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The EPA's And Enron's End-Runs Of Congress
12/01/2010
http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/29/epa-enron-greenhouse-gases-opinions-contributors-larry-bell.html
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So Enron and others wondered, why not do the same thing with CO2? Since natural gas is a lower CO2 emitter than coal, that development would certainly be a profitability game changer. But there was a problem. Unlike SO2, CO2 wasnt a pollutantat least not thenand the EPA had no authority to regulate it.
After Senator Wirth became undersecretary of state for global affairs in the Clinton-Gore administration, he began working closely with Enrons boss, Kenneth Lay, to lobby Congress to grant the EPA the authority to control CO2. Between 1994 and 1996 the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million to the Nature Conservancy, and together with the Pew Center and the Heinz Foundation, it engaged in an energetic and successful global warming fear campaign that included attacks on dissenters. That was a time when that exact same Heinz Foundation, headed by Teresa Heinz Kerry, awarded a $250,000 scientific award to key global warming alarmist and director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, who then publicly supported her husband in his failed presidential bid.
A Sept. 1, 1998, letter from Enron CEO Ken Lay to President Bill Clinton requested that he moderate the political aspects of the climate discussion by appointing a Blue Ribbon Commission. His intent was clear: to trash disbelievers and cut off debate on the matter.
Lay had direct contact with the White House earlier when he reportedly met with President Clinton and Vice President Gore on Aug. 4, 1997, to prepare a U.S. strategy for an upcoming Kyoto climate summit that December. Kyoto presented the first step toward creating a carbon market that Enron desperately wanted Congress to support. An internal Enron memorandum stated that Kyoto would do more to promote Enrons business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside the restructuring [of] the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States.
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This government is so corrupt....how can we trust anyone anymore?????
Thanks for posting the link. Interesting article. Bookmarked.