{"id":2947,"date":"2015-12-24T14:15:44","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T20:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=2947"},"modified":"2015-12-24T14:15:44","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T20:15:44","slug":"that-darn-climate-change-conspiracy-ctd-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/12\/24\/that-darn-climate-change-conspiracy-ctd-13\/","title":{"rendered":"That Darn Climate Change Conspiracy, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

The organization ALEC<\/strong><\/em><\/a> has come up before for its conservative, pro-business views.\u00a0 So why are businesses beginning to flee membership?\u00a0 Google may be understandable as it’s a very young organization mired deep in an arena not known for its conservative views, and top management certainly believes the scientists are correct regarding climate change.\u00a0 But now, as Nick Surgey @ The Daily Kos<\/strong><\/em> reports<\/a>, a power company – a redoubt of conservatism – is now moving away:<\/p>\n

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has suffered the loss of another major corporate sponsor,\u00a0the\u00a0Guardian<\/em><\/a>\u00a0reported Tuesday, with the electric utility American Electric Power (AEP) announcing it will no longer provide the climate change denial group with funding from 2016.<\/p>\n

AEP becomes the\u00a0107th identified corporation<\/a>\u00a0to have withdrawn funding since the Center for Media and Democracy launched the\u00a0ALEC Exposed\u00a0<\/a>project in 2011, joining others such as Shell, BP, Google, Microsoft and Facebook.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

EcoWatch<\/strong><\/em> notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If that wasn\u2019t bad enough for ALEC, AEP said in it\u2019s announcement it will be shifting its focus to working with states to comply with\u00a0the Obama Administration\u2019s landmark climate rule<\/a>, the Clean Power Plan.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Clean Power Plan has been a bugaboo for ALEC<\/strong><\/em>, since the plan is meant to mitigate climate change.\u00a0 This is interesting, as AEP<\/strong><\/em> is not exactly an angelic corporation, accused of attacking solar power generators using legislation in Indiana (see this CleanTechnica<\/strong><\/em> article<\/a> from Feb 2015) and West Virginia (MorganCountyUSA.org<\/strong><\/em>‘s article<\/a>)1<\/sup>.\u00a0 I have no idea what really motivated their leavetaking; the official quote from Nick’s article is bland:<\/p>\n

“We let (ALEC) know that we won\u2019t be renewing our membership in 2016,” an AEP spokesperson told the\u00a0Guardian<\/em>. “We are reallocating our resources as we focus on our work with the states around the Clean Power Plan.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve speculated a little bit on how this might be a negative.\u00a0 Is ALEC<\/strong><\/em> an organization dedicated to business objectives, or to a conservative agenda?\u00a0 There is a difference which is becoming more and more apparent, because the conservative agenda is currently dominated by certain religious precepts and magical thinking about how the world should be, not how it is.\u00a0 Many religious organizations and personalities (as distinct from normal people) operate in a world of their own making and sometimes believe that the real world is the same way; however, business leaders who’ve banged into the real world hard enough are likely to balk at the poor intellectual quality of climate deniers, recognizing that as a danger to the survival of their business – not to mention their homes, families, and selves.<\/p>\n

In the end, my exploration of the negatives really comes to naught.\u00a0 Another source of funding moves away from an organization not dedicated to reality; another muscle is stripped away from a skeleton.\u00a0 The problem is that the organization is not discredited in the eyes of its primary audience, conservative state legislators<\/em>.\u00a0 In that respect, it might be slightly hobbled, but those controlling and directing ALEC’s efforts will remain effective – and I continue to worry about an organization that engages in magical thinking in a world that doesn’t easily tolerate the same.<\/p>\n

\n
1<\/sup>Both of these found via Wikipedia<\/strong><\/em><\/a>‘s article on AEP).<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The organization ALEC has come up before for its conservative, pro-business views.\u00a0 So why are businesses beginning to flee membership?\u00a0 Google may be understandable as it’s a very young organization mired deep in an arena not known for its conservative views, and top management certainly believes the scientists are correct \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2947"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2951,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2947\/revisions\/2951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}