Environmental extremists took to the Seattle Times editorial pages today, hiding behind a business organization front group to advance Jay Inslee’s anti-carbon attack on the Washington State economy.
Of course, Inslee is trying to cloak his “green” agenda with a pro-economic development message, which makes today’s editorial endorsement from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) even more laughable.
That’s right, the “junk science” folks who tried to take down Washington State’s apple industry with the fraudulent Alar scare back in 1989 are back here standing proudly behind Inslee’s cap-and-tax scheme. Although, not so proudly that the NRDC would actually use its own name in the editorial.
Instead, the fear-mongering NRDC penned the editorial under the name of Ingrid Rasch, who is identified as the Pacific Northwest chapter director of the Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2). It’s only after searching that group’s website that you find out that “E2 was founded in 2000 as an affiliate of the Natural Resources Defense Council.”
It’s understandable why Inslee would not want the public support of the NRDC while he is trying to sell a skeptical legislature and public on the dubious merits of his tax-raising plans. After all, that extreme group was so discredited by its misleading attack on the apple industry that 60 Minutes – which worked with the NRDC’s public relations firm to portray the phony claims against Alar as serious science – was forced to issue an on-air retraction.
So, it comes as no surprise that the NRDC “scientists”, fronted by Ms. Rasch and E2 in the Times editorial, would depend on discredited science to advocate for Inslee’s job-killing proposals. Rasch, who suggests her background as an early human resources director for Microsoft qualifies her as an authority on economic and environmental policy, falls back on the Inslee claim that the oyster industry in Washington is being destroyed by global warming – a claim that even Inslee’s own Ecology Department was forced to admit was without any scientific merit.
But, lack of scientific merit is an NRDC specialty. Just ask the apple growers in Central Washington who lost millions thanks to the Alar scare. Or ask the legislator who represented that area in 1989, and saw first-hand the damage that fake science and a coordinated PR campaign could cause his constituents – that would be former State Representative Jay Inslee.
