I wrote about the issue this week because of a great piece at Alternet, Gas Is Really Costing Us About $15 a Gallon and tied it together with another piece about OPEC, OPEC and Low Oil Prices, ‘Raising the entry barrier for alternative fuels’.

It’s an issue that cannot be covered enough, especially since we’re seeing the environmental impact on our very shores and the external costs around the globe in disasters.

The external costs are those not added to the true cost, the cost we pay at the pump and those who usually pay that cost are the poor, the least of us who live on the outskirts of our society, either in our own Country or Globally in less developed Countries.

But as the Gulf nightmare has shown, the costs will become more apparent at home.  

And so the efforts of organizations like the National Resource Defense Council and anyone who is willing to talk about the issue should be applauded.

They currently have an amazing piece up by Ryan Reynolds (MY new hero, because he is also producing a documentary about a very wonderful Orca named Luna, who’s story is as tragic as it is beautiful), The True Cost of a Gallon of Gas.

The conclusion is the most important part, the true cost of gas is impossible to calculate because to try to measure the worth of biodiversity, the health of our children affected by pollution, the loss of habitat, I think it’s beyond our grasp to try to put it into small numbers before a dollar sign.  But it’s what we seem to live and die by.  

It’s easy to vilify Big Oil after a tragedy like this, but there are still hard working people in that industry who need to put a roof over their heads. I firmly believe we can pass clean energy and climate legislation and by doing so, put millions of Americans to work.

But we have to ask for it. We have to petition the government to move this kind of legislation forward. The Senate failed to do it this summer, but we should call on them to do it this fall.

If the voices are loud enough, lawmakers will start to listen and (if only in the interests of self preservation) begin to move the country in a new direction.

I think our approach to energy is going to change one way or another. Eventually the Earth will make us change. It would be great if we could get in front of that — and better still, be here to enjoy it.

It is easy to point fingers at big oil, what it comes down to is putting more and more Americans back to work and attempting to put big oil down at the same time.  It’s a hard sell.  They have a lot of money backing them, money to burn.

Not only does OPEC like the idea of cheap oil to keep alternatives outpriced and out of the market.  But you’ve got big players like Koch spending money to crank up the anti-global warming rhetoric.  Greenpeace traced their dirty money and all the players they fund to keep talking up the free market deniers on our airwaves to muddy the waters and keep people in denial.  It works too.  I wrote about it here.

But as Greenpeace has done, they aren’t just pushing back on Global warming, they are also pushing back on alternative energy, Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition.

III. OPPOSING CLEAN ENERGY

Funding Cape Wind Protests Bill Koch has a nearly five-year history of opposing one of largest renewable energy initiatives in America. Cape Wind, a project to develop the country’s first offshore wind farm, has received a significant amount of media attention, not only for its prominence as the first major proposal of it’s kind, but also for the manufactured opposition from wealthy individuals like Bill Koch.

According to the project’s developer Jim Gordon and his company Energy Management Inc., Cape Wind calls for the construction of 130 wind turbines off of Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound.34 While the project is expected to produce 420 megawatts of energy, providing Cape Cod and the surrounding islands with three fourths of the area’s total electricity needs, Koch has been vehemently against Cape Wind. Koch has a home overlooking the Sound in Osterville, Massachusetts, and has been quoted in a variety of publications stating that Cape Wind would ruin the beauty and hinder his sailing in the area. “Who would want to sail in a forest of windmills?” said Koch, in a 2006 Forbes article.35 “I don’t want this in my backyard.”

According to capewind.org, the turbines will be visible 440 feet above the water. Point Gammon is the closest land area to the development, at a distance of 5.2 miles and Nantucket is the furthest away at 13.8 miles. The Web site also adds however that Cape Wind is “farther away from

the nearest home than any other electricity generation facility in Massachusetts.”36

Koch’s opposition to Cape Wind surpasses his verbal protest and manifests in his role as chairman for a front group that he also supports financially. He has been one of the largest donors to The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, one of the most recognized adversaries of Cape Wind. Formed in 2001, the group collects donations in efforts to lobby against the building of the wind turbines, and in 2006 had raised $11 million, 90 percent of which has been donated by Koch and

other wealthy opponents of the project.37 Koch, who serves as the group’s co-chairman, has given at least $1.5 million to support the cause.38 Other donations have come from extremely wealthy individuals like Paul Fireman of Reebok, who gave $250,000 and Michael Egan, son to the founder of EMC Corp., who gave $150,000.39

Evidence shows that the Alliance is particularly strategic in how they solicit such donations. In 2006, the Boston Globe reported that an internal fundraising guide from the Alliance shows that the organization has specific steps for wooing a donor. The 35-page guide teaches fund-raisers how to meet a donor, court them at home and engage them with a follow-up call. According to the Globe, the guide makes statements such as, “Don’t be afraid if there is silence, allow them to think about their response,” and “Highlight fund-raising successes to date, but our success will depend on major donors at the six-figure level.” The guide explains that small donations, such as $5,000, are frowned upon and viewed as “token gifts.”40

Oxbow Lobbyists Against Cape Wind

In addition to being the largest identified funder of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, Bill Koch has also funneled $1 Million dollars to lobbyists to fight Cape Wind through his company, Oxbow Energy.41 By using his company as the conduit for these lobbying payments from 2005 to

2007, Koch helped the Alliance not exceed their limits for lobbying expenditures as a tax-deductable not-for-profit charitable organization. 42

Koch’s use of Oxbow to funnel money to lobbyists against Cape Wind started surreptitiously, with payments from Oxbow to the lobbying firm U.S. Strategies. That firm then paid other lobbyists to work against Cape Wind, including Kessler & Associates.43 This lobbying activity coincided with a

widely criticized move by members of the Alaskan delegation in Congress working with opponents to Cape Wind. The delegation attempted to attach language to a Coast Guard Reauthorization Act in Conference Committee that would have singled out Cape Wind and prohibited it from being permitted.

It was a lobbyist being funded through Koch’s company Oxbow that set up the first meeting between Alaskan Congressman Don Young and the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. Young inserted anti-Cape Wind language into the conference bill shortly thereafter.44 Due to a strong bipartisan outcry, the anti-Cape Wind provision was later significantly modified so that Cape Wind could continue forward in its permitting process.

Koch’s role in lobbying efforts against Cape Wind were revealed again in a 2008 Boston Globe article that described a lobbying disclosure form showing Oxbow along with the Alliance as the funders of yet another lobbying firm, BKSH & Associates, against Cape Wind.45 This was the

first time that Oxbow Energy and the Alliance were listed on the same lobbying disclosure form for anti-Cape Wind lobbying which the Alliance and Oxbow would later claim was a ‘mistake.’

The efforts of Koch and the Alliance were defeated this past April when U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved the project, making it America’s first offshore wind facility.

Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition  Used with permission from Greenpeace, They want as many people as possible to spread the word!

It’s not just money behind the scenes, we know that, it’s lobbyist money, it’s money given to think tanks to put pundits on the TV to try to convince Americans that climate change is not real and, as we learned this week, Fox News, the mouthpiece for the Republican party is not staying on the sidelines either when it comes to the money game, 1 million dollar donations are not “fair and balanced” (Not that I had an delusions otherwise).  

This is about buying public opinion and continued complacency so that we will continue down the same path that keeps a very few people and corporations rich while many pay the price for our dirty energy dependent society.

Corporations can buy candidates, the Supreme court said so.  But we can vote.  We can lobby for better legislation, we can talk to our neighbors and tell them that what we see before us, the world that is changing around us, this is not an illusion, it is reality.

We cannot afford to pay for cheap gas anymore in the lives lost, in the cost to our environment, to the cost to our oceans, air and our future.  These costs are far too high and the stakes are so much more than any of us could imagine.

Take action, tell your Senator to act on Climate legislation.  Not later, not when it’s too late.  

I am extremely disappointed by the Senate’s failure to address the governmental and corporate failures that led to the BP oil disaster. The inability to respond to a great environmental catastrophe, coming on the heels of the failure to deal with climate change, is astonishing. By doing nothing the Senate has failed to create American jobs, increase our security and protect the environment.

The BP blowout has disrupted the lives of millions on our Gulf Coast. The well may finally be plugged, but we are still left to wonder about the long-term effects of millions of gallons of oil and a million-plus gallons of chemical dispersant on our health and the environment. It will be a long time before we fully understand the consequences.

But we already know the costs of inaction on clean energy and climate legislation. Every day since the Senate failed to act:

 — America falls another $210 million behind in clean energy investments;

 — we miss the opportunity to create nearly two million good-paying clean energy jobs; and

 — we import another 491 million gallons of oil, raising the price of oil, which gives Iran — a recognized sponsor of terrorism — another $173 million dollars in oil profits.

And while the Senate fails to act, temperatures keep rising. In fact, since 1985, every single month has seen global average temperatures higher than the average for all of the 20th century. As a result, more than one third of U.S. counties face higher risks of water shortages in the coming years.

You still have an opportunity to invest in our workers at home, to stop sending billions of dollars overseas, to slow the rate of climate change. But this will require your active leadership in making sure the Senate takes action now. There is still time to get the right legislation enacted, a bill that responds to the Gulf spill, limits carbon pollution, ends our oil dependence and creates new, clean-energy jobs throughout the country.