Some people are willing to share public lands — let’s call them “inclusionists.” Others aren’t — let’s call them “exclusionists.” That’s the schism behind an ongoing struggle over who keeps public lands access and who doesn’t. Land agency bureaucrats tend naturally to side with the exlusionists, since accommodating and managing people is more of burden than just watching trees grow. Accommodating the resource industries that often also operate on public lands might also be a hassle, from a bureaucrat’s point of view, since almost every related decision becomes a political controversy or court battle. And who needs that if you’ve got no real financial or personal stake in the outcome, as land agencies don’t?

Thus explains the affinity between federal eco-crats and throw-the-bums-out eco-elitists.

As long as it was just those annoying jet-skiers, ATVer, snowmobilers or motorcycle-riders in the cross hairs, recreational snobs of the Sally Jewell School were content to cheer from the sidelines, or even egg-on the exclusionism. Little did they suspect that the arguments favoring exclusion of motorized recreation, if taken to extremes, could soon be used to exclude them, since every form of recreation, even just humping it up the trail, impacts the ecosystem in some way. One restriction leads to another: that’s just the way ”recreational correctness” (like political correctness) works.

The goal, ultimately, is to purge people, and profit-making, from public lands, preserving them as sanctuaries which just the environmental elite can enjoy, in complete serenity, while the rest of us are confined to designated “open spaces” in our own backyards. The man-is-a-cancer greens want the tumors removed, so the scars can heal and the ”natural order” can be restored to some mythical balance that existed before homo horribilis, man the meddler, came along. The effort to eject resource industries has been going on for decades; the attack on recreationists is more recent, but following a similar trajectory.

I’m familiar with this exclusionist impulse because I have to fight it myself. During a recent bike trip to Moab, some of the rides we selected were on multiple-use trails, meaning we occasionally had to eat the dust of the unfailingly polite, yet noisy and dusty, off-roaders who crept or whizzed by, covering in minutes the sandy terrain we were grinding through at a slow slog. Momentarily shattered was the illusion of isolation and adventure we were seeking. How unique and special could these landscapes be, after all, if some maniacal motorhead could invade our space merely by pushing a pedal or twisting a throttle? We were working for our scenery, and our sense of adventure; they were not. Or so explained the resentment I felt, on one level, when such encounters occurred.

That such a balance can be struck, and work, will be obvious to anyone visiting the multiple-use mecca called  Moab. Before it became an attraction for bikers, hikers, climbers, boaters and off-roaders of all sorts, Moab was a mining town. Uranium, vanadium, potash and manganese were extracted in great quantities. Yet it didn’t become an unlivable wasteland as a result, as the mobs that flock there attest. A similar “dark” history is shared with many locales across Colorado, including many of the state’s most tony ski towns, even if the trendsetters who supplanted the toilers are oblivious to it.

If so-called extractive industries are so damaging, and nature is so easily bulldozed into submission, how is it that parts of the state that once boomed due to mining (Telluride, Crested Butte and Breckenridge, to name a few) have today become havens for wealthy aesthetes who view such activities as raping and pillaging the planet? Few evidently recognize the ironies involved, or the hypocrisy. And how does this square with those, in environmental goups and elsewhere, who peddle the premise that resource development and environmental protection are incompatible – that we must choose one or the other?

The truth, of course, is that the either/or proposition is an agenda-driven fabrication. Coexistence works, as the continued popularity and allure of the once heavily-mined, ranched and logged Rocky Mountain West attests. Mining is still going on in Moab, albeit on a smaller scale, even if most recreationists who visit the town aren’t aware of it. Resource development, recreation and natural protection aren’t mutually exclusive, as extremists contend. A balance and harmony is possible if reasonable people, rather than zero-sum zealots, win the debate.

Gang green, in divide-and-conquer fashion, likes nothing better than to pit one group of land users against another. They love to see hikers feuding with bikers, snowmobilers sparring with skiers, bird watchers butting-heads with bird hunters. They similarly relish wars between resource interests – coal against natural gas, as a recent example. But unless these atomized groups show more tolerance and find common ground, uniting against the champions of recreational correctness and enemies of multiple-use, all will face eviction from the public lands sooner or later.

The language is newspeak. Introduced by George Orwell, it is characterized by using familiar words and phrases in unfamiliar ways. In the President’s parlance, “fair” means skewering the upper middle-class and redistributing their wealth. “Necessary investments” are excuses to raise taxes and grow government.

Similar convoluted definitions exist in the President’s energy policy pronouncements. His “all-of-the-above” approach apparently means wasting precious federal revenues on failed renewable projects while bankrupting the coal industry and slapping new taxes and regulations on U.S. oil and natural gas producers.

Promoting renewables is hardly a new idea. President Jimmy Carter tried it in the 1970s when the Iranian Revolution and gasoline lines made America fearful of its dependence on foreign oil. Speaking to the nation in April 1977, he called the energy crisis the “moral equivalent of war” and said “we must prepare…permanent renewable energy sources” because “we are now running out of gas and oil.”

Although many in America apparently don’t remember that President Carter’s renewable energy investments were an expensive failure, his warning stuck in the American psyche. Today there are still countless Americans in denial about our ability to achieve North American energy independence in the near term.

The latest global energy projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shatter the Carter-era myths.  According to EIA, U.S. imports of foreign oil are plummeting and are expected to continue to fall in 2013 and 2014. Oil production in both OPEC and non-OPEC countries is expected to rise. New technologies, including hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, are rapidly expanding U.S. oil and natural gas production, while improved vehicle fuel economy and other factors are likely to continue reducing demand for oil.

Furthermore, North America could provide 100 percent of U.S. demand for liquid fuels by 2024. That’s an amazing feat considering the gloom and doom prognostications from the Carter Administration 36 years ago.

Yet this good news is being downplayed by the Obama Administration. Instead of a robust energy policy including approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, the President is clinging to oldspeak, or at least old ideas, to address a different dilemma—climate change. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions, he is promulgating regulations on traditional energy production while subsidizing renewable energy companies.

Simply put, the President is repeating historical mistakes by propping up energy sources that are as yet unreliable, unaffordable, and cannot compete without federal support.

The Administration’s latest embarrassment is Fisker Automotive, an electric car company that was expected to generate sales of more than $1 billion by 2012. Despite federal loan guarantees amounting to $193 million, the company recently fired 160 of its remaining 200 employees and hired a bankruptcy law firm. With the government likely to inherent the company, now worth only pennies on the dollar, a congressional panel is investigating the Administration’s investment.

To make matters worse for the President, climate scientists are at a loss to explain why the planet has not warmed in the past 16 years. As Richard Tol, professor and climate expert at England’s University of Sussex, told Reuters, “My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years.”

So far questionable climate models and bankrupt renewable energy companies have not dampened the President’s quest to save the planet from humans. Although he paid lip-service to domestic oil and natural gas production in his recent State of the Union address, he said “we must do more to combat climate change” to safeguard our future.

If the President ignores the promise of secure domestic oil and gas production and continues to embrace the failed energy policies of the 1970s, more federal dollars will be wasted, U.S. economic growth could remain slow, and millions of workers will continue to face an uncertain future. On the other hand, if the President encourages domestic oil and natural gas production, hundreds of thousands of jobs could be created in the energy industry, along with more than one million new manufacturing jobs.

As the President assembles his new team for his second term, there is very little reason for economic optimism.  One thing we can count on, however, is that the President’s policy pronouncements are likely to be couched in newspeak to camouflage their impact on our wallets.

(Bob Beauprez is a former Member of Congress and is currently the editor-in-chief of A Line of Sight, an online policy resource. Prior to serving in Congress, Mr. Beauprez was a dairy farmer and community banker. He and his wife Claudia reside in Lafayette, Colorado. You may contact him at:  http://bobbeauprez.com/contact/. This piece originally appeared in Beauprez’s A Line of Sight blog.)

In many ways, the playing field is dramatically tilted in their favor, with myriad tax credits, grant programs, loan guarantees and purchase mandates.  However, federal policy still excludes renewables, coal-fired electricity production and nuclear from an important business structure from which other forms of energy have benefited. Congress should expand access to this business structure and put renewables on a level playing field with other forms of energy.  At the same time, they should end the ridiculous catalogue of provisions that attempt to pick winners and losers by subsidizing renewables to the hilt.

It’s time to let the market work and allow broader access to the private equity markets:  Congress should allow master limited partnerships to include income from renewable, coal-fired electricity and nuclear investments in their “qualifying income.” Master limited partnerships (MLPs) are a type of publically traded partnership, meaning they are organized as partnerships but traded like corporate stocks.  MLPs have general partners who run the day-to-day operations and limited partners who provide capital but take no active role in running the business.  MLPs are required to return the vast majority of their earnings (plus tax deductions and credits) back to the limited partners (known as unitholders) on a regular basis.  MLPs don’t pay partnership-level tax and thus earnings are only subject to a single level of taxation.

This is an attractive business structure and the growth in MLPs over the past decade has been substantial.  One limitation on MLPs is that 90 percent of their income must come from eligible sources.  Those sources include: exploration, development, production, processing and transportation of natural resources, typically oil, natural gas, coal and other depletable minerals.  It currently does not include renewable sources, coal-fired electricity generation or nuclear.

The main reason to expand the energy sources that are eligible for the MLP tax structure is that it will shift those industries’ capital procurement away from Washington and toward New York.  For far too long renewable energy has clung to the infant-industry argument and remained hooked on D.C. to subsidize their start-up and operating capital.

The Department of Energy’s now-embarrassed loan guarantee program dramatically lowered the cost of start-up capital for many renewable companies and nuclear investments.  On the operating-capital side, the poster child for perpetual infancy is the wind industry, which has been dependent on the production tax credit for more than 20 years.  Their trade association, AWEA, launches major lobbying campaigns anytime the PTC is set to expire.  Broadening MLP eligibility while simultaneously (and this is the critical component) ending the production tax credit has the potential to turn renewables’ attention to the same place other fledgling sectors get their capital: the equity markets.

Another important reason that renewables should have access to MLPs is because this structure avoids the double taxation of corporate earnings.  The shift from C corps to pass-through entities is a well-documented trend.  There are multiple inputs to this business decision but treating business earnings correctly by only taxing them once is an attractive feature of the partnership code.  There’s no reason renewables’ earnings shouldn’t receive that proper treatment as well.It’s not all upside if Congress lets MLPs count renewable investments toward their qualifying income.  Because of the need to consistently distribute cash to limited partners, stable revenue streams are an essential component of functioning MLPs.  The predictable revenue streams from conventional fuel sources (think pipelines and natural gas processing) are the reason they’re attractive to MLP investors.  This year more than 80% of MLPs are invested in the energy and natural resources sector.  This is a product of the qualifying income requirements and the revenue stream stability.

This necessary stability creates a challenge for many renewable energy sources because their revenue streams are often tied to government purchase mandates (state-based RPSs, EPA’s blending mandates, etc.) and not to consumer demand.  Expanding MLP access to renewables could have the adverse consequence of increasing the number of stakeholders lobbying federal and state lawmakers to keep renewable purchase mandates in place.  Just as the renewable industries should move from Washington to New York for their capital needs, they should also transition their products’ revenue streams away from government support.

MLPs have the potential to increase that government dependency if limited partners see an avenue to quick and easy cash distributions procured through rent-seeking purchase mandates.  Supporters of economic freedom must work overtime to eliminate those mandates.  The uncertainty and political volatility that surrounds renewables’ economic viability is an obstacle for investors to embrace MLPs.  However, this is a decision for individual investors to make based on the merits of a particular project.

One caveat:  Congress must maintain the existing passive loss rules as they apply to MLPs in order to ensure renewables do not become an attractive tax shelter that would lead to an unhealthy investment bubble.  In The End of Energy, Michael Graetz detailed the problems California experienced during the 1980s when its wind tax credits became a magnet for tax abuse.  Graetz illustrated that due a combination of federal and state credits, an investor could produce tax savings “five times his investment, whether the turbines actually produced any electricity or not.”  This “gold plating” led to a large boom and bust as investors rushed to take advantage of the shelter and then retreated once Congress got wise to the trick.  As Graetz put it, the tax fix “let all the air out of the California wind rush.”  Ensuring that unitholders cannot use passive renewable MLP losses to offset their active income is an important protection to attract the right kind of investment.

On balance, expanding the definition of MLP qualifying income to include renewables (as well as coal-fired electricity generation and nuclear) is a good idea.  We must also end the PTC and other D.C. subsidies for these energy sources.  This will give renewables a chance to grow and join other sectors securing their capital from investors who will push them to be more efficient and stable contributors to the country’s energy needs.

(Mr. Valvo is the director of policy at Americans for Prosperity).

Hickenlooper came to office as a business-friendly centrist, whose personal experience creating jobs would temper the economy-stunting extremism for which his party is sometimes known. But that reputation could take a hit if he won’t veto a law that will impose heavy new burdens on rural power providers and their 1.5 million customers.

Meeting the “green energy” mandates imposed by SB-252 could cost nonprofit rural co-ops an estimated $4 billion. Those costs are real, and they’ll be passed on to energy consumers one way or another. Trying to mask them with gimmicky rate “caps” will only encourage cost-shifting and dishonest accounting. Unnecessarily raising utility rates now, when the state and national economy are stuck in a prolonged swoon, can’t do anything but damage the state’s business climate and competitiveness.

Surely the governor must see that.

Not just struggling families, but farmers, ranchers and small businesses will be shouldering unnecessary new burdens – burdens largely imposed by urban lawmakers whose constituents are immune from the impacts. Pueblo’s newspaper may have put it best when it called these mandates a “dagger” aimed at rural Colorado. Only Gov. Hickenlooper can stop the blade from striking home.

From where does this push for higher utility bills come? From urban lawmakers, mostly, like Sen. President John Morse of Colorado Springs, whose constituents won’t have to pay a penny of the costs. It also comes from organized green extremists, who take it as an article of faith that making Coloradans pay a premium for renewables will “save the planet” from climate change. Finally, a growing number of not-ready-for-primetime companies, which depend for their survival on subsidies and mandates, stand to profit from the new rules.

This is the coalition that supports piling even more mandates on top of those already approved in Colorado. And unless average energy consumers wake-up and get involved, they’ll continue to be out-maneuvered and out-muscled in the political arena. SB-252 was written behind closed doors, by special interests and chummy legislators, and rushed forward in the waning days of the session, with no input from co-ops or their customers. No cost-benefit analysis was done. The benchmarks are arbitrarily chosen, with no consideration to cost or consequences.

Virtually every major paper in Colorado has condemned SB-252 as too rushed or ill-considered. Yet the “experts” in Denver haven’t been dissuaded. What matters most to them, apparently, is winning their Climate Crusader merit badges.

Why should Coloradans not served by co-ops care? Because backers of such mandates never know when to stop. Because they are driven by feel-good ideology, not bottom-line practicality, anything goes. If we give them another inch, they’ll take another mile. Approval of SB-252 will only whet their appetites for more.

Evidence is everywhere that such mandates don’t make sense.

More than half the states that adopted renewable mandates are now taking a second look, because such plans have foundations built on shifting sands. Simplistic assumptions and preliminary cost estimates almost always are wrong. California’s Little Hoover commission recently warned of looming energy shortages and “chaos” in that state, which was an early and enthusiastic adopter of this (and every other) regulatory fad. And Europe was recently called a “green energy basket case” by none other than The Washington Post, no right-wing mouthpiece, in an editorial highlighting the mess that’s been made by its own misadventures with mandates.

There’s still time to derail the Rural Rate Hike Express. But that will require that alert, educated and active energy consumers write or call (303) 866-2471) the governor and tell him to veto this bill.

It was necessary, they told us, for rural Coloradans – and gun owners everywhere – to compromise our lifestyle and our freedom as part of their irrational quest to make us safer by passing laws that will continue to be ignored by cold-blooded killers like James Holmes, Adam Lanza and the Boston bombers. Now, Democrats are feeding their green-energy fetish by imposing drastically higher energy costs – 15 to 20 percent higher – on rural families, schools and the farms and ranches that put food on their dining room tables.

This is the price, they have determined, that we must pay to “save the planet” from global warming.   Senate Bill 252, which was introduced barely a month before the legislature mercifully adjourns, would require rural electric associations (REAs) to obtain 25 percent of their electricity from “renewable” sources in just the next six years.  Rural cooperatives say the change will cost the average consumer about $400 a year.

In 2004, voters required most Colorado utilities to obtain at least 10 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2020; REAs were added, with their support, in 2007.  The 16-year implementation horizon recognized that utilities cannot simply flip a switch on solar, wind and other renewable sources. Building wind and solar “farms” takes time.  Building transmission lines also takes time – even longer when the very environmentalists who lobby for renewable energy file lawsuits to block construction of transmission lines.  So, just as REAs are preparing to meet the 10 percent standard, sponsors of this bill more than double the requirement without allowing any additional time for implementation.

All of this is terribly wasteful.

REAs get their power from Tri-State Generation and Transmission, which has built enough generation facilities to meet its members’ needs.  Under this bill, Tri-State will have to build or buy renewable resources that it doesn’t need, while idling those that it’s already built.  Those costs must be passed along to customers.  Sponsors of this bill – all Democrats, mostly from metro areas – didn’t bother to consult with REAs when crafting this plan. Instead, they arrogantly adopted a “we know better than you do” attitude, deferred to the green lobby, and chose to cram it down the throat of rural Colorado.

That’s ironic because Xcel Energy, the state’s largest utility, helped craft legislation that increased its own renewable mandate to 30 percent.   The difference between Xcel and the REAs is that the rural cooperatives are owned and governed by their customers.  That’s a very effective system of checks and balances – far better than being governed by legislators who know little about REAs and even less about rural communities. Advocates often tout renewable energy as an economic boost to rural Colorado.  The fact is that wind farms provide a short-term boost during construction and a paycheck to a small handful of landowners – while increasing costs to everyone else.

Rural schools, too, will also suffer from higher energy costs.  Sen. Greg Brophy (R-Wray) calculated the cost to his hometown school at $30,000 a year.  Schools served by REAs will pay a combined $1 million or more annually – at a time when Democrats in the legislature profess concern for school funding.

The bill passed the Senate by a mere one vote margin as two Democrats – Mary Hodge of Brighton and Lois Tochtrop of Thornton – joined Republicans in voting NO.  Sadly, several rural Democrats – Sen. Gail Schwartz (D-Snowmass Vilalge), Rep. Millie Hamner (D-Dillon), Rep. Mike McLachlan (D-Durango) and Rep. Ed Vigil (D-Fort Garland) – are already pledged as co-sponsors.

Perhaps Democrat leaders in Denver have concluded that they can write off rural Colorado and the voters who live here. This bill certainly gives us one more reason to think so.

(Mark Hillman is a Colorado native, a farmer, a “recovering journalist” and a former Majority Leader of the Colorado Senate. This piece is reprinted, with permission, from MarkHillman.com)

“(W)hether initiatives’ incremental support was always needed for wind projects to be built is also unclear. GAO’s review of a briefing memorandum from White House staff, DOE documents, and other documentation related to two wind projects suggests that agencies’ wind initiatives have, in some cases, supported projects that may have been built without their incremental support,” the authors wrote in the 283-page report. Nine federal agencies oversaw 82 wind-related initiatives in 2011, according to the report.

GAO researchers found instances in which a single recipient for wind energy received funding from seven different federal programs for a single project, agency spokesman Frank Rusco said. The full report describes 31 areas in which federal programs overlap or are fragmented or duplicative. GAO researchers culled through agencies’ strategic plans, performance and accountability reports and budgets to reach their conclusions.

The section on renewable energy programs describes their rapid growth under the Obama administration. It notes that federal spending had been $4 billion a year from 2002 to 2008. Then, after the $792 billion stimulus bill became law, federal expenditures rose to $15 billion in 2010. Nearly a quarter of all federal programs for wind, solar, and bio-fuels (157 in all) received funding from Obama’s signature bill, the report notes.

The report is careful not to conclude directly that any program or agency is inefficient or wasteful. Instead, it implies that some renewable energy programs are so. “While the extent to which this fragmentation is necessary remains unclear, the magnitude of federal renewable energy efforts may increase the likelihood that some of this fragmentation is, in fact, unnecessary,” the authors write in “Actions Needed to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits.”

The report is the third and final installment of the series that began in 2011. Previous reports have said the Department of the Interior could raise the rates for leaseholders on non-oil revenue producing federal land to $4 an acre.

Most of the nine members of the Colorado congressional delegation supported the extension of the federal wind-energy tax credit, which is due to expire at the end of this year.

(This piece reprinted with permission of The Colorado Observer.)

“Every one-cent increase at the pump steals about $1 billion from the larger economy that consumers would have otherwise saved or spent on something else,” the Wall Street Journal has pointed out. High gasoline prices thus translate into lost jobs, lost tax revenues and lower living standards. Americans are beginning to understand that, as the Obama “recovery” gives them real-world economic lessons.

Unfortunately, the Pew report quickly deflated optimism over this support, when it tersely identified who the minority is: “liberals” – stanchions of Big Green’s circus tent. We have seen time and again that the liberal 23% can be a “majority” to President Obama, who wields executive orders to bypass the people.

As his administration approaches a decision, lame-duck politics says he could go either way – even with his own State Department’s second favorable environmental impact report on the KXL’s construction permit. Even with Alberta Premier Alison Redford saying that an Obama rejection would damage U.S.-Canada relations. “Canada relies on the U.S. for 97% of its energy exports,” Redford said, and “sees the new pipeline as critical to its economic well-being.” And even with ten governors and 22 lieutenant governors sending letters to the President, urging pipeline approval.

What is Obama likely to do? Some 82% of Republicans favor the pipeline, so revenge is not an unthinkable motive for a possible rejection. However, 70% of independents and 54% of Democrats also favor the KXL. Fogging the crystal ball is the ideological split among Democrats: 60% of the party’s conservatives and moderates support building the pipeline, compared to just 42% of liberal Democrats. That considerably flattens Obama’s upward slope toward a potential rejection, but doesn’t level it.

Obama’s decision may hinge on pleasing his base of global-warming advocates. This whole Keystone XL controversy was carefully conceived and organized as a “globally significant response” to global warming. Shutting down Alberta’s oil sands – by blocking both the US-bound Keystone XL pipeline and any other Alberta oil conduit, particularly a proposed link to Vancouver, British Columbia harbors and oil tankers bound for Asia – would supposedly reduce global warming. That’s propaganda, not reality.

As Environment Canada has observed, oil sands production contributes a mere 0.14% of global greenhouse gases, notes, and would add an undetectable 0.00001 degrees C per year to global warming, even if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases really do drive climate change.
The anti-oil sands campaign – activists call them “tar sands” to evoke ugly images – was devised by the New York City-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund, using earmarked grants to recruit “a network of leading US and Canadian NGOs” and establish a “coordinated campaign structure” to act as its public face, according to a leaked PowerPoint presentation.

The first slide says, “The Tar Sands Campaign, Michael Northrop, Program Officer, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, July 2008.” Seven slides drive home the message that Rockefeller wants its paid campaigners to emphasize: Oil sands and Keystone represent “a globally significant threat” – with “Global Warming,” and “Oil Addiction” as the two “thought leader slogans” in the parade of old shibboleths that trigger brain freeze in Big Green followers. The rest was a coldly calculated, very practical plan to destroy Canada’s single most important export, with Rockefeller giving $7 million per year to activist groups to do the job.

Thinking people understand that being “addicted to oil” is like being addicted to breathing, better living standards, improved health and life itself. Just try getting along without it in a world where fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) contributed 82% of US energy use in 2012. The “green alternative” (wind and solar) provided a mere 3.3% of our overall needs in 2012; the rest was nuclear, hydroelectric and biomass (mostly wood). Relying on the “green alternative” is like trying to inhale only 3.3% as much as you usually do. There’s an energy gap there we need to account for.

Canadian researcher Vivian Krause exposed the Rockefeller funding for campaigns against Canadian energy exports in her October 2010 Financial Post story, “US foundations against the oil sands.” Five US foundations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, funneled vast sums of money through the Tides Foundation’s Canadian organization, Tides Canada. The Tides family of operations is a notorious California-based funder of left-wing activists.

Krause wrote, “A large part of Tides Canada’s funding comes from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. These are The Big Five. They give away about US$1.2-billion every year.” In a chilling reminder, she concluded, “If these foundations decide to undermine a foreign industry, they probably can.”

Later that fall, Krause testified before a Canadian House of Commons committee, prompting an audit of the Canadian arm of the Tides Foundation by the Canada Revenue Agency (Canada’s equivalent to the IRS). By Krause’s calculations, Tides, a co-funder of the Rockefeller oil sands campaign, has distributed $19 million to anti-Keystone groups since 2008.

Krause explains that the campaign strategy is intended to foster renewable energy by shifting investment capital away from so-called “dirty oil” and toward so-called “clean energy.” To this end, she said, “they ‘educate’ media, consumers and voters. They stigmatize fossil fuels as bad, thereby facilitating the positioning of renewables as good. It’s basic product positioning and ‘depositioning’ the competitor.”

Not surprisingly, the “education” is slanted. “We get only bad news about fossil fuels and good news about solar and wind,” Krause observes. “We don’t get the whole story.” What gets left out are the advantages of fossil fuels – and the limitations and harmful effects of renewables, like the tiny amount of energy they provide, and the terrible impacts they have on birds, bats and wildlife habitats. “Furthermore, some of the information that is perpetuated is out-dated, and some is plainly false.”

I asked Krause why the Rockefeller presence behind the anti-XL propaganda campaign was virtually invisible. She told me that it has been done quietly but not secretly. “The grants have been disclosed in online databases for years,” she said. “But nobody bothered to add them up and connect the dots.” Krause connected the dots to the networks of foundations that work together on targeted projects.

She directed me to a revealing but obscure source, “Design to Win: Philanthropy’s Role in the Fight Against Global Warming,” which was sponsored by six of “the usual suspects” I have learned to expect to find behind any global warming campaign: the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Energy Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Oak Foundation, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Another source was “A Strategy Planning Tool for Western Conservation,” prepared for the Hewlett Foundation by the Redstone Strategy Group, a brain pool of Ivy League hotshots not to be trifled with. Their strategy is to create eight massive national parks, each the size of Switzerland, as a way to stop the development of fossil fuels. Just fence industry out with parks – or Antiquities Act designations.

Anyone who thinks their local grassroots green group just pops up spontaneously in occasional protests needs to read either of these documents. They will find that the “roots” under the environmentalist “grass” are fertilized with bales of hundred-dollar bills. Rockefeller’s actions are quite open, if quiet. Krause said, “The strategy is articulated in discussion papers, but who reads them?”

Nobody except Vivian Krause, evidently. Her Twitter account, @FairQuestions, says, “I follow the money & the science behind enviro campaigns.” Her research and writing are impressive. Her blog profile states, “I work from my dining room table, using Google, on my own nickel. Not part of any political party, any industry, or any campaign.” Her work deserves more attention in the United States.

Krause’s discovery and exposé of the Rockefeller millions behind the anti-Keystone XL campaign could become a factor in Obama’s pipeline construction decision. It has already created Canadian suspicion of environmental groups dancing on the strings of US foundation money.
It’s not the money itself Canadians fear. It’s the way bales of US foundation cash can buy pressure by proxy, to impose undue foreign influence over Canada’s national energy policy and sovereignty.

One must hope Mr. Obama does not wish to be suspected of dancing on the same Rockefeller policy puppet strings as the Big Green bigwigs who were recently arrested protesting at his front door.
__________

Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. Portions of this report appeared originally in the Washington Examiner and are used by permission.

Soviet attempts to replace the logic of the free market with the “expertise” of bureaucrats and politicians failed miserably, as most admit, yet many American politicians evidently learned little from the example. And it’s not just the federal government pursuing such policies. States, too, have gotten into the act, particularly when it comes to central planning of the energy sector, mimicking Soviet-era “5 year plans” with “renewable energy portfolio standards” that force utilities to generate or procure a rigid quota of expensive niche renewable energy, whether or not that’s cost-effective, technically feasible or makes sense for customers.

Colorado already has taken modest steps down the road to central planning, by adopting increasingly higher renewable production quotas via the ballot box and legislative action. But now central planners in the Statehouse want to meddle again, via SB-252, which will more than double the renewable energy production quotas imposed on rural Colorado energy co-ops, from 10 percent to 25 percent by 2020. You read that right: from 10 percent to 25 percent in just 7 short years.

That could cost the non-profit co-ops between $2.5 billion to $4.1 billion, according to industry estimates, which will of course be passed on to customers in the form of higher utility bills. Higher utility bills won’t just mean hardship for families, but for businesses, delivering yet another serious blow to areas of rural Colorado that already are struggling.

SB-252 was written behind closed doors, by environmental special interests and green-leaning legislators, and rushed forward in the waning days of this session, with zero input from energy co-ops or their customers. No cost-benefit analysis was done; the benchmarks were arbitrarily selected, as always. The long-term costs and consequences of the bill seem of minor concern to those backing it: all they care about is preening as saviors of the planet.

Backers of the measure have tried to allay fears of runaway rate hikes by imposing a 2 percent annual cap on costs that can be passed along to customers as a result of the mandates. But 2 percent per year isn’t a nominal sum to Coloradans living on fixed, stagnant or falling incomes. It may not crimp the champagne and caviar lifestyles of folks living in Snowmass Village, which is represented by SB-252 co-sponsor Gail Schwartz, and it won’t be felt at all by the Colorado Springs constituents of Senate President John Morse, since he (for now) exempts the municipally-owned utility (Colorado Springs Utility) serving them. But a 2 percent annual increase, piled atop whatever other rate hikes the co-ops must impose in order to stay in the black, isn’t as insignificant as backers suggest.

And how will co-ops cope if, as is likely, the new mandates impose costs that exceed the capped amount they can pass along to customers? Backers of the bill are vague about that. As non-profits, the co-ops have no profits or shareholder payouts to raid or withhold when their costs of compliance exceed the capped amount they can recover from customers. That likely will result in dishonest bookkeeping, cost-shifting or the neglect of capital investments not linked to meeting the mandates.

A cap on customer rate hikes won’t make those additional costs of compliance go away; somebody, somehow, somewhere has to pay for them, covertly or overtly. Only economic illiterates, under the spell of magical thinking, would believe otherwise.

It’s a policy, and a policy-making approach, that the former Soviet Union would be proud of, but which has no place in a supposedly-free country, where free markets and consumer choice are supposed to rule. Virtually every major newspaper in Colorado has condemned this as too rushed or ill-advised. The Pueblo Chieftain characterized it, quite correctly, as a dagger aimed at the heart of rural Colorado. And resistance is stirring as awareness of what’s afoot spreads. But given the freight train speed and fury with which Democrats have been ramming through their agenda, the momentum, at least for the moment, seems on their side.

The state Senate already approved the measure; now the action shifts to the House. Unless more Coloradans speak-out in protest – here’s a directory to all House members – the bill has a good chance of passing. It’s believed by many observers that Gov. John Hickenlooper will sign it.

Think your utility bill is a whopper now? Just wait until the meddling politicos in Denver get done with it! Unless you take a few minutes to act now, and tell legislatures to stop politicizing energy decisions, you’ll be paying more for electricity for years to come and Colorado’s business climate will suffer another self-inflicted wound — all so a bunch of energy and economic illiterates can pat themselves on the backs for making gestures they think will “save the planet

An official in Ohio recently stirred controversy by comparing that state’s renewable energy production quotas to one of Stalin’s 5 year plans. But is the analogy really so far-fetched? While it’s true that no one in America will disappear into the gulag, or end up in a mass grave, because he or she failed to meet the renewable energy production diktats handed down from on high, that’s about the only major difference between the two approaches. Both ignore market forces, consumer preferences, technical realities and human and material costs, in favor of arbitrary, politically-motivated demands from arrogant planners and social engineers.

We all know who well such policies served the Soviet Union. They gradually sapped the supposed-superpower of economic vitality until it fell in on itself. So why, one wonders, would anyone expect any better results from command-and-control energy policies here in the supposed ”land of the free”?

What makes these cuts particularly punitive, and outrageous, is that these aren’t appropriated funds drawn from the general treasury. They are royalty payments – revenues generated from energy activities on federal lands – which the state is owed as part of its sometimes-lopsided public lands “partnership” with Washington. It’s not welfare. It’s not pork. It’s part of a longstanding contractual relationship between governments, in which Washington cuts states in on a share of energy revenues, as compensation for any burdens or consequences these activities impose on state or local governments.

These dollars aren’t just handed-out, based on Washington’s political whims, but distributed according to formula, which is directly tied to energy production in the impacted states. They are in that sense earned, not given or granted as part of an “entitlement” program. And royalty payments to states can’t be said to be contributing to the deficit, or the debt crisis, since they are just a share of the billions of dollars in deficit-reducing revenues generated by productive activities on federal lands. Energy royalty payments are better than “budget neutral” – they are budget-beneficial, helping to close yawning gaps in Washington’s ledger sheets. The state share of these payments adds nothing to the federal deficit, since it amounts to skimming-off a little of the gravy energy development brings in.

That, it seems to me, arguably sets these dollars apart from other federal funds, which might open the door to political, rhetorical or even legal challenge if Colorado’s leaders had the cojones to battle back. But thus-far, as usual, Washington is doing just as it pleases in Colorado, with nary a peep of protest from those charged with defending this state’s vital interests. This hit on Colorado, which trickles-down to local communities, ought to be raising a storm of protest from Gov. Hickenlooper, Sens. Udall and Bennet and other top Democrats in the state. Instead, they quietly stand-by while Coloradans are screwed-out of energy royalties that should have nothing to do with sequester cuts.

Washington is running a similarly-nasty gambit regarding so-called timber county payments, which is the portion of logging revenues many rural Western counties traditionally received as compensation and impact-mitigation for harvests taking place on nearby federal lands. The feds are demanding that counties return funds already distributed (and in some cases spent), hitting many already-hard-hit counties below the belt. And this already is generating loud (and bipartisan) objections from states where most of these payments go.

But timber county payments are different from royalty payments in one crucial way. Though timber payments at one time were self-funding, and budget-neutral, since they were pulled from a pot of money the feds collected from timber sales, the demise of the U.S. wood products industry, at the hands of anti-logging fanatics, the Clinton administration and the spotted owl, years ago severed any direct link to actual payments, which were plummeting right alongside harvest numbers. These payments ever since then have been a direct, deficit-fueling drain on the U.S. Treasury, which modestly strengthens the argument for making them subject to sequester cuts – though this still seems a petty and punitive action on the administration’s part.

But I digress.

While much of the rest of the intermountain West is experiencing a sagebrush rebellion revival, with state legislators and governors challenging our distant and detached federal landlord in various ways, Colorado remains compliant and complacent in the face of anything Washington throws our way. Endangered species listings? No complaint from Colorado. War on coal (and coal workers)? No complaint from Colorado. Access restrictions on federal lands? Shelved energy leases? Reductions is the scope of oil shale areas? Raids on our energy royalty revenues? Still no complaints from Colorado.

Whatever Washington decides, whatever it dictates, on these and other critically-important issues is just fine with Colorado — at least judging from the silence of the Dems. Why we’re such a willing doormat for Uncle Sam is something I’ll explore, in-depth, some other time. But the two most obvious explanations are that 1.) top Colorado Democrats are simpatico with all these policies, no matter their impacts on the state’s economy, or 2.) party loyalty prevents them from rising to Colorado’s defense against a fellow Democrat in the White House.

Party loyalty evidently trumps defending Colorado’s vital interests for these Democrats. Washington, in their eyes, can do no wrong, even when what it’s doing is hurting Colorado. How else to explain the passivity, and the silence, with which these lamb-like “leaders” greet Washington’s predatory actions?

I’m no attorney, so I’m just playing a hunch when I wonder aloud whether this raid on energy royalty payments would withstand legal challenge if taken to court. But I would hope it’s something that someone in Attorney General John Suthers’ office is at least researching. Perhaps, if all else fails, the attorney general will take note and intervene. Somebody in state leadership has to confront Washington when Washington does Colorado wrong.

These issues highlight attitudes toward ethics, law and public policy that prevail at EPA and too many other government agencies. However, that attention should not distract from other important matters.

Ms. McCarthy may be the worst of the new nominees. In addition to her dishonesty, she helped devise onerous mercury and soot rules that employed junk science to shutter coal-fired power plants and kill thousands of jobs – and those vehicle mileage standards, which will force people to drive less safe cars that will cause millions more serious injuries and thousands more needless deaths every year.

However, she, Ernest Moniz for Energy, and Sally Jewell for Interior are all team players for the Obama White House; they all share ideologies and agendas that bode ill for America’s and the world’s energy, economic, health and environmental future. They represent a rapidly expanding, increasingly powerful government class that is determined to control what we eat, say, do and buy.

In the environmental arena, these would-be czars and czarinas want to regulate what kinds of energy we can produce and use, cars we can drive, and jobs and living standards we can have. They are the vanguard of a dangerous alliance of eco-imperialism and vulture environmentalism.

Deep Ecology vs. Energy   Driven by utopian, Deep Ecology and global governance ideologies, elected and unelected ruling elites pass laws, promulgate regulations and issue edicts, based on faulty to fraudulent science and unsupported proclamations about dangerous manmade global warming, resource depletion and sustainable development. They seek to radically and fundamentally transform the energy, economic and social fabric of our nation and world – in the name of “social justice” and “saving the planet.”

They operate with little or no transparency or debate, often with vague or minimal legislative or constitutional authority, and with virtually no accountability for the false pretexts they use to justify their intrusive actions, or the harm they cause to people and wildlife. Their attitudes and actions often reflect a callous disregard for environmental values and people’s property, civil rights, jobs, health and even lives.

Our courts give them almost limitless discretion to impose laws and regulations, select pseudo-scientific “facts” to justify them, and ignore both the imaginary benefits and substantive harm they cause. They allow and encourage sweetheart “sue and settle” legal actions between regulatory agencies and activist groups, capricious agency inaction on mineral leases and permits, and arbitrary bureaucratic waivers of endangered species and other environmental laws for gigantic wind and solar projects.

Nameless, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats effectively control the lands and resources of federal lands that constitute 30-86% of the acreage in Alaska and our eleven westernmost states. America’s federal, state and private lands are rich in energy, mineral, timber and other resources that offer vast job and revenue opportunities. We could easily have drilling, mining, forestry and ranching, along with recreation, wildlife, parks and wilderness – and for decades government regulators emphasized this “multiple use” approach. But today, environmentalists and bureaucrats block these uses and vigorously promote preservation.

A Costly Agenda   Today their motto seems to be: If it creates real energy, jobs and revenues – pillory, ban, delay and regulate it out of existence. If it can be labeled “renewable” – mandate it, subsidize it, waive endangered species laws, and ignore the policies’ impacts on wildlife and on people’s health and well-being. Instead of ensuring that resource development activities are conducted properly, don’t permit them at all.

Under their agenda, U.S. domestic oil and gas production climbed during Mr. Obama’s tenure – but the increase was all on state and private lands, mostly because of fracking and despite Team Obama, which is trying to limit and control this game-changing technology even there. On federal lands, oil production fell 23% and gas production plummeted 33% from fiscal-2010 to FY-2012 – dragging jobs, living standards, and federal bonus, royalty and tax revenues downward with them.

The eco-imperialists profess concern for human health and lives, wildlife and environmental quality. They demand pristine air quality to reduce risks that exist only in EPA computer models. But then they issue lethal vehicle mileage regulations, corn ethanol standards that increase global food prices and harm nutrition, and myriad rules that kill jobs and cause foreclosures, stress, and more heart attacks and strokes.   They blame deadly wildfires on global warming, instead of on Deep Ecology policies that prohibit forest thinning, prevent treating insect infestations, and require substandard fire suppressants.   Nearly 700 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa rarely or never have electricity. As a result, pollution from open fires causes asthma and other lung infections that kill a million African women and children annually; countless more die from intestinal diseases due to eating spoiled, unrefrigerated food.   And yet, during a speech in Ghana, President Obama said hungry Africa should rely on its “bountiful” wind, solar and biofuel energy, while his administration refused to provide or support loans for gas or coal-fired generating plants, because he believes Earth is “threatened” by global warming.

Double Standards   Eco-imperialist politicians, regulators and environmentalists demand heavy penalties for birds and other wildlife killed by petroleum-related accidents. They delay or ban drilling, fracking and mining because these activities might “disturb” sage grouse. But when millions of birds and bats are exterminated year after year by wind turbines, they turn a blind eye and actively help hide the horrific slaughter, while ignoring evidence that turbines impair the health of people living near them.

Vulture environmentalists hijack environmental laws to further the venal interests of eco-activists, bureaucrats and wealthy elites, who covet private property but don’t want to pay fair prices. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has joined celebrity fracking opponents, green pressure groups and blueblood vultures that are salivating over beautiful Catskill farmlands. Overtaxed, over-regulated owners could save their family farms through careful natural gas production – but the hovering vultures prefer to force them into foreclosure, and grab the prime properties at fire-sale prices.

Radical greens used imagined threats to the western spotted owl to eliminate logging jobs and a way of life in western states, to create playgrounds for the green 1 percent. Now the feds plan to shoot formerly eastern barred owls, to keep them from breeding their spotted cousins out of existence – before their habitats are incinerated in fiery conflagrations brought on by other ignorant eco-imperialist policies.

In states and communities all over the USA, the Endangered Species Act, Agenda 21, critical habitat areas and buffer zones, endless regulation and litigation, advisory panels stacked with eco-activists but nearly devoid of private property owners, lowball appraisals of lands and water rights, climate change scare stories and other tactics are used repeatedly to seize title or control over property, without payment of just (or any) compensation. The abuses are endless, and are occurring over the planet.

In just one example, over 20,000 Ugandans were evicted, impoverished and left homeless by the New Forest Company and government authorities, to make way for foreign investors promoting “clean development mechanisms” and carbon-trading credits, as solutions to “runaway global warming.”

Conclusion   We went to war with England over far less than this, back in 1776. It’s high time that our environmental laws were again used to address real air, water and wildlife problems – instead advancing what Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore has called the “anti-science, anti-technology, anti-human” agenda of eco-imperialists and vulture environmentalists.

(Driessen is senior policy adviser for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power – Black Death. This piece originally appeared on The Master Resource blog.)