A "free-market grassroots group" is planning a major protest at the lower Manhattan offices of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative on the date of a proposed "carbon auction."
The New Jersey and New York chapters of Americans for Prosperity announced their plans today in an e-mail to supporters and interested followers. The rally will take place at 11:00 a.m. on September 8 at the 90 Church Street offices of the RGGI. That organization will hold its ninth "carbon points" auction at that date and time.
AFP-NJ has been featuring the RGGI on its front page for several weeks. As they point out, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade law passed the House last year but stalled in the Senate. The scandal surrounding the unauthorized release of a 6.2-megabyte archive of "correspondence, code and documents" from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Centre on or about November 19, 2009 might or might not have played a role in that stalling. (Representative Leonard Lance, R-NJ-7, one of eight Republicans in the House who voted for Waxman-Markey last year, has rescinded his support during the current election campaign. However, Senators Robert Menendez and Frank R. Lautenberg, both D-NJ, voted for the companion Kerry-Boxer bill in the Senate and remain committed to the concept.)
But though the federal program remains stalled, ten States have enacted cap-and-trade programs of their own: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. New Jersey's cap-and-trade law, Chap. 340 NJSA 26:2C-45, provides that proceeds from the "carbon auctions" that are the heart of the RGGI go to support active measures intended to lead to lower energy use, "sequestration" of carbon (chiefly in thicker forests and restored tidal marshes), and greater use of "renewable" energy.
Mark Lagerkvist, writing in New Jersey Watchdog, last July published an expose of the RGGI program, saying that "secrecy and greed" pervade the program. According to Lagerkvist, RGGI has sold $662 million in CO2 permits since 2008, but refuses all requests, including this one made under the Open Public Records Act, for information on how they spend that money. Jonathan Schrag, RGGI's executive director, has held that RGGI is not a "public agency," and refuses all requests for interviews. Lagerkvist also paid a backhanded compliment to the US Environmental Protection Agency, which, in comparison to RGGI, has published details of its sulfur-dioxide emissions auctions for 18 years. The RGGI has insisted that its CO2 auction details are a "trade secret," but Lagerkvist says that the EPA's precedent belies that notion.
This New Jersey Watchdog blog entry states that among the secrets that RGGI keeps are the salaries of Schrag and other leading executives. But the author of the entry did learn that Schrag and his wife live in a $2.2 million full-floor loft apartment in New York City--an example of opulence reminiscent of the country dachas assigned to the nomenklatura in the old Soviet Union, and perhaps also a demonstration of the sort of hypocrisy of which Albert A. Gore Jr. and most of the delegates to the Fifteenth Conference of Parties in Copenhagen last year stand repeatedly accused.
AFP-NJ, headed by Steve Lonegan, who ran unsucessfully against future Governor Chris Christie in the gubernatorial primary last year, said that Christie used RGGI proceeds to balance this year's New Jersey budget. They also point to his recent plan to subsidize an off-shore wind farm. For those reasons, AFP-NJ says that they cannot rely on Christie to oppose the program or attempt to terminate it, this although the RGGI is an initiative of the administration of Christie's predecessor, Jon S. Corzine. (Lonegan has criticized Christie before on budget matters, for "cutting State aid rather than State government.")
AFP-NJ also maintains this special website, No NJ Cap and Trade, essentially a blog with links to several organizations having information on the RGGI
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Comments
One of the insidious aspects of global warming theory is the sense of entitlement it confers to environmentalists. Virtually any program, touted as reducing CO2, can be endorsed by environmentalists without regard to the financial impact of it. Worse yet is the feeling that there is no need to link specific projects to their impact on climate. Probably because that would be difficult if not impossible to do and would undercut the "science" behind the movement.
This article is wrong and potentially libelous.
1) The salary has been posted online for weeks in the organization's 2009 IRS 990 tax return. He earned $146,667 dollars in 2009.
2) How the money is spent in NJ and 9 other states is clearly detailed on the website.
How could you print something so wrong?
This quote taken from the RGGI website:
"These investments reduce CO2 emissions, and generate important consumer benefits, including lower energy bills, greater electric system reliability and more jobs."
There's a wise adage advising that when something seems to be too good to be true it usually is. We are promised everything you can imagine. Less CO2, cheeper energy bills, a more reliable electric system, a net increase in jobs and improved energy efficiency to boot. Downside? Santa came early this year. Less expensive electric bills? Don't believe it. Maybe the anonymous commenter can explain how we can have it all.
To quote the article above: "among the secrets that RGGI keeps are the salaries of Schrag and other leading executives". But the tax return for 2009 with Schrag's salary is there for all to see: $146,667. http://www.rggi.org/docs/RGGI_Inc_Form_990_2009.pdf
Another quote: "but refuses all requests, including this one made under the Open Public Records Act, for information on how they spend that money." Again, the state investment plans twith specifics on how states are spending the money is also on the website with details for all to see.
http://www.rggi.org/rggi_benefits/program_investments
Now you might disagree with how states are spending money, or doubt that it will have the advertised impacts. That's fair. We'll have to wait and see the results. i have some concerns myself. But any claims that the information is not available is just wrong.
You put some work into this Terry. Have a great weekend.
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