As covered by Morning Consult on July 31, the Climate Leadership Council (CLC) has commissioned a report on its carbon tax plan. As of this writing, a 26-page summary from the report’s authors at Thunder Said Energy is available here. It appears a longer report will follow. Based on the available information, the report has some significant holes, even on its own terms. My initial concerns follow.
By driving technological innovation, the CLC plan would reduce US CO2 emissions by 57% by 2035 (vs. 2005), unlock $1.4tn of new investment, create 1.6M jobs and enhance US competitiveness.
CLC Plan as Basis for Modelling: Thunder Said Energy modelled the consequences of a $43/ton CO2 price in the US starting in 2021, then rising by 5% above inflation each year, reaching $112/ton by 2035. Our bottom-up analysis assessed the impact on the costs and potential benefits of 30 different energy technologies. This summary is drawn from our longer report.
Emissions Reductions of 57% by 2035: Based on the cumulative emissions reductions of 30 different decarbonization technologies, unlocked at different price points, the CLC plan would reduce US CO2 emissions by 57% from the EPA’s 2005 CO2 baseline. See Figures 1 and 2.
$1.4 Trillion of New Capital Investment in Technological Innovation: The plan would produce an initial investment surge of $95bn of new spending in 2023 and create 195,000 direct new jobs that year. By 2035, the CO2 price would unlock a total of $1.4tn of new capital investment in energy-related technological innovation
IER’s Take
Telling us that we’ll see a 57-percent emissions drop suggests a major shift in trajectory, but to know if that’s the case we need to grasp the emissions trajectory under a scenario in which current policies are maintained in the absence of a carbon tax. We’ve already seen greenhouse gas emissions fall more than 10 percent since 2005 (the year off of which the 57-percent figure is based). How much lower will emissions be under this plan than they would otherwise be? That’s a key question. And that the answer to that question isn’t broadcast on page one should raise eyebrows. The relevant number isn’t 2035 emissions with carbon tax vs. 2005 emissions, but 2035 emissions with a carbon tax vs. 2035 emissions without.
A second concern readers should have about this report is the short shrift it gives to the significant price increases energy users would face as a result of the tax. Almost as an afterthought, the authors note in the final paragraph of the introduction that the starting tax rate would result in an increase of $0.40 per gallon of gasoline. Given the 5 percent annual hike, that means over a dollar extra per gallon by 2035. The starting tax rate would also result in an immediate 14-percent electricity rate hike (based on ERCOT 2019 numbers) and a 20-percent increase in the price of natural gas for residential use. On page seventeen, the report states that the tax could increase home heating costs by between $110 and $2,600. That’s quite a range of possibilities.
A third aspect of this report deserving scrutiny is its inconsistency with respect to the use of the tax revenue. On page one, it states the proceeds will be “returned to all Americans as equal quarterly dividends.” On page three, however, it states “payments can be redistributed to individuals who bear the costs of climate change.” If we are going to buy into the externality framework, we should recognize that something as complex as global warming will have heterogeneous effects on people in different circumstances. People in some regions theoretically will face challenges like more severe storm surge, while people in other regions, conversely, could benefit from extended growing seasons and the fertilization effect of increased carbon dioxide concentrations. Therefore, stating that the tax revenue will be “redistributed to individuals who bear the costs of climate change” is at odds with the statement that revenue will be “returned to all Americans as equal quarterly dividends.”
The most extraordinary blind spot in this report is that it doesn’t tell us one thing about the CLC tax’s effect on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations or the related temperature rise attenuation that would ostensibly justify increasing energy costs. The explanation for this omission is obvious: Thunder Said Energy and CLC simply don’t know how much of an impact the tax would have. Associates of CLC assure us that they have a border adjustment analysis coming in the future that would shed light on this most obvious of concerns.
But Biden should know that Friedman’s views for socially effective public policies were not partisan. The law of unintended consequences, and the truth that one intervention spawns ever more, are lessons for both Democrats and Republicans.
Milton Friedman died in 2006 at age 94. Born on this day 108 years ago, the renowned economist specialized in money and banking. But as a public intellectual, writing popular books and a biweekly Newsweek column, he became quite conversant in different fields, including energy.
Rent-Seeking
Friedman understood how, for much of U.S. history, major energy regulation was sponsored by some segment of the industry. “Few U.S. industries sing the praises of free enterprise more loudly than the oil industry,” he stated in 1967. “Yet few industries rely so heavily on special government favors.”
That was then. Now, cronyism has shifted toward the market-problematic wind, (on-grid) solar, nuclear, ethanol, electric vehicles, and carbon-capture industries. All of these energy segments are government-enabled with special tax incentives and mandated markets. Oil and gas can survive and expand from underlying consumer demand; the six aforementioned rent-seeking segments cannot.
On top of this, public utilities distributing electricity have turned into tubs of political pork under their state regulatory commissions. Politically correct, economically incorrect energies and technologies have shelter under a franchise monopolist.
Price Controls
Friedman’s harsh reaction to federal wage and price controls implemented August 1971 is particularly important for the energy debate. Nixon’s unprecedented peacetime edict, not the Arab Embargo, spawned the oil shortages and a decade of spiraling regulation. The effects of a decade of federal price and allocation controls on energy were so perverse that like intervention has not been part of the policy debate ever since.
It took guts to deviate from the mainstream and say that oil and gas, and minerals more generally, were not special (depletable) with extraction and retail sale becoming ever more expensive. But in a 1978 lecture, Friedman opined that mineral energies are “producible … at more or less constant or indeed declining cost because of the improvements in the technology of drilling and exploring and so on.”
In this regard, there was not energy economics but only good and bad economics to Friedman. Ipso facto, oil, gas, and coal would thrive in free markets—and wither under price controls and nationalization. Same with wheat and sugar.
Protectionism
“The infant industry argument is a smoke screen,” Milton and Rose Friedman wrote in Free to Choose (1979). “The so-called infants never grow up. Once imposed, tariffs are seldom eliminated.”
Consider, in our day, the U.S. wind power industry. The Production Tax Credit, first enacted in 1992, has been extended twelve times: in 1999, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2019. And the wind industry today wants still more subsidies and more time to be “competitive.”
Climate Alarm
Near the end of his long career, Friedman weighed in on the global warming debate with a blurb for Thomas Gale Moore’s Cato Institute book, Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry About Global Warming (1999): Friedman opined:
This encyclopedic and even-handed survey of the evidence of global warming is a welcome corrective to the raging hysteria about the alleged dangers of global warming. Moore demonstrates conclusively that global warming is more likely to benefit than to harm the general public.
And when modern-day carbon taxers tried to hijack Friedman’s views on climate, David Friedman set the record straight. “Of all my father’s accomplishments, I believe the one he was proudest of was his role in ending military conscription,” David wrote. “I do not think he would be happy to be conscripted, posthumously, for someone else’s cause [of a carbon tax].” He explained:
… warming can be expected to produce both negative externalities such as sea level rise and hotter summers and positive ones such as longer growing seasons and milder winters. The effects will be spread out over a long and uncertain future, making their size difficult to estimate. My own conclusion …is that the uncertainties are large enough so that one cannot sign the sum, cannot say whether the net effect will be positive or negative.
Conclusion
Every July 31st should be recognized as Milton Friedman Day. His insights were well premised, logically developed, and timeless. His was good economics, marrying theory and evidence to better understand the world. This foundation naturally carried over to political economy, where Friedman’s energy insights are as fresh today as when they were spoken or written.
We're bringing back this slightly different-from-the-norm Whiteboard Friday, in which the fantastic Will Critchlow shares lessons from how kids search. Kids may search differently than adults, but there are some interesting insights from how they use Google that can help deepen our understanding of searchers in general. Comfort levels with particular search strategies, reading only the bold words, taking search suggestions and related searches as answers — there's a lot to dig into.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hi, everyone. I'm Will Critchlow, founder and CEO of Distilled, and this week's Whiteboard Friday is a little bit different. I want to talk about some surprising and interesting and a few funny facts that I learnt when I was reading some research that Google did about how kids search for information. So this isn't super actionable. This is not about tactics of improving your website particularly. But I think we get some insights — they were studying kids aged 7 to 11 — by looking at how kids interact. We can see some reflections or some ideas about how there might be some misconceptions out there about how adults search as well. So let's dive into it.
What do dolphins eat?
I've got this "What do dolphins eat?" because this was the first question that the researchers gave to the kids to say sit down in front of a search box, go. They tell this little anecdote, a little bit kind of soul-destroying, of this I think it was a seven-year-old child who starts typing dolphin, D-O-L-F, and then presses Enter, and it was like sadly there's no dolphins, which hopefully they found him some dolphins. But a lot of the kids succeeded at this task.
Different kinds of searchers
The researchers divided the ways that the kids approached it up into a bunch of different categories. They found that some kids were power searchers. Some are what they called "developing." They classified some as "distracted." But one that I found fascinating was what they called visual searchers. I think they found this more commonly among the younger kids who were perhaps a little bit less confident reading and writing. It turns out that, for almost any question you asked them, these kids would turn first to image search.
So for this particular question, they would go to image search, typically just type "dolphin" and then scroll and go looking for pictures of a dolphin eating something. Then they'd find a dolphin eating a fish, and they'd turn to the researcher and say "Look, dolphins eat fish." Which, when you think about it, I quite like in an era of fake news. This is the kids doing primary research. They're going direct to the primary source. But it's not something that I would have ever really considered, and I don't know if you would. But hopefully this kind of sparks some thought and some insights and discussions at your end. They found that there were some kids who pretty much always, no matter what you asked them, would always go and look for pictures.
Kids who were a bit more developed, a bit more confident in their reading and writing would often fall into one of these camps where they were hopefully focusing on the attention. They found a lot of kids were obviously distracted, and I think as adults this is something that we can relate to. Many of the kids were not really very interested in the task at hand. But this kind of path from distracted to developing to power searcher is an interesting journey that I think totally applies to grown-ups as well.
In practice: [wat do dolfin eat]
So I actually, after I read this paper, went and did some research on my kids. So my kids were in roughly this age range. When I was doing it, my daughter was eight and my son was five and a half. Both of them interestingly typed "wat do dolfin eat" pretty much like this. They both misspelled "what," and they both misspelled "dolphin." Google was fine with that. Obviously, these days this is plenty close enough to get the result you wanted. Both of them successfully answered the question pretty much, but both of them went straight to the OneBox. This is, again, probably unsurprising. You can guess this is probably how most people search.
"Oh, what's a cephalopod?" The path from distracted to developing
So there's a OneBox that comes up, and it's got a picture of a dolphin. So my daughter, a very confident reader, she loves reading, "wat do dolfin eat," she sat and she read the OneBox, and then she turned to me and she said, "It says they eat fish and herring. Oh, what's a cephalopod?" I think this was her going from distracted into developing probably. To start off with, she was just answering this question because I had asked her to. But then she saw a word that she didn't know, and suddenly she was curious. She had to kind of carefully type it because it's a slightly tricky word to spell. But she was off looking up what is a cephalopod, and you could see the engagement shift from "I'm typing this because Dad has asked me to and it's a bit interesting I guess" to "huh, I don't know what a cephalopod is, and now I'm doing my own research for my own reasons." So that was interesting.
"Dolphins eat fish, herring, killer whales": Reading the bold words
My son, as I said, typed something pretty similar, and he, at the point when he was doing this, was at the stage of certainly capable of reading, but generally would read out loud and a little bit halting. What was fascinating on this was he only read the bold words. He read it out loud, and he didn't read the OneBox. He just read the bold words. So he said to me, "Dolphins eat fish, herring, killer whales," because killer whales, for some reason, was bolded. I guess it was pivoting from talking about what dolphins eat to what killer whales eat, and he didn't read the context. This cracked him up. So he thought that was ridiculous, and isn't it funny that Google thinks that dolphins eat killer whales.
That is similar to some stuff that was in the original research, where there were a bunch of common misconceptions it turns out that kids have and I bet a bunch of adults have. Most adults probably don't think that the bold words in the OneBox are the list of the answer, but it does point to the problems with factual-based, truthy type queries where Google is being asked to be the arbiter of truth on some of this stuff. We won't get too deep into that.
Common misconceptions for kids when searching
1. Search suggestions are answers
But some common misconceptions they found some kids thought that the search suggestions, so the drop-down as you start typing, were the answers, which is bit problematic. I mean we've all seen kind of racist or hateful drop-downs in those search queries. But in this particular case, it was mainly just funny. It would end up with things like you start asking "what do dolphins eat," and it would be like "Do dolphins eat cats" was one of the search suggestions.
2. Related searches are answers
Similar with related searches, which, as we know, are not answers to the question. These are other questions. But kids in particular — I mean, I think this is true of all users — didn't necessarily read the directions on the page, didn't read that they were related searches, just saw these things that said "dolphin" a lot and started reading out those. So that was interesting.
How kids search complicated questions
The next bit of the research was much more complex. So they started with these easy questions, and they got into much harder kind of questions. One of them that they asked was this one, which is really quite hard. So the question was, "Can you find what day of the week the vice president's birthday will fall on next year?" This is a multifaceted, multipart question.
How do they handle complex, multi-step queries?
Most of the younger kids were pretty stumped on this question. Some did manage it. I think a lot of adults would fail at this. So if you just turn to Google, if you just typed this in or do a voice search, this is the kind of thing that Google is almost on the verge of being able to do. If you said something like, "When is the vice president's birthday," that's a question that Google might just be able to answer. But this kind of three-layered thing, what day of the week and next year, make this actually a very hard query. So the kids had to first figure out that, to answer this, this wasn't a single query. They had to do multiple stages of research. When is the vice president's birthday? What day of the week is that date next year? Work through it like that.
I found with my kids, my eight-year-old daughter got stuck halfway through. She kind of realized that she wasn't going to get there in one step, but also couldn't quite structure the multi-levels needed to get to, but also started getting a bit distracted again. It was no longer about cephalopods, so she wasn't quite as interested.
Search volume will grow in new areas as Google's capabilities develop
This I think is a whole area that, as Google's capabilities develop to answer more complex queries and as we start to trust and learn that those kind of queries can be answered, what we see is that there is going to be increasing, growing search volume in new areas. So I'm going to link to a post I wrote about a presentation I gave about the next trillion searches. This is my hypothesis that essentially, very broad brush strokes, there are a trillion desktop searches a year. There are a trillion mobile searches a year. There's another trillion out there in searches that we don't do yet because they can't be answered well. I've got some data to back that up and some arguments why I think it's about that size. But I think this is kind of closely related to this kind of thing, where you see kids get stuck on these kind of queries.
Incidentally, I'd encourage you to go and try this. It's quite interesting, because as you work through trying to get the answer, you'll find search results that appear to give the answer. So, for example, I think there was an About.com page that actually purported to give the answer. It said, "What day of the week is the vice president's birthday on?" But it had been written a year before, and there was no date on the page. So actually it was wrong. It said Thursday. That was the answer in 2016 or 2017. So that just, again, points to the difference between primary research, the difference between answering a question and truth. I think there's a lot of kind of philosophical questions baked away in there.
Kids get comfortable with how they search – even if it's wrong
So we're going to wrap up with possibly my favorite anecdote of the user research that these guys did, which was that they said some of these kids, somewhere in this developing stage, get very attached to searching in one particular way. I guess this is kind of related to the visual search thing. They find something that works for them. It works once. They get comfortable with it, they're familiar with it, and they just do that for everything, whether it's appropriate or not. My favorite example was this one child who apparently looked for information about both dolphins and the vice president of the United States on the SpongeBob SquarePants website, which I mean maybe it works for dolphins, but I'm guessing there isn't an awful lot of VP information.
So anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this little adventure into how kids search and maybe some things that we can learn from it. Drop some anecdotes of your own in the comments. I'd love to hear your experiences and some of the funny things that you've learnt along the way. Take care.
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The International Energy Agency (IEA) annually estimates global fossil-fuel consumption subsidies that measure what many developing countries spend to provide below-market-cost fuel to their citizens. In 2019, IEA found that fossil fuel consumption subsidies totaled around $320 billion, 27 percent lower (about $120 billion less) than in 2018. According to IEA, this decrease is partly due to lower average fuel prices throughout the year. Oil subsidies made up 47 percent ($150 billion) of the total fossil fuel consumption subsidies, while electricity made up 36 percent ($115 billion), natural gas 16 percent ($50 billion) and coal 0.8 percent ($2.5 billion). According to the IEA, the United States does not have any consumption subsidies for oil, coal, natural gas, or electricity. This is contrary to many political and media discussions in the United States suggesting that such subsidies exist.
The IEA is a part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which represents the developed nations of the world. IEA’s subsidy study found that many developing countries artificially lower energy prices to their citizens, paying the difference from their government budgets. These wealth transfers are differentiable from subsidies that are intended to support uneconomic energy sources such as wind and solar technologies toward commercialization. The United States and other developed countries support energy production of all types in the form of tax credits, loan guarantees or mandates, which are not included in IEA’s fossil fuel consumption subsidy calculations since they are directed towards production rather than consumption of the fuel.
Almost all countries had lower estimated subsidies with the only exceptions being Iran, Bahrain, and Sri Lanka. Consumers receiving these subsidies paid on average around 85 percent of the competitive market reference prices for the energy products consumed.
Iran leads the world in fossil fuel consumption subsidies providing $86 billion in 2019 to lower the cost of fossil fuels to end-users in its country, despite an increase of at least 50 percent in gasoline prices in November. Of the $86 billion in fossil fuel consumption subsidies Iran paid, 21 percent covered oil, 60 percent went to electricity, and the rest to natural gas.
China is the second largest subsidizer of end-use fossil fuel prices, providing 59 percent of its $30.5 billion in fossil fuel consumption subsidies to oil and 41 percent to electricity. Saudi Arabia ranked third with $28.7 billion in fossil fuel consumption subsidies, 63 percent covering oil, 16 percent covering natural gas, and 20 percent going to electricity. Russia came in fourth with $24.1 billion in fossil fuel consumption subsidies—electricity garnered 57 percent and natural gas 43 percent. India ranked fifth with fossil fuel consumption subsidies totaling $21.8 billion, 96 percent covering oil and 4 percent covering natural gas.
Indonesia ranked sixth funding $19.2 billion in fossil fuel consumption subsidies—100 percent to oil. Egypt ranked seventh with fossil fuel consumption subsidies totaling $15.8 billion in 2019 with oil receiving 57 percent, electricity 40 percent, and natural gas 2 percent. Algeria, Venezuela, and Iraq ranked eighth, ninth, and tenth in fossil fuel consumption subsidies, respectively, with subsidies totaling $13.1 billion (Algeria), $12.8 billion (Venezuela), and $7.4 billion (Iraq).
Coal received $2.5 billion in fossil fuel consumption subsidies, just 0.8 percent of the total. The countries that subsidized coal consumption in 2019 were Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Argentina, and South Korea.
Many of the countries providing fossil fuel consumption subsidies own state energy companies, including countries that comprise the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Net exporting countries see these subsidies as an opportunity cost that benefits their citizens by providing lower cost transportation fuels and reducing other energy costs.
Developed countries, such as the United States, do not have fossil fuel consumption subsidies.
Energy Fossil Fuel Consumption Subsidies in the Top 25 Countries, 2019 (Billion USD)
Energy Consumption Subsidies Were Intended to Alleviate Poverty
Fossil fuel consumption subsidies are often used by developing countries to alleviate energy poverty, but are an inefficient means for doing so, creating market distortions that result in wasteful energy consumption. As such, there has been political pressure to remove fossil fuel consumption subsidies, especially from OECD countries focused on climate change.
IEA Estimates Much Lower Fossil Fuel Consumption Subsidies for 2020
The drop in fossil fuel prices and consumption caused by the coronavirus pandemic is expected to reduce global fossil fuel consumption subsidies to $180 billion in 2020—a drop of 44 percent—which would be the lowest annual figure since the IEA started tracking the data in 2007. The lockdowns and economic slump have brought market-based fuel prices closer to the artificially low end-user prices that prevail in many countries, decreasing the value of the subsidy per unit of consumption. Lower consumption in many countries has further reduced the estimate, primarily the reduction in transportation demand.
Conclusion
Many Americans are confused by the large amount of global fossil fuel consumption subsidies that the IEA calculates, not realizing that these subsidies have nothing to do with tax policy, research, and development or loan guarantees, where most U.S. programs are directed. In fact, most liberalized countries do not offer fossil fuel consumption subsidies that artificially lower the end-use price of the fuel. Fossil fuel consumption subsidies are common and even pervasive in the developing world, particularly in economies with state-owned energy companies. The IEA has been advocating for years that fossil fuel consumption subsidies should be eliminated since they encourage wasteful consumption. It is also true that the richer nations of the OECD who tax energy consumption heavily and use their taxation and subsidy programs to encourage renewable energy might be concerned about poorer countries inducing economic growth with the use of more conventional fuels.
Fossil fuel consumption subsidies in developing countries are welfare transfers that can be differentiated from subsidies in the name of commercializing or sustaining uneconomic energy sources such as on-grid wind or solar, which OECD countries have been subsidizing and/or mandating—for example through the wind production tax credit (PTC) in the United States. These latter forms of energy subsidies that help promote production of uneconomic energy sources can be abolished without detrimental effects to the U.S. economy or its citizens.
The OECD countries find fault with developing countries for subsidizing the costs of energy purchased by their citizens, but those same OECD nations are busy subsidizing and mandating the use of uneconomic and inefficient forms of energy which will make energy more expensive and less reliable for their citizens. The economies would be better off if all such supports by governments were abolished.
This week the team highlights an article focusing on renewed efforts of environmentalists to pass a setback rule for energy development in Colorado and provides a preview of the latest episode of the Plugged In podcast featuring a discussion with Kathryn Klaber on the regulatory landscape of Pennsylvania.
This program has been made possible through the generous support of All Points North Foundation, The Turner Foundation, In Our Hands, the Carolyn Foundation and many individual contributors to Red Cloud Renewable.
Pine Ridge, South Dakota (July 30, 2020) – Red Cloud Renewable (RCR), Solar Energy International (SEI), and Remote Energy (RE) are pleased to announce our continued partnership with All Points North Foundation through the Tribal Train the Trainer (T4) Program for Solar Certification.
All Point North Foundation’s investment in T4 marked its inauguration in 2019. In Year One, T4 hosted nine Native American Trainers who successfully completed 160 hours of hands-on and theory-based solar PV training and mentoring, and ended with participants taking the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) PV Associates Exam.
Red Cloud Renewable hired two of last year’s T4 graduates as PV Instructors for Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center’s PV training program on Pine Ridge Reservation. RCR Executive Director Henry Red Cloud said, “Marie Kills Warrior and Silas Red Cloud are skilled and exceptionally dedicated solar instructors. We are looking forward to what the future brings for them and the good work they do sharing their solar electric knowledge with other Tribal members.”
Marie Kills Warrior is a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe and holds the NABCEP Associate Credential. “I look forward to informing other districts on my reservation about Renewable Energy resources with an emphasis on PV,” she said.
Silas Red Cloud of Pine Ridge says that having been around Lakota Solar he saw that it was something great for his kids and for the future, which inspired him to seek certification. Silas stresses the importance of educating the public because many people are interested in a sustainable future, yet don’t know how to contribute towards it. For other Native Americans considering a career in solar, “it’s a great employment opportunity, is good for the environment, and ties into traditional teachings honoring the sun,” he says. Silas is excited to offer it on the homeland and encourages others to do so.
Through All Points North Foundation’s support, the T4 program will expand in Year Two, including formalizing the hands-on training center at Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center with the support of SEI and RE. Retired SEI Co-Founder Johnny Weiss is actively soliciting equipment donations from the industry to create a training center modeled after SEI’s campus in Paonia, Colorado. Additionally, RCR has selected two women and four men representing five tribes and receiving full scholarships for this year’s professional training program that will covers tuition, meals and lodging at the Sacred Earth Lodge, transportation, and the fee for the NABCEP PV Associate’s certification exam. In light of COVID-19 and its devastating impact on Pine Ridge Reservation, training is scheduled tentatively for Spring 2021, with timing dependent on how COVID-19 continues to evolve.
Trainees will learn about the design and installation of grid-tied and battery-based PV systems through classroom and hands-on training. Ongoing mentorship, skill development, and culturally adapted support will build a strong foundation for this program to serve more people in the coming years, bolstering the Native American community‘s solar workforce.
RCR will provide special attention to support solar development efforts on the Yankton Sioux Reservation. According to Henry Red Cloud, “Gail Huebbling and Chris French were two of the founders of the Solar Warrior Society at Yankton, and we want to support them and others there to explore the full spectrum of solar possibilities!”
Red Cloud Renewable is a 501 (c)(3) federally approved non-profit organization headquartered on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Led by Lakota renewable energy leader, Henry Red Cloud, it has provided renewable energy training for thousands of tribal members from more than 50 tribes.
Since 1991, SEI is the premiere solar training organization in the U.S. with more than 76,000 alumni. More than 25% of all North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP) have received their training through SEI. It has collaborated on solar projects with tribes for more than 15 years.
Remote Energy is a for-impact organization formed in 2017. Its team is dedicated to sharing experience, skills and expertise to empower individuals, communities, technicians and instructors in developing communities worldwide.
All Points North Foundation is one of the first and relatively few foundations in the U.S. to focus specifically on significantly advancing the penetration of photovoltaic (PV) solar through education, job training and the deployment of solar PV technologies. www.AllPointsNorthFoundation.org
Kathryn Klaber, founder and former CEO of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, joins the show to discuss the regulatory landscape in Pennsylvania and steps that energy producers have proactively taken to ensure the safety of their communities and how these realities differ from the story presented in a recent report by the state’s attorney general.
While pipelines in the United States face increasingly hostile legal challenges, China is seeing the importance of a national oil and natural gas pipeline network and is buying pipelines and storage facilities valued at 391.4 billion yuan ($55.9 billion). PipeChina was created in December 2019 to consolidate pipeline assets from the country’s state-owned oil and gas companies, as part of China’s reforms to incentivize domestic exploration and production.
Newly created PipeChina, known formally as China Oil and Gas Pipeline Network, is taking over oil and gas pipelines and storage facilities from state-owned companies, PetroChina and Sinopec, in return for cash and equity in the pipeline company worth almost $56 billion. PipeChina was created to provide neutral access to China’s pipeline infrastructure to help small and non-state-owned companies, encourage investment, improve efficiency, and help China meet its energy needs. The deals are expected to be completed and PipeChina to be operating by the end of September.
Bakken Oil Pipeline Projects
Pipeline projects in the United States that were slated for startup in 2021 are facing huge challenges from uncertain demand, lengthy court battles, and regulatory review. While some projects already under construction are moving forward, it is estimated by ESAI Energy’s North America Watch that 2.7 million barrels per day of new takeaway will be postponed.
First, there is the potential loss of the 570,000 barrel per day Dakota Access Pipeline and its planned expansion due to an issue with environmental permitting. Early in July a DC-based judge ruled that the pipeline needed to be shut down and emptied while a new environmental analysis be performed despite the pipeline operating without mishap for three years. The closure, if appeals fail, will cause bottlenecks as other pipelines fill up, resulting in more dependency on rail and weaker prices for Bakken crude, which had already been adversely impacted due to the lockdown from COVID-19.
Other pipelines affecting Bakken output are the 350,000 barrel per day Liberty pipeline that was deferred in March due to deteriorating economic conditions resulting from COVID-19 and the Tesoro High Plains pipeline that was ordered to shut down for the first time in its 67 years of operation. The Dakota Access pipeline and the Tesoro High Plains pipeline together ship more than one-third of crude from the Bakken shale formation to market. The Tesoro High Plains pipeline delivers oil to Marathon Petroleum Corp.’s 74,000 barrel-a-day Mandan refinery. The Bureau of Indian Affairs determined the pipeline was trespassing on Native American land and found the company responsible for $187 million in damages. The lack of pipeline takeaway from North Dakota is expected to result in an increase in crude-by-rail of 300,000 to 350,000 barrels per day.
Due to these pipeline problems, some curtailed Bakken production may not be brought back, with expected production declining by about 270,000 barrels per day in 2020 and by a further 65,000 barrels per day in 2021. As a result, capital is likely to be diverted to other basins that have better access to markets.
Other U.S. Pipeline Issues and Fatalities
Recently, Dominion Energy and its partner Duke Energy announced they were no longer moving forward with their $8 billion Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline after years of delays and escalating costs. The Atlantic Coast pipeline would have transported natural gas 600 miles through West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. The two companies had invested a combined $3.4 billion in the pipeline to date. Just five months before, Williams Co. canceled its Constitution natural gas pipeline after failing several times to obtain a water permit from New York State.
The Keystone XL pipeline also has a permitting issue, which is related to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ permitting program, known as Nationwide 12, which allowed gas and oil pipelines to traverse wetlands and bodies of water. A May 15 ruling from a federal judge in Montana cancelled the use of the permit for Keystone XL, ruling that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to adequately consider effects on endangered species.
On top of these existing challenges, presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden’s energy and environment advisor Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has introduced an amendment to block the U.S. Army Corps from using federal funding to issue permits under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act for “the discharge of dredged or fill material resulting from an activity to construct a pipeline for the transportation of oil or gas.” That would prevent the Army Corps from constructing, repairing or working on about 8,000 projects each year involving oil and gas pipelines that cross waterways.
Conclusion
China has recognized the necessity for an efficient and accessible pipeline network to further its expansion of oil and natural gas and provide its economy with abundant energy. In the United States meanwhile, environmental activists and their political allies—including an advisor to presidential candidate Joe Biden—want to keep fossil fuels in the ground and are using pipeline obstruction as the means to do so, filing legal suits that prompt the halting of pipeline operation and construction and even introducing legislation to block pipeline permits altogether.
Abundant and low-cost oil and gas are important to our nation’s recovery from the coronavirus economic lockdowns, but a Biden administration would turn away from those energy sources. Biden has vowed to steer the economy toward intermittent sources of energy and to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline that President Trump granted in 2017. As a result, more companies could follow Dominion and Duke and shy away from building new oil and gas infrastructure.
Right now, it appears that China is taking energy very seriously and investing in pipeline infrastructure for the future. In the United States, antipathy toward oil and gas has drowned out the science that shows pipelines to be safe and environmentally sound.
Data visualization platforms have become a vital tool to help illustrate the success of a body of work. Painting a clear picture of your SEO efforts is as important as ever, whether you’re reporting out to clients or to internal stakeholders at your own company. More and more SEOs are turning to data visualization tools to do so — pulling in data from across multiple SEO tools, blending that data in unique ways, and helping to pull back the curtain on the mystery of SEO.
Platforms like Tableau and Google Data Studio are becoming more commonplace in the SEO community as we seek better ways to communicate with our teams. We’ve heard from a number of folks in the Moz community that having a central dashboard to present data has streamlined their own reporting processes. It’s also made information more digestible for colleagues and clients, as they can see everything they need in one place.
Thanks to the helpful feedback of many, many STAT customers, we’ve been hard at work building six Google Data Studio Community Connectors to help pull STAT data into Data Studio. Fortified by beta testing and your thoughtful input, we're excited to launch the six connectors today: Historical Keyword Rankings (site and tag level), Share of Voice (site and tag level), and Ranking Distributions (site and tag level).
If you’re already using STAT, dive into our documentation in the Knowledge Base to get all the nitty-gritty details on the connectors. If you’re not yet a STAT customer, why not chat with a friendly Mozzer to learn more?
Want to hear a bit more about the connectors and how to implement them? Let’s go!
Historical Keyword Rankings
Tracking daily keyword positions over time is a central part of STAT and the long-term success of your site. The Historical Keyword Rankings connectors send historical highest rank data to Data Studio for every keyword you’re currently tracking in a site or a tag.
You can start out with a simple table: perhaps if you have a group of keywords in a dynamic tag, you might want to create a table of your top keywords ranking on page one, or your top keywords ranking in positions 1-3.
Turn that table into a line graph to understand average rank for the whole site or tag and spot trends:
In STAT, share of voice measures the visibility of a group of keywords on Google. This keyword set can be keywords that are grouped together into a tag, a data view, or a site. Share of voice is calculated by assigning each ranking a click-through rate (CTR) and then multiplying that by the keyword’s search volume.
It’s important to remember that share of voice is based on the concept that higher ranks and higher search volume give you more share of voice.
The default chart type will display a doughnut chart for current share of voice, and a line graph will show share of voice over time:
Ranking Distribution, available in the Daily Snapshot and Ranking Trends views in the STAT app, shows how your keyword rankings are distributed across the top 119 Google results.
View your top ranking positions as a bar chart to easily eyeball how your rankings are distributed, where shifts are taking place, and where there is clear opportunity for improvement.
Whether you’re a Google Data Studio pro or a bit newer to the tool, setting up the connectors shouldn’t be too arduous. Get started by visiting the page for the connector of your choice. Authorize the connector by clicking the Authorize button. (Tip: Each connector must be authorized separately.)
Once you authorize the connector, you’ll see a parameters table like this one:
Complete the fields using the proper information tied to your STAT account:
STAT Subdomain: Fill in this field with the subdomain of your STAT login URL. This field ensures that the GDS connector directs its request to the correct STAT subdomain.
STAT API Key: Find your API key in STAT by visiting Options > Account Management > Account Settings > API Key.
STAT Site/Tag ID: Retrieve IDs through the API. Visit our documentation to ensure you use the proper API calls.
Allow “STAT Site/Tag ID” to be modified in reports: Tick this box to be able to edit the site or tag ID from within the report, without reconfiguring the connector.
Include Keyword Tags: Tick this box to add a column to your report populated with the tags the keyword is a member of (only applicable to site and tag historical keyword rankings connectors).
Allow “Include Keyword Tags?” to be modified in reports: Tick this box to be able to turn the inclusion of the Keyword Tags column on or off from within the report, without reconfiguring the connector (only applicable to site and tag historical keyword rankings connectors).
Once you’ve filled in the table, click Connect in the top right.
Confirm which columns you’d like to include in the report. Review the columns, and click Create Report.
Once you’ve created a report, the exciting part begins! Whether you’re pulling in your STAT data for a fresh report, adding it into a report with other pieces of data, or using Data Studio’s data blending feature to create compelling views of your search presence — there are so many ways to slice and dice.
Ready to put the connectors into production? We can’t wait to hear how your Google Data Studio reports are strengthened by adding in your STAT data. Let us know how it goes in the comments.
Not yet a STAT user but curious how it might fit into your SEO toolkit? Take a tour of the product from your friendly neighborhood Mozzer:
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The ballot proposal to undercut Colorado’s status as a major oil and natural gas producer is back. Well, sort of.
Two years ago, climate activists spent $1.87 million advocating for an initiative that would have required new oil and gas development to be located a minimum distance of 2,500 feet from occupied buildings and “vulnerable” areas—a term likely left vague intentionally. Fortunately, voters defeated the initiative 55 percent to 45 percent.
Despite that wide margin, the activists returned in early 2020 to gather signatures for a new oil and gas setback initiative. To the activists’ delight, Governor Jared Polis temporarily ok’d the use of remote electronic signature gathering, using new social distancing practices precipitated by COVID-19 as justification. When the Governor’s decision was challenged, the state Supreme Court in a unanimous ruling deemed the democratic end-around unconstitutional.
The relationship between environmentalists and Colorado’s ballot measure process has been rocky to say the least. Regardless of whether the oil and gas setback measure makes it onto Colorado’s ballot in November, the topic’s staying power demands that we asses it, yet again.
Advocates for these setbacks claim that current buffer zones are not effective in protecting citizens. However, they offer no scientific evidence to support that position. What tangible difference will this increase of more than 1,000 feet make? And why is 2,500 feet the magic number? Why not make it a clean 5,280 feet in honor of the Mile High City?
When the ballot measure topic originally surfaced, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released an assessment in 2017 stating that the studies used to justify the setback proposal “do not indicate the need for immediate public health action” since there is not “substantial or moderate evidence of health effects of communities living near oil and gas operations.” In other words, Colorado already has adequate setback buffers, and no evidence has been offered to adequately justify expanding it. In fact, some in other states have looked to Colorado’s current, possibly best in the nation, robust regulatory system as a model to consider replicating.
It appears environmentalists picked the 2,500-foot setback distance for political reasons. Extending setbacks to this distance would put 54 percent of Colorado off-limits to new gas and oil development—a certain threat to Colorado’s position as the sixth-largest state in natural gas production and the fifth-largest state in crude oil production. Further, an analysis by Common Sense Institute indicates that “89.42% of new oil production and 87.3% of new gas production, has occurred within the proposed 2,500-ft increased setback area.”
Putting aside the poor rationale for extending setbacks with proposed politically-targeted distances, it is imperative to point out the economic costs for drastically increasing the buffer zone.
It is estimated, according to the Common Sense Institute study, that this loss in oil and gas production would eliminate around 33,500 to 43,000 jobs in Colorado in the first year, and reduce state and local tax revenue from severance taxes, property taxes, income taxes, and sales and use taxes by between $825 million and $1.1 billion by 2030.
But let’s imagine for a moment there were good rationale to extend Colorado’s setbacks. In that case, the concern for setbacks should also apply to the health risks associated with other energy sources, like wind and solar generating facilities. Shouldn’t setbacks be applied to all forms of industrial energy development in a similar way?
One study found that individuals living in close proximity to industrial wind turbines experienced sleep disturbance, excessive tiredness, headache, stress, hearing problems, tinnitus, heart palpitations, anxiety and depression. Further, citizens in Westerlo, New York wrote a letter to Albany County officials voicing their concern over a roadside solar farm that created a dangerous glare for oncoming traffic. Yet there is little discourse around appropriate setback provisions for wind turbines and solar arrays.
Some studies have concluded that close proximity to high-voltage power lines can increase the chances for leukemia. Cancer aside, severe weather happens year-round and natural disasters related to tornadoes, hurricanes and other storms can seriously damage power lines and other electrical equipment creating highly dangerous settings. And if our radically changing climate is so volatile, as some believe it to be, we should anticipate even more severe weather changes and increased risk from power lines.
Why is there not a comprehensive setback policy to address these concerns? Because those are the politically-preferred energy sources. The discrepancy between fossil fuels, wind and solar energy, and power line setbacks presents a curious double standard. Failure to educate the public on this matter will result in even more misguided initiatives that threaten American energy security, and the affordable prices it is delivering to consumers.
The truth is, this double standard is unfair and hypocritical. It’s time that all energy setbacks be subjected to the same degree of scrutiny and debate.
“We need millions of construction, skilled trades, and engineering workers to build a new American infrastructure and clean energy economy. These jobs will create pathways for young people and for older workers shifting to new professions, and for people from all backgrounds and all communities. Their work will improve air quality for our children, increase the comfort of our homes, and make our businesses more competitive. The investments will make sure the communities who have suffered the most from pollution are first to benefit — including low-income rural and urban communities, communities of color, and Native communities. And, Biden’s plan will empower workers to organize unions and bargain collectively with their employers as they rebuild the middle class and a more sustainable future.”
Biden’s $2 trillion plan promises to massively raise taxes; eliminate jobs in the coal, oil. and natural gas and construction industries; and raise energy prices. Biden is pushing extreme policies that would severely hurt the economy when it is recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. Biden’s plan to mandate a transition from gas-fired power to renewable energy will hasten the decline of union jobs and add to the strife the industry is already feeling due to the pandemic.
The Energy Job Market
Biden’s proposed transition from oil and gas to renewable energy would result in lower pay for blue-collar workers and possibly lower benefits as well. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for May 2019, the average annual pay for gas and oil extraction workers was $96,600—twice that for solar panel installers ($46,850) and almost 60 percent higher than the average salary for a wind turbine technician ($61,270). Further, workers who have completed an apprentice program or otherwise dedicated years of their lives in a profession do not want to see their skill sets devalued or be thrown into junior positions in a new occupation. Laid-off workers will not be able to immediately find a new job at the same wage, but will likely spend a significant amount of time searching for work, and will most likely need to accept a lower wage in the new job market.
Further, new jobs may not be available where workers currently live, requiring them to relocate. Workers, who may own a home and have raised a family near a current job, may not want to upend their careers. And, those who are near the end of their careers would probably have difficulty transitioning to something so different than their current occupations. For those facing major industry upheavals, the path to a new career is often unclear and the outcome uncertain. While this applies for all job-changers, it becomes especially acute for those presented with a government embargo on their chosen field of work deliberately. This is precisely what Joe Biden’s plans to phase out the U.S.’s predominant fuels.
Biden’s promise of union jobs is also unrealistic since the renewable energy sector largely lacks union representation. According to a January 2017 report by the U.S. Department of Energy, only 3.4 percent of solar photovoltaic workers were unionized and only 4 percent of workers in wind power generation were unionized, compared to a national workplace average of 11 percent.
Along with losing high-paying jobs, keeping conventional fuels in the ground in the United States would amount to giving up billions of dollars in annual oil and gas exports along with related jobs and tax revenue, as well as that economic and national security leverage such exports have only recently given us. Dozens of states from Appalachia to the Gulf Coast to the Rocky Mountain region are critically dependent on fossil energy for jobs and for state and local tax revenues.
Even if the United States were to remake its society, industry, and economy and even if the nation achieved 100-percent decarbonization, it would not accomplish the goal of limiting global warming to targets of 1.5 or 2 degrees Centigrade proposed by the Paris climate accord. Estimates using EPA-approved climate models suggest reductions of at most 0.14 degrees Centigrade by 2100 if U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are reduced immediately.
Further, nothing the United States does alone will slow the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. New coal-fired and natural gas-fired capacity by other countries would likely offset any carbon emission reductions achieved. Shutting down carbon emissions in the United States merely invites a proportional increase in emissions abroad.
Biden does not describe exactly how he would pay for the $2 trillion in new spending that he needs to kick-start his plan. Some of it, according to advisers, would be through stimulus funding, which would add to the growing federal deficit, and/or Biden may rescind the tax cuts pushed by President Trump and approved by Congress in 2017, and/or he may “ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.” Even if Biden wins the presidency, much of his climate plan would require legislation from Congress—a tall order even if Democrats take back the Senate and win the White House.
Conclusion
Retraining programs have been tried before and have not worked well due to lower salaries, less benefits, relocation complexities, and age issues. The retraining that Biden’s plan would entail would be enormous and difficult to implement especially when the economy is suffering from the devastation caused by the coronavirus pandemic. His promises of well-paying union jobs are just that—promises. Americans, especially those working in the energy industry, should carefully examine Biden’s plan, its costs, and its ramifications before endorsing it.
One of the best ways (and in my opinion, the best way) to earn top-quality links is to create your own studies, surveys, reports, etc., and pitch them to online publishers. This is what we do at Fractl, because it’s a tried-and-true way to elevate organic growth:
Over the years, we’ve received a lot of questions about what results to expect. Sure, everyone wants links now, but where does the real growth come in, and how long does it take? And in either case, people want to know what wins they can report on to their superiors, even in the short-term.
There are so many benefits to this combination of content marketing and digital PR, and I’ll walk through what you can realistically expect, and feature examples and data from our experience working with Porch.com.
Short-term benefits
It’s true that content marketing is an investment, which I’ll explain properly in the next section. But there are certainly short-term wins you can celebrate and report on, and that can have an impact on your business.
We started working with Porch.com in early 2018. We created 4-5 content projects per month for them back then, and I’m going to show you two of our early wins — a small win and a big win — so you can get a sense of what’s possible as well as what’s probable.
The small win: “Fixer Upper” by the numbers
This project was my idea, so naturally I think it deserved way more coverage. It was during the heyday of “Fixer Upper” featuring Chip and Joanna Gaines.
We secured top-tier coverage for it on Apartment Therapy, and while I would’ve liked to have seen more media coverage, there are still plenty of wins to identify here (and elements for you to keep an eye out for in your own content):
Brand mentions: Porch is mentioned four times in the article (six if you count image credits). Every time your brand is mentioned, you’re upping your brand awareness.
Link quality: The article linked to our project three separate times! (Bonus: More links means higher likelihood of referral traffic.) The site has a domain authority of 90, making it a very high-value earned link.
Audience relevance: Porch is about connecting people to home renovation contractors. Their audience probably has a ton of overlap with the Apartment Therapy audience, and are presumably interested in improving the look of their homes.
Publication readership: Then there’s the matter of the publication’s statistics, which can help you get a sense of potential reach. SimilarWeb is used by tools like Cision and Meltwater to highlight publications’ readership. In this case, Apartment Therapy is ranked #17 in the “Home Garden” category of sites, and has an estimated 9.16 million visitors per month.
So, even in one average-performing project, you can get some great links and brand exposure.
The big win: “Cooking Nightmares”
Okay, “big” win is kind of an understatement. This campaign was a huge win and remained one of our top-performing projects for Porch.
We surveyed people of all ages to determine their cooking skills and confidence, and then broke the results down by generation. People found the results fascinating, and all-in-all, the project garnered about 50 dofollow links.
In measuring this project’s success, you can look at the same qualities I mentioned for smaller wins: brand mentions, link quality, and audience relevance.
But here are some other considerations for bigger wins:
Amount of coverage: The project went wild, earning media coverage on Washington Post, USA Today, Bustle, Thrillist, MSN, Real Simple, Southern Living, Better Homes & Gardens, and more. This coverage meant more high-quality links and significantly more brand exposure, including to a more general audience.
Nature of brand mention: Exactly where and how is your brand mentioned? For example, in the Washington Post coverage and Thrillist coverage, they mentioned Porch.com in the second sentence. Bustle included a description of what Porch.com is: “an online resource for connecting homeowners and contractors,” which not only gets the Porch name out there, but also explains what they do.
Writer connections: The more writers who are happy with what you’re pitching, the higher the chance they’ll open your next email. All secured media coverage is a win in this way, but it’s a significant element that’s often overlooked.
There are plenty of short-term wins to this kind of work, but odds are you’re looking for sustained growth. That’s where the long-term benefits come in.
Long-term benefits
On our site, we have a full content marketing case study that details the impact of the work we did for Porch.com in the span of a year.
That includes building links from 931 unique linking domains and adding 23,000 monthly organic visitors to the site.
This is the kind of long-term growth most people are looking for, and the key is that all of this work compounds.
Building authoritative links is critical to off-site SEO, as Google views your site as more of an authority, which subsequently means your on-site content is more likely to rank higher. And when people see your brand mentioned in the media because you’ve completed these interesting studies, they’re more likely to click on your content when they see it later because they’re familiar with you, again signaling that you have quality content.
This is our philosophy on things:
And this doesn’t even include the brand awareness aspect that I mentioned before. Which is why, to really assess the long-term impact of a content marketing and digital PR investment, you can look at the following:
Backlink portfolio health: High-quality, relevant links will always be valued, even if they’re older. But newer links can signal to Google that you remain relevant and continue to actively provide value to audiences.
Organic brand mentions: When your brand name is consistently in the media, it increases the chances people know who you are. Are your branded searches increasing? What are people searching for related to your brand? Are you appearing more often organically in content?
Organic traffic: This is the primary metric many look at, because as I mentioned, earning brand coverage and links from top publishers means you’re building your authority, which improves your chances of ranking in Google and for being trusted by audiences, all of which impact your organic search numbers.
We ended up working with Porch.com for longer than a year, from about January 2018 to March 2020. In total, we earned them 1,894 dofollow links and the brand mentions and awareness that accompanied all of that media coverage.
But I want to show you what it looks like to get to this place of growth, and how it’s not by going viral on a monthly basis. It’s about sustained, ongoing work.
This is what it looked like for our work with Porch:
As you can see, we had some projects that earned a very high number of dofollow links. This often occurs when you’re producing a high volume of content over the course of many months.
However, the bulk of your content will fall in the average. Most of our work earned somewhere between 1 and 50 dofollow links, with top performers in the 50 to 100 range.
To see this spread, you have to keep doing the work. You won’t get all of those projects that earn 50-100 dofollow links right off the bat and in a row, and even if you did, while you’d get a big boost, it wouldn’t last you forever. You have to demonstrate your ongoing effort to provide value.
Conclusion
It’s true that content marketing is a long game, at least in order to see significant growth for your company. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t wins in the short-term. You can absolutely see a lift from a high-performing project and at the very least start setting up a stronger foundation for brand awareness and backlink building.
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Keith Ellison and Karl Racine, attorneys general of Minnesota and the District of Columbia, respectively, filed fraud charges this June against fossil fuel companies and alleged co-conspirators for participating in public discourse on climate change.
Ellison’s accusation is that Exxon Mobil Corp., Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute have perpetrated “a conspiracy to deceive the public about climate change.” Racine’s accusation is that Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, and Chevron have “systematically and intentionally misled consumers” about fossil fuel products’ climate impact. While one might expect that Ellison and Racine would have their sights trained on the social unrest within their jurisdictions and the justice reforms that are legitimately within their purview, the climate show must go on.
And a show this is.
The attorneys general theorize secret deals and private pressure where Occam’s razor suggests only an alignment of perspectives. The oil and gas companies, the trade associations, and the think tanks name-dropped in these complaints (which includes, in the Minnesota case, my own organization, the Institute for Energy Research) are all interested in the implications of climate science. In a free and open society, they are all at liberty to pursue knowledge and debate it. Sometimes, these entities reach similar conclusions. At other times, as with the carbon tax debate, they differ sharply. The “conspiracy to deceive” and the “misleading greenwashing campaigns” exist only in the activist hemispheres of Ellison and Racine’s minds.
Meanwhile, the complaints cover no new territory in the climate discussion. The relationship between greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures, and environmental damage has been under examination for decades. While the particulars of greenhouse warming potential and its economic ramifications remain hotly contested, the fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas has been common knowledge since James Hansen testified before the Senate four decades ago. To the extent that #ExxonKnew, we all knew.
What is new is the legal theory behind this action. Other climate litigation cases have appealed to the common law tradition of nuisance, albeit with an aggressive conception of damage. Cases such as the lawsuits brought by California cities and counties against Chevron and other companies that produce fossil fuels revolve around the argument that using the industry’s products has caused tangible harm (or the risk thereof) and that the industry should be held liable.
But the nuisance cases have been unsuccessful, so Minnesota and D.C. took a different tack. It is not emissions and their effects that are top of mind for the attorneys general, it is the defendants’ engagement with and investment in scientific inquiry and political dialogue. The goal is to punish the defendants for having discussions that the attorneys general do not like. The goal is to stifle open inquiry into climate science and to channel our interpretation of it. These lawsuits threaten the defendants’ First Amendment right to participate in public debate.
In leveling the accusation of fraud upon the defendants, Ellison deploys a tried and true authoritarian tactic: using ambiguous statutes to portray perceived political enemies as deceitful saboteurs. Ellison’s weapon is Minnesota Statutes section 325D.44(13), which states:
“A person engages in a deceptive trade practice when, in the course of business, vocation, or occupation, the person … engages in any other conduct which similarly creates a likelihood of confusion or of misunderstanding.”
Ellison and Racine’s attacks on the defendants veer far from the civil pursuit of damages and toward the demonization of heresy. Like the securities fraud case brought against Exxon Mobil by former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in 2018, this is a political harassment campaign without legal merit.
The uncomfortable irony in these cases is that while the attorneys general postulate conspiracy, their legal thrusts have been facilitated by a network of environmental policy influencers. Throughout the filing process, Ellison and Racine have been accompanied by privately funded assistants whose positions were created at the behest and with the financial investment of Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies.
As brought to public attention by Chris Horner and Victoria Toensing in the Wall Street Journal last summer, Bloomberg Philanthropies has funded assistant positions in the offices of attorneys general in more than 10 states and the District of Columbia via an entity at New York University known as the State Impact Center.
Since 2017, the State Impact Center has provided “direct legal assistance to interested attorneys general on specific administrative, judicial or legislative matters involving clean energy, climate change and environmental interests of regional and national significance.” The assistants placed in Ellison’s Minnesota office, according to public records requests, are Peter Surdo and Leigh Currie, the signatures of whom sit just below Ellison’s on the complaint against Exxon Mobil et al.
These special assistant attorneys general, as the cohort has been innocuously dubbed, have focused much of their attention on the legal attacks directed at the perceived political enemies of Big Green Inc., such as Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries, rather than on matters more central to the public concern. Indeed, that was the explicit intention of the offices of attorneys general in seeking State Impact Center support. “Further,” Racine’s staff wrote in its application for an assistant, “the office wishes to be an active partner at the national level, looking for opportunities in our local environment, consumer protection, and other authorities to make unique contributions.”
Investing capital in open inquiry is one thing. Using it to augment directly one’s agenda within the offices of attorneys general is wholly another. The cases filed in Minnesota and the District of Columbia indicate that the organs of the state are being used as political cudgels against private entities. This development suppresses open inquiry into the causes, severity, and potential responses to climate change.
That the action is being funded by extra-governmental sources makes it all the more worrisome. It is inherently suspect for attorneys general to accept financial support from private sources to pursue policy outcomes desired by those sources.
