The environmental political complex unmasked

Last year, Shift launched an investigation into Jay Inslee’s secret “green” plans for Washington State. We dug through pages upon pages of emails from Inslee’s office obtained via a public records request. Our efforts were not in vain.

We managed to discover plans to implement a fuel mandate in our state and the truth behind Inslee’s involvement in the Pacific Climate Collaborative (PCC). As Shift reported, the PCC resulted in an agreement to implement a fuel mandate—among other extreme green policies—in 2015 with now-disgraced Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, California Gov. Jerry Brown and British Columbia Premier Christy Clark.

Influence of Bloomberg, Steyer organizations in Inslee administration

In June 2014, Shift exposed a series of emails that reveal how the outside environmental industry and paid-for consultants crafted Inslee’s extreme green agenda. We revealed how Jay Manning—former chief-of-staff to Gov. Christine Gregoire—benefitted financially via contracts with these organizations while advising Inslee on extreme environmental policies. And, Shift uncovered the influence of the very environmental organizations caught in the Kitzhaber scandal—the Tom Steyer-funded Energy Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund—in Inslee’s administration.

Finally, national media outlets are beginning to pay attention as realization grows that the Kitzhaber scandal is not unique to Oregon. Rather, corruption and cronyism runs deep in the political operations of the environmental industry and the Democrat governors who support it. It is an environmental political complex that must be unmasked.

Inslee implicated in coordinated promotion of green industry agenda

Today, the Washington Times highlighted emails—those also obtained by Shift last year—that implicate Inslee and his staff in an orchestrated campaign to promote the extreme environmental industry’s agenda, “beginning with the California and Washington governors’ offices, a private environmentalist law firm and the White House.” The Washington Times,

According to the emails, the parties discuss “Dan’s concept.” [A plan developed by Dan Carol, the Kitzhaber staffer heavily involved in the scandal] Deploying the governors’ offices in a coordinated push for the “climate” agenda would require paying outside parties as well, which would be funded by “major environmental donors” including Michael Bloomberg and Mr. Steyer. This would “serve as a standard setting left flank.”

Specifically, the plan includes “a nationally-coordinated, multi-year ‘states strategy’ focused on driving outcomes contemplated by the president’s climate action plan, [EPA’s Clean Air Act section 111d], resilient infrastructure and international treaty objectives at scale.”

The emails also reveal that the governors’ offices sought to arrange a private dinner at the White House in order to “create buy-in” for those involved that would “signal where funders should support filling holes in missing capacity we need to pull off the Multi-state strategy to keep outcomes and momentum moving on top of the public approach,” wrote Mr. Carol. The Washington Times,

According to the emails, Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Dan Utech liked the idea. Sam Ricketts, director of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s Washington, D.C. office, also assured his colleagues that “[Council on Environmental Quality ] staff were interested and felt [White House’s David] Agnew, [then-Counselor to the President John] Podesta et al.” would be interested as well.

About the planned White House meeting, they suggested “select Governors, senior White House officials, Tom Steyer, [Michael] Bloomberg, and a couple of other major environmental donors”: “The Ask to Funders at that Meeting: Support right now the hiring of a ‘grown-up’ in each state, trusted and recommended by each engaged Governor who is capable and committed to developing and managing an integrated and multi-issue climate outcomes campaign through Paris 2015.”

This would “be independent of any specific in-state or national [nongovernmental organization], yet would work closely with [green] NGOs.”

Evidence demands wider investigation

Given the corruption uncovered by the investigation that ultimately led to Kitzhaber’s resignation and the emails that implicate Inslee in similar circumstances, there is “no doubt” that a “credible investigation into the use of public offices to advance the “clean energy” industry, beyond the Oregon governor’s office, is required.” The Washington Times writes that any investigation must “also extend to the White House, whose occupant serially invoked the objective of “finally” making renewable energy “the profitable kind of energy.”