Paul Chesser
2007-10-05 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

While the media and environmentalists regularly hammer the Bush administration for its alleged lethargy in addressing global warming, an activist group is working through individual states and substantially influencing how they will reduce their output of greenhouse gases. Taxpayers and energy consumers will take a hit to their household budgets because

of it.

What’s amazing is that the states — including Maryland — are using the Center for Climate Strategies to de facto create their plans to address climate change, despite CCS’s predisposition to alarmism and the fact that the policy development process is mostly paid for by extreme environmentalist foundations.

The course of action taken by Maryland is similar to those in other states. Gov. Martin O’Malley, as have other executives (both Democrat and Republican), issued an executive order in April declaring global warming a threat to the state and creating the Maryland Commission on Climate Change.

The panel consists entirely of political appointees with no expertise in climate science, which is essential to determine whether or not the decisions made will accomplish any reduction in temperature (even if implemented nationwide or globally). Nor were any economists chosen for the commission, so the significant cost to Marylanders will remain a mystery.

The reason why none of this expertise was enlisted is because CCS tells states that they provide all they need to make informed decisions. After all, CCS designed all the policy options — smart growth, renewable energy portfolio subsidies and utility surcharges among them — to theoretically trim greenhouse gas emissions within the state. But if you’re looking for how its various ideas will impact temperature or affect the economy of Maryland, forget it. CCS provides no such analysis.

With a series of several dozen options under consideration that could cost consumers and taxpayers billions of dollars, you might think at least the commission members could judge each choice on a straight up-or-down vote. You’d be wrong.

The CCS procedure is to establish each option as already approved; to change or remove one would require a mostly uninformed panelist to oppose it. Even if someone does, he or she is often a single voice crying in the wilderness, and if enough members believe strongly enough that an option is unacceptable, it is simply made less objectionable. Maryland is even more unlikely than other states to see options removed because its panel consists almost entirely of government bureaucrats.

Should you still think that the process is not stacked against taxpayers, consider who is paying for the sham. CCS is so appealing to governors because states pay almost nothing to develop their policy. Instead CCS looks attractive by toting along funds it has raised from environmentalist foundations, all of which are squarely on the panic-stricken side of the global-warming argument.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the (Ted) Turner Foundation and the Heinz Endowments are among their patrons. Those names are hardly recognized for their support of individual rights and small government.

What do they pay for? Nothing that requires a lot of intellectual heft. CCS, which has none of its own employees, pays six figures annually to several contractors who jet around the country to host climate planning meetings in various states.

Little new is introduced in the way of ideas, procedures or science, as the CCS template is used almost identically everywhere. All its consultants have to do is show up and direct the meetings.

With such a controlled process and outcome, it would be laughable for CCS officials to claim they have no bias about climate science or no interest in the policy outcomes of their process, yet that is what they say.

“CCS provides a model facilitation service and does not advance an agenda in terms of final policy decisions in respective states,” said Brian Hill, president of CCS’s parent nonprofit.

Whether you think global warming is throwing the planet into a death spiral or a tropical paradise, CCS’s tactics and solutions ought to concern everyone. Marylanders stand to suffer a sock to their economy should the state’s climate commission succeed with the draft legislation it produces. It’s not too late to start questioning the process.

Paul Chesser is an associate editor for the John Locke Foundation who can be reached at pchesser@carolinajournal.com.