when he and a cadre of the capital's top
lobbyists held their first meeting to plot the demise of President
Clinton's energy tax. It was December 1992, Mr. McAvoy recalls: "I
left it, and went straight to our Christmas party."
Not only was the tax plan little more than Washington dinner-party
grist; the President wasn't even the President yet. Mr. Clinton
would not suggest squeezing money from British thermal units until
February. Congress would not vote on a B.T.U. tax until May.
But opponents were already hard at work.
And last week -- after the proposed tax on coal was lowered; after
aluminum smelters and barge operators got a break; after farmers and
city dwellers won exemptions for the diesel that heats homes and
runs combines; after oil refiners and gas and electric companies
moved the tax off their backs and onto consumers'; after grain
merchants won and then lost a battle to exempt ethanol; after
chemical and glass makers secured protection against untaxed foreign
competitors -- last week, after all that and more, the White House
gave up on enacting a tax on the heat content of fuels, at least for
now. Who Would Have Thought?
"They've done a very sophisticated job," Treasury Secretary Lloyd
Bentsen said Thursday of the anti-tax forces.
Indeed, the lobbyists have ridden a juggernaut. Powered by satellite
feeds and talk radio and opinion polls and a blizzard of newspaper
advertisements, they had whipped up a froth of outrage over the tax.
Mass mailings urged citizens to complain to Congress, and lobbyists
offered a toll-free number to make it painless. Meanwhile, the White
House slept.
The tax foes' campaign was cheap by Washington lobbying standards --
a few million dollars, its generals say. The ease of the victory
shocked some.
"Nobody thought you'd win this fight," said Jeffrey A. Nesbit, head
of communications for Citizens for a Sound Economy, which raised
several hundred thousand dollars by direct mail last winter to
battle the tax. "We've got a Democratic President, a Democratic
Congress. Whoever thought you would be able to beat this?"
In hindsight, Mr. Nesbit and others said, it is not so hard to see why.
One reason was that the tax hit every American, including thousands
whose anger was easily brought out. "It just took a while for
members of Congress and Americans generally to look at it," said
Charles Fritts, the chief lobbyist for the American Gas Association.
"But when people did look at it, they said, 'This isn't an energy
tax -- it's my utility bill; it's how I drive my car.' "
Another is that some arguments against the tax were plausible, not
merely political. Some gas utilities could show that the tax
exceeded their profits; chemical makers could show how a similar
tax, levied on chemicals to finance the Superfund toxic-waste
cleanup program, had caused exports to plummet. A Distracted White House
But the White House also fought a poor fight, the lobbyists said.
Saddled with public suspicion of his economic plan and diverted by
brush-fire crises, Mr. Clinton never explained why a B.T.U. tax was
needed.
Some said the White House fatally erred by handing out tax breaks to
silence opponents, rather than insisting on shared sacrifice.
"They allowed their proposal to move from a relatively fair tax,
across the board, to one that was riddled with loopholes," said
Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of
Manufacturers, a Washington-based industry lobby.
While Mr. Clinton was absorbed by Bosnia, Haiti and the search for
an Attorney General, "we had a very single-minded coalition that
focused on defeating the B.T.U. tax and substituting spending
reductions in its place," Mr. Jasinowski said. "The Administration
never got out into the field." With Friends Like These . . .
The White House was also crippled by a few powerful Democrats,
including Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma and Representative
Charles Stenholm of Texas, who opposed the tax fiercely and
publicly, and made opposition politically legitimate. Mr. Boren, a
swing vote on the Senate Finance Committee, was crucial to the
anti-tax effort, lobbyists said.
Then there were professionals like Mr. McAvoy, who spent Christmas
to Memorial Day stirring up trouble.
A Republican who ran "truth squads" to spread his party's message at
the Democratic National Convention last July, Mr. McAvoy now is
president of Advocacy Communications, a unit of the public-relations
giant Burson-Marsteller. Advocacy's business is fertilizing the
grass roots -- in this case, cultivating anti-tax sentiment for
1,400 lobbies and businesses headed by the manufacturers association
and dubbed the American Energy Alliance. Anger in Corn Country
In February, Randy Cruise, who farms 3,000 acres of corn and
soybeans in Pleasanton, Neb., learned that the White House planned
to tax ethanol, a corn-based fuel that competes with gasoline, at a
maximum rate.
Mr. Cruise is president of the National Corn Growers Association.
"We went straight to Bentsen and Panetta," he said. Besides the
Treasury Secretary and Leon E. Panetta, the budget director, Mr.
Cruise went to Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy and farm-state
Democrats like Senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska.
Joining the cause was the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group
that includes the Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, maker of 70
percent of all ethanol and a generous political donor.
On March 23, before the tax bill went to Congress, Mr. Bentsen sent
Mr. Kerrey a letter. "After studying the impact of the B.T.U. energy
tax," he wrote, "we have decided to exempt both ethanol and
methanol." More Favors Are Sought
Emboldened by that bow to the farm belt, Northeastern senators
demanded a break for their constituents, too. So on April 1, Mr.
Bentsen lowered the proposed tax on home-heating oil. And a parade
of favor-seekers began wearing a path to White House and
Congressional doors.
Aluminum companies, voracious consumers of power, fought for and won
a $500 million exemption. According to the magazine National
Journal, 13 House members from aluminum-plant districts wrote Mr.
Bentsen to argue that electricity was a raw material in aluminum,
not a taxable fuel. Among them was Thomas S. Foley of Washington,
the Speaker of the House.
The Chemical Manufacturers Association shunned lobbying Gucci-style
and used calls and visits by hometown company executives to secure
an "equalizer" tax on competing imports. The American Gas
Association turned to its 250 members to help move the B.T.U. tax
away from pipeline operators and on to gas customers' bills. The
White House balked, envisioning millions of mailboxes stuffed with
monthly reminders of Mr. Clinton's tax; Congress moved the
collection point anyway.
By April, as the modified tax moved from the White House to
Congress, the anti-tax coalitions -- the American Energy Alliance
and Citizens for a Sound Economy -- opened long-planned efforts to
stir up opposition. Plenty of Money
The alliance was financed mostly by the National Manufacturers
Association, the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American
Petroleum Institute. But it signed up 1,400 other members, creating
the impression of a mass movement, and spent $1 million to $2
million in about 20 states.
The alliance hired a Virginia direct-marketing company to conduct a
mail campaign and Mr. McAvoy's shop to execute a public-relations
strategy.
The alliance relied heavily on television, radio talk shows and
staged news events. From Baton Rouge, La., for example, came a
widely reported study by Louisiana State University energy experts
warning that the B.T.U tax would cost the state $1 billion. Let's
Call a Senator
In the states of two crucial Democratic Senators on the Finance
Committee, Mr. Boren and John B. Breaux of Louisiana, the group
spent about $100,000 mobilizing public opinion. Street rallies and
full-page newspaper advertisements were employed in the other
states, with a twist: a toll-free number that voters could use to
call their senators and complain.
How well do such campaigns work? Mr. Jasinowski, Mr. McAvoy and Mr.
Nesbit agreed their millions might have been wasted had average
people not already been uneasy. "I think we threw a match on
something that the White House had already thrown gas on," Mr.
McAvoy said, "and that ignited a real brush fire."
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/14/us/tax-s-demise-illustrates-first-rule-of-lobbying-work-work-work.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
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